Polish president visits Jewish cultural center amid fight over law

Poland’s president visits a Jewish community center in a conciliatory gesture that comes amid a wave of anti-Semitism in the country and a dispute with Israel over a new law that makes it a crime to blame Poland for the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany.

Israel’s ire has in turn sparked anti-Jewish remarks in the public media by prominent commentators and elected officials, something unheard of in decades.

President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday visits the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, the southern Polish city that was once a center of Jewish life. The center is a gathering place for elderly Holocaust survivors and also houses a nursery and preschool, a reflection of the Jewish life that has been reemerging in Poland in recent years.

There, Duda stressed his appreciation for Jewish culture.

— AP