Polish parliament drops nationalist weekly over anti-Semitic headline

WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s parliament has canceled the delivery of a nationalist weekly that recently ran an anti-Semitic headline.

Andrzej Grzegrzolka, the head of parliament’s press office, said Thursday that the list of publications delivered to the legislature will be reviewed to prevent a repeat of such situations.

Opposition lawmaker Michal Kaminski spotted the Tylko Polska, or “Poland Only,” paper with the headline “How to Recognize a Jew” at a kiosk on the parliament grounds. He called for prosecutors to investigate, as it’s a crime in Poland to incite hatred based on race or religion.

A lawmaker from the ruling right-wing party called for the paper to be banned altogether.

Poland, which was home to Europe’s largest Jewish community before the occupation by Nazi Germany (1939-1945), has seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in recent years.

Israel and Poland have recently seen diplomatic tensions over a controversial law that forbids blaming the Polish nation for Nazi crimes. A crisis emerged after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a February visit that some Poles collaborated with the Germans during the Holocaust. He said speaking about the complicity of individuals was permissible despite the law.

But his comment, which was misrepresented in some media to include all Poles, triggered a diplomatic spat. It escalated when Israel’s acting foreign minister, Israel Katz, later said that Poles take in “anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”