Poll reveals anti-Semitism in Poland, renews debate over hate-speech laws
By Don Snyder
Polish officials hope the Museum of the History of Polish Jews can be a force for educating a new generation on the importance of tolerance and the contribution of Poland’s Jewish population.
More than half of Polish youth visit anti-Semitic websites that glorify Hitler and the Nazi era, according to a new poll that has renewed debate about laws governing hate speech and stoked the concerns of Poland’s dwindling Jewish population.
The data, gathered by the Warsaw University Center for Research on Prejudice, was presented to the Polish parliament on Nov. 5. Some participants in the poll embraced such blatantly anti-Semitic statements as “Jews must realize that they themselves made the Poles hate them because of their treason and crimes.”
Twenty-one percent of the youth polled and 19 percent of adults said such hate speech should not be banned, while 14 percent of all those polled said racist language was common in Poland.
The Center’s director Michal Bilewicz, a co-author of the report and assistant professor at Warsaw University, said there were 653 respondents to the poll aged 16 to 18 as well as 1,007 adults.
“What is most important for me is that so many young people accept hate speech,” Bilewicz told FoxNews.com in a telephone interview. “In fact, more than adults. And the young are the future of Poland.”
“I am dismissing this study because it is overemphasizing the danger from crackpots.”
– Sigmund Rolat, Holocaust survivor
Other experts on racism in Poland concur with Bilewicz’s findings.
“Contrary to what might be expected, it is the young who often display anti-democratic and xenophobic attitudes on a mass scale today,” said Rafal Pankowsi, professor of political science at Collegium Civitas, a private college in Warsaw.
But Sigmund Rolat, 85, a Holocaust survivor and major benefactor of Warsaw’s newly-opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews, said Jews are safer and more accepted in Poland than in Western Europe. He said the study gave too much emphasis to a minority of bigots.
“I am dismissing this study because it is overemphasizing the danger from crackpots,” Rolat said.
According to Bilewicz, the failure of Polish courts to enforce laws banning expressions of hate compounds the problem.
“Judges must maintain the fine balance between protecting free speech and banning rhetoric designed to incite hate,” he said.
The poll reinforces the findings of recent studies that show an anti-Semitic tilt among Polish youth. Forty-four percent of Warsaw high school students don’t want a Jewish neighbor, according to a poll of 1,250 students that was released in April of this year, also conducted by the Center for Research on Prejudice.
Piotr Kadicik, president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland, found the poll results troubling. The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports him as saying that the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes is particularly surprising as there are hardly any Jews in Poland.
Read more Poll reveals anti-Semitism…
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