Polish Police Arrest Teenager Suspected of Throwing Firebombs at Warsaw Shul

By Hamodia Staff

Polish police have arrested a 16-year-old male on suspicion of attacking the Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw with Molotov cocktails and said they plan to ask prosecutors on Thursday to open an investigation.

Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, a member of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER) Standing Committee, said the shul sustained minimal damage to its façade and no injuries were reported. No one was in the shul at that time, baruch Hashem.

Hours after the attack, ambassadors of the United States and Israel arrived at the incident site with Jewish community leaders and Polish officials representing the president, the national parliament and the city government to condemn the attack.

Addressing a press conference, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski said, “The Nożyk synagogue is a symbol of survival, and we stand in solidarity with Nożyk today and tomorrow.”

“Look there,” Rabbi Schudrich told reporters at a news conference in front of the shul on Wednesday, pointing at the burn marks on the building. “If [the bottle] had gone 15 centimeters to the left it would have reached the window and possibly inside the synagogue. There’s a library there.”

“Here there’s no context, there’s no other possibility; it’s antisemitism,” he added when asked about a possible motive.

Police in cooperation with the Internal Security Agency arrested the teenager in Warsaw on Wednesday evening.

“He was completely surprised, he didn’t want to talk, he didn’t reveal his motives,” police spokesperson Robert Szumiata was quoted as saying by the news agency PAP.

Szumiata said police will send a request to the prosecutor’s office on Thursday to initiate an investigation. The teenager, who has no previous police record, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

He is to be investigated under a section of the penal code that states that “whoever causes an event that threatens the life or health of many people or large-scale property, in the form of a fire, shall be punished by up to 10 years in prison.”

The court will need to decide whether the suspect will be held responsible for the act as an adult, the police spokesperson said, according to PAP.

In a post on social media on Wednesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda condemned the “shameful attack” on the synagogue. “I condemn the shameful attack on the Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw. There is no place for antisemitism in Poland! There is no place for hatred in Poland!” Duda wrote.

President of the Conference of European Rabbis, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, said: “A week before the March of the Living in Auschwitz, we received a painful reminder that history, chalilah, can repeat itself. Especially after October 7, we must not forget that in the same place where synagogues were set on fire in the first round, they might act to burn Jews in the second round. I thank President Duda for condemning the act and expect to see swift actions from his government, including the severest punishment for the perpetrators, enhancing security around Jewish institutions, and strengthening the personal security of the Jewish community in Poland, which was affected by the events in Israel.”