Election Debate Turns Anti-Semitic: Polish Politician Slips Kippah on Head of Opponent

The memorial to the 42 Jews who were murdered in the Kielce pogrom July 4, 1946, Hy”d.

A far-right Polish politician made his point during a debate last weekend by slipping a kippah on the head of his opponent, Polish media reported.

An election debate, held ahead of the May 26 European Parliament elections, descended into a display of anti-Semitism, as candidates sparred over restitution to Jewish Holocaust victims.

During the debate, Dawid Lewicki, a candidate for the far-right Confederation political alliance, stuck a kippah in front of Anne Krupka, from the ruling Law and Justice party, and said, “This is the symbol of Law and Justice. They kneel before the Jews, they sell the country for $300 billion,” according to Polish press reports.

Krupka then threw the kippah off the table.

Later, when she got up to speak, a video showed Konrad Berkowicz, another Confederation official, picking up the kippah and holding it above her head.

Poland’s Ambassador to Israel Marek Magierowski condemned the incident, saying that “all expressions of racially motivated hatred are unacceptable.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, however, said it was not worthy of comment. “This a fringe racist party that isn’t even worthy of responding to,” he said.

The debate was held last Saturday in Kielce, a southern city in Poland that was the site of a pogrom against Polish Jews by their non-Jewish neighbors in 1946.

 

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