23 November 2006
Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich has said that there was no wide-spread anti-Semitism in the central European country. After he was physically attacked by right-wing extremists earlier this year, society had "made it clear immediately that there is no place for anti-Semitism in Poland", Schudrich told the newspaper "Rzeczpospolita", adding that the attack had been strongly condemned and the perpetrators been arrested shortly afterwards. Schudrich pointed out that the late Pope John Paul's teaching played a great part in changing Polish opinion about Jews. He also referred to a recent study on anti-Semitism in Europe by the European Jewish Congress (EJC), according to which there have been only a few isolated incidents of anti-Semitism. Ilan Moss, the author of the EJC study, told "Rzeczpospolita" that although anti-Semitism was creeping up from time to time in Polish political discourse and the media, there was no violence against Jews. Contrary to western Europe, Poland's Jews felt safe, Moss pointed out.