A Polish man convicted of burning an effigy of an Orthodox Jew has announced that he plans on suing leaders of his country’s Jewish community for accusing him of anti-Semitism, Radio Wroclaw reported.
Piotr Rybak was sentenced to three-months imprisonment for burning the effigy at an anti-immigration protest in November 2015, an incident which Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich said showed "how the hatred for migrants comes from the same place as the classic hatred for Jews.”
As Rybak burned the effigy, his fellow demonstrators chanted “God, honor and fatherland!” The demonstrators also chanted “United Catholic Poland! National radicalism! Down with the European Union” and one speaker declared that “Poland is for Poles.”
“What happened last night in Wroclaw is outrageous and concerning. We cannot help but to remember how Jews were burnt in effigy in the 1930’s and today by Hamas,” Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told The Jerusalem Post at the time.
“With my lawyers, we are already considering how to sue Dutkiewicz and Gleichgewicht, who called me a fascist, anti-Semite, and stinking nationalist,” Rybak said, referring to Aleksander Gleichgewicht, chairman of the Jewish community in Wrocław, and Rafał Dutkiewicz, president of the Wroclaw Jewish community.
Rybak’s lawyers have already appealed his prison sentence.
