30 May, 2006
Polish President Lech Kaczynski has said there will be 'zero tolerance' for anti-Semitism in his country. Kaczynski made the statement after receiving Michael Schudrich, the country's chief rabbi, who was attacked on Saturday in Warsaw. Rabbi Schudrich, a US citizen, was pushed and sprayed with tear gas on a Warsaw street on Saturday by a young man, who then ran away. "It is very important that the president is taking this incident so seriously, proclaiming zero tolerance for anti-Semitism," Schudrich said after the meeting. "President Kaczynski has always said that he would not tolerate any kind of anti-Semitic incident in Poland," presidential aide Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka was quoted by AFP as saying.
Rabbi Schudrich, who prayed alongside Pope Benedict XVI at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Sunday, linked the attack against him to recent changes in the Polish government. The nationalist League of Polish Families (LPR) has entered the governing coalition and LPR leader Roman Giertych, a third generation far-right activist, has been appointed deputy premier and education minister. "When you let an extreme right-wing party into the coalition government, that empowers nationalists and those who run around shouting unpleasant things," Schudrich told journalists at the former Auschwitz death camp. The strong man in Poland's governing coalition is Jaroslaw Kaczinski, twin brother of the president.
