A leading right-wing national weekly newspaper in Poland has published an article on its front page that explains to its readers “how to recognize a Jew.”
The Tylko Polska, or Only Poland, ran the story alongside its main headline, which read, “Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris,” and voiced anger at alleged anti-Polish speakers at a Holocaust studies conference in Paris last month.
The “recognize a Jew” piece lists “names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation” and even supposed “disinformation activities” that might mark out a Jewish person, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. The headline added, “How to defeat them? This cannot go on!”
The newspaper was delivered to the lower house of the Polish parliament—the Sejm—on Wednesday, as part of the weekly package of publications sent to lawmakers there.
Michal Kamiski, of the center-right Poland Comes First party, told a press conference that the newspaper’s presence was unacceptable, Polsat News reported.
Only Poland is published by nationalist political candidate and musician Leszek Bubl. In the past, he has sung anti-Semitic songs about “rabid” rabbis, the JTA reported.
Initially, Andrzej Grzegrzolka—the director of the Sejm Information Center—said the newspaper was being sold in kiosks within the parliament, meaning it was not up to the Information Center to regulate its sale. He suggested law enforcement authorities were more suited to deal with the issue.
But as outcry grew, Grzegrzolka said the Center would request the removal of Only Poland from the parliament’s press kit, to avoid causing further offence.
The anti-Semitic headline ran alongside the front page article complaining that speakers at last month’s Holocaust studies meeting in Paris had been attacking Poland. It was printed with a photo of Jan Gross, a Polish Jew who teaches at Princeton University.
Gross has regularly said that Poles collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, helping Adolf Hitler’s regime murder millions of their Jewish countrymen. He has become a favored target for Polish nationalists, who rail against any suggestion of Polish complicity in the genocide.
Gross was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 1996. However, in 2016, the nationalist Law and Justice government was reportedly considering stripping the scholar of the honor for what it considers his anti-Polish work.
The government has been accused of trying to rewrite history by banning any suggestion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Use of the phrase “Polish death camps” to refer to Nazi-run concentration camps like Auschwitz, for example, is now punishable by up to three years in prison.