Polish Former Priest Indicted For Inciting Hatred Against Jews
Polish flag with coat of arms Image by Wikimedia Commons
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — The prosecutor’s office in the western Poland city of Wroclaw issued an indictment against former priest Jacek Międlar for “public incitement to hatred based on religious and national differences.”
He could face up to 2 years in prison.
On Nov. 11, 2016, during Polish Independence Day, Wroclaw hosted the “March of Patriots.” According to the prosecutor’s office, Międlar’s speech there publicly called for hatred against Jews and Ukrainians.
“He used expressions intended to inspire others to feelings of contempt, strong dislike, anger, disapproval and hostility towards them, imputing them hostility towards Polish people and transgressive intentions and encouraging the participants of the march to fight against them,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Międlar did not plead guilty. In his statement he stated that he defended the good name of Poles, whom he said the Jews call “worms.”
“We must be strong in spirit, body, in our mentality and knowledge, because only we will be able to win with the left, with Jewry, and with communism, which is still in our homeland,” said Międlar during the march. “Only we will win the fight against evil!” He also shouted: “Poland for Poles. Poles for Poland.”
In April 2016, Miedlar referred to Jews in a sermon as a “cancer which swept Poland.” The Prosecutor’s Office in Bialystok later found that no hate crime had been committed. He has twice this year been banned from entering the United Kingdom to take part in anti-immigrant marches.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
