As usual, Poles can’t keep track of which Semitic people they hate the most:
Those stupid buggers. Nothing will ever teach them to smarten up.
Anti-Semitism in Poland
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
As usual, Poles can’t keep track of which Semitic people they hate the most:
Those stupid buggers. Nothing will ever teach them to smarten up.
Clarissa's Blog 
Not surprised this happened in Wrocław – it’s a profoundly weird place (moreso even than the rest of the “regained” lands which were ceded to Poland from Germany after WWII in recompense for losing a big chunk of its east to the USSR).
It has no real longstanding connection to Poland (it was the German city of Breslau for almost all of its history) and most of the current population is descended from migrants from the kresy (borderlands) brought in during population transfers that occurred after WWII (short, simplified version: ethnic Germans were exiled to Germany and replaced by ethnic Poles mostly from places that are now part of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine). IIRC a majority in Wrocław came from around Lwów (Lviv, the current cultural capital of Ukrainian language culture).
(yes, I know you know all this but I’m assuming some readers don’t).
Anyhoo, it’s also part of the greater Silesian region which is very working class and rougher and violent than the rest of the country and has had its own problems with modernity.
Anyhoo, the combination of Eastern people, German architecture (in the core of the city) and Silesian… coarseness always made it kind of… disorienting for me (I used to go there two or three times a year for work related reasons).
Given the shallow time frame for Polish identity there makes people touchier and more defensive and liable to say things that other people are only thinking. This led to some creative sabotage against the communists (via little statues of gnomes but that’s another story) but it also can lead to crap like the demonstration in question.
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This is fascinating. Thank you for the comment.
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A few other points.
Poles have never needed the presence of actual Jews to express anti-semitism (if anything the absence of physical Jews makes it easier and more…. creative and lurid).
This is weird because (among other reaons) a fair amount of people in Poland have Jewish names and/or look …. Jewish though they don’t necessarily think of themselves as such (and I’ve heard of a few freakouts when Jewish ancestory was discovered in the family tree).
Things like this protest are also a symptom of the lack of acceptable nationalist discource in the EU. There is at present no acceptable language for discussing questions of national interest vs (for example) European integration and/or other pipe dreams.
The refusal of most public figures to engage in nationalist discourse doesn’t make it go away it drives it underground where it festers and occasionally bursts out into ugly forms (similarly to the way anti-semitism was driven underground among African Americans).
The connection between accepting Syrian (and a buffet mix of other) migrants and Jews comes from the widespread perception in Europe that Jewish organizations and intellectuals are spurring on migration for puposes of their own that have nothing to do with the wellbeing of European countries. George Soros’s pronouncements that Europe must accept millions of “refugees” from here until eternity doesn’t help things.
Again, discussing why Soros is spending millions of dollars to create an unemployable and unintegratable underclass in Europe is not something people in polite company discuss but that doesn’t mean no one will discuss it….
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