It is not the 1930s but you’d never know it from the virulent church service held this week at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus church in Krakow, Poland. More than 1,000 people attended the special church service organized by the Committee Against Defamation of the Church and For Polishness, along with the anti-Semitic Radio Maryja. Posters around the neighborhoods of Krakow announcing the event drew local residents with the slogan on them “The kikes will not continue to spit on us.”

“The Jews are attacking us! We need to defend ourselves,” shouted Professor Bogoslav Wolniewicz at the service. Attendees were treated to a diatribe against the Jews by the bishop of Krakow, Albin Malysiak, who began inflaming the crowd there with his sermon beginning “”A man who does not love his homeland, but some sort of international entity, apparently also does not love his nearest and dearest.” Seems that they had a rollicking good time bashing the Jews, any Pole who has any business dealings or sells anything to Jews, and anyone who supports the Jews such as at Righteous Among the Nations Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, at a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office responsible for Jewish-Polish affairs; and at the newspaper that, in their eyes, represents the Polish left, Gazeta Wyborcza, and its editor, Adam Michnik.

They are upset, you see, about a scholarly book written by a Polish-born Jew that documents the pogroms against Jews that took place in Poland following the end of World War II when concentration camp survivors and those who had been in hiding attempted to return to their homes and to try to find any surviving loved ones and well, to not put too fine a point on it, were killed by their Polish neighbors among other actions taken against them by their fellow Poles. The book is called “Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz” and it is by Jan Gross.

A review of the book from Booklist (whose core mission is to provide public and school librarians with reviews that help them decide what to buy. In recent years, Booklist has also become a valuable tool that helps librarians make reading recommendations):

Professor Gross’ widely acclaimed Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001) described the slaughter of Polish Jews by their fellow Poles as the Nazis watched approvingly. Now Gross illustrates with eloquence and shocking detail that the bloodletting did not cease when the war ended. Contrary to most expectations, many Polish Jews who survived the Holocuast wished to remain in Poland. After all, Jewish and Gentile Poles had generally coexisted peacefully, if not harmoniously, before the war, and many Polish Jews viewed themselves as staunch patriots. But when Jews attempted to return to their hometowns and to reclaim their property, tensions reached the boiling point; the explosion came in the town of Kielce, when the disappearance of an eight-year-old boy sparked the old blood libel of ritual murder. As the slaughter of Jews began, police and military officials either joined in the outrages or refused to intervene. In succeeding years, with the complicity of Communist authorities, the position of the remaining Polish Jews continued to deteriorate. By 1949, the goal of the Nazis had been achieved: Poland was essentially free of Jews. This is a masterful work that sheds necessary light on a tragic and often-ignored aspect of postwar history.

So the Bishop of Krakow and these other folks feel like their country has been given a bad rap about its treatment of the Jews and they’d really like to do something about it. They are up in arms that anyone would accuse any Poles of being Anti-Semitic. Yeah, and they used posters proclaiming “The kikes will not continue to spit on us” to advertise their church service…Well, I’m convinced. Obviously no Anti-Semitism to be found in Poland after the war and certainly not now. Ummm hmmm.