Poland’s defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz, has been revealed as having founded and run an antisemitic newspaper.
Macierewicz, who in the course of his ministerial duties has met with many world leaders, founded Głos (Voice) in 1977, and according to Forward owned it at least as recently as 2009, and may still own it.
One survey of Głos’ content during the years in which Macierewicz was most active as its editor found 43 antisemitic articles published in 1996 alone. For example, when in 1996 Dariusz Rosati wrote a profound plea for forgiveness to the Jewish community for the 1946 Kielce pogrom, in which 40 Holocaust survivors were murdered, Macierewicz described the apology as “a brazen lie and defamation”, denying any Polish involvement. In another article, he blames “Jewish circles” for spreading a “politics of lies” that blames Poles for pogroms.
In another article that year he asked “Why are Jewish threats to harm the international interest of Poland treated with such respect?”
Forward writes that many Głos articles accuse Jews of conspiring against Poland, for example of wanting “even our natural monuments”, accusing Jews of wanting to strip the country of its resources. Another writer accused Jews in Krakow of wanting to take over the hospitals and indicated that Jews had in some way infiltrated public services, writing that one senior police officer was “strictly linked to the Jewish nationality,” continuing that one “can see him in synagogue very often”.
The paper also featured many antisemitic cartoons, one depicting an Orthodox Jew saying to a dog “we’ll put you to death for your antisemitism”, and others depicting Jewish stereotypes.
In 2002, Macierewicz wrote of the antisemitic fabrication the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that “experience shows that there are such groups in Jewish circles”.
The Anti-Defamation League have met with Polish officials to discuss the matter