ANTI SEMITISM PROLIFERATES AS NATIVISM FLOURISHES

A few months ago I reread Leon Uris' harrowing tale "Mila 18," a historical
novel set in German occupied Warsaw, Poland, before and during World War II. This impressive work covered the Nazi Occupation of Poland, and the atrocity of systematically dehumanizing and eliminating the Jewish population  of Poland.
The story concentrates  on Jewish resistance fighters  in the Warsaw ghetto, and, in graphic detail, describes the gradual decimation  of a cultural force which once encompassed the largest concentration of Jews in Europe. Prior to the Holocaust, Poland boasted 3.3. million Polish Jews - about 10%  of the population. During World War II 20% of the Polish population perished - half of them were 3 million Polish Jews. Many were killed during the ghetto uprising and ongoing pogroms executed by Nazis and Polish collaborators. (Some historians estimated that as many as 200,000 Polish Jews were killed by fellow Poles.) Most were murdered in any of the 6 German extermination camps the Nazis built in Poland. These included the notorious Auschwitz, Birkenau an Treblinka facilities designed and built exclusively to kill prisoners on a massive scale immediately upon arrival. Slightly more than 300,000 Polish Jew survived the war. Most of these fled the country afterwards, many to Israel. Today the Jewish community in Poland has shrunk to 10,000.

Given this horrific history, which effectively continued during the immediate post WWII Soviet occupation, and  which, to be fair, also affected much of the gentile population, one would expect the remaining population to minimize its expressions of intolerance and bias. As in several other affected countries, Nazi ideologies and symbols did become illegal. However, recently, after newly arisen right-wing populist and nativist parties began filling the political void created by the growing unpopularity of traditional, mostly centrist, organizations, the strength of these regulations diminished. In Poland this trend started with the arrival of the "Law and Justice Party," found in 2001, and gaining political dominance in 2005. Led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski and supported by President Andrzej Duda , "Law an Justice," claiming absolute majorities in the Polish Parliament, seized control of public media and the courts, and gradually began assuming authoritarian rule. Fueled by Europe's migration crisis and economic problems, and endorsed by growing numbers of the, often young, unemployed  or underemployed of an increasingly disaffected segment of the population. Like what happened in much of Europe, Poland's traditional, moderating, center-left labor parties lost public supports and influence. Many of its positions were co-opted and tweaked by the dominant party. The result has been that we now begin to see  "Charleston-like" white supremacist led marches and demonstrations in support of the current government, ostensibly showing anti-immigrant, and increasingly anti-Semitic content. While the initial focus of this nativist noise centered on hatred of mostly Muslim migrants, an expression of Islamophobia, anti-Semitic Muslim migrants paradoxically, in an ideological sense, joined forces with anti-Jewish nativist groups, thereby intensifying the impact on the Jewish population. To Polish youth groups clamoring for a "return" to a white-Catholic Poland, this incongruity has grown into an uncomfortable marriage of convenience, ultimately making Jews susceptible to attacks from an even larger segment of the population.

Anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland and other European countries gradually proliferated. As the European migration crisis escalated, right-wing nativist movements grew in popularity and influence, facilitating sympathetic governments' ability to enact policies supporting their political slant. Poland's "Law and Justice Party" recently adopted a new anti-defamation law, which makes it a crime for anyone , in any part of the world, to accuse the "Polish nation" of complicity in Nazi war crimes. In other words, it asserted that, by law, Poland was not complicit in the Holocaust, a denial which had no impact on popular attitudes towards its Jewish population. A study produced by the University of Warsaw reported a sharp increase in negative attitudes and acceptance of hate speech towards Jews. Approximately 56% of people interviewed said they di not want a Jewish person in their family, 32% did not want Jewish neighbors, and 24% of younger Poles admitted to making anti-Semitic remarks.

In Germany where, only four years after its founding, the anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, "Alternative for Germany" (AFD) party, recently became the third largest political party in parliament, 62% of Jewish survey respondents reported that they experienced anti-Semitism in their everyday life. A Berlin Imam, Abu Bilal Ismail, reportedly called on Allah to "destroy the Zionist Jews - count them and kill them all," and a segment of AFD party members is actively pushing to have Nazi soldiers remembered as patriots. (Austin Davis, "Germany's rising anti-Semitism haunts Jews," USA Today, Dec. 22, 2017). In France, which houses 475,000 Jews and around 5 million, pro-Palestinian, Muslims, synagogues are being attacked, kosher supermarkets smashed and looted, and crowds are chanting "death to Jews,' and "slit Jews throats." (Marie Brenner, "The troubling question in the Jewish community: Is it time to leave?" Vanity Fair, July 8, 2015). In Italy racist and anti-Semitic incidents increased more than ten-fold between 2012 and 2016. This activity played an unprecedented role in its most recent lection during which hard-right populists won better than 50% of the vote.

Last year, in the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League reported a 57% surge in anti-Semitic incidents, totaling 1,986, up from 1,267 in 2016. his was the single largest one year spike since 1979. according to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt "this alarming increase appears to be fueled by emboldened far-right  extremists, as well as the divisive state of our national discourse." According to Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, Executive Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis: "It is not a  big deal to hate Jews. The first group that gets attacked is the Jews."

As far-right nativists and populists increasingly assume political control in country after country, as they already have in Poland, Hungary, Austria, and potentially in Germany and Italy, anti-Semitic rhetoric is bound to proliferate. Eric Goldstein, CEO of the UJA Federation of New York, in an interview with The Times o Israel, sent us a succinct warning: "The world is witnessing an alarming rise in acts of anti-Semitism, and we must do all we can to respond to this growing threat. History has shown us the ramifications of silence." We all need to remember what happened when another populist movement gradually replaced the Weimar Republic in Germany.

Yes, it can happen again!