Polish Councilman Wants To Censor References To Pogroms In Bialystok

(JTA) — A Polish alderman is seeking the removal of references to anti-Semitic violence in the history of Bialystok from a graphic novel about the city.
Marek Chojnowski, who represents the ruling Law and Justice party on the Bialystok City Council, was quoted this week by the news site Onet as protesting references to a 1906 pogrom in the booklet published with municipal funding. The 2014 booklet commemorates Ludwik Zamenhof, a Polish Jew who invented the international language Esperanto.
One page that Chojnowski wants censored shows dozens of civilians wielding clubs and hitting a group of Jews while they are prone on the street. Another shows four men dressed like Polish farmers beating three people — a woman wearing a torn dress and two young men.
The illustrations refer to pogroms carried out by Bialystok residents that were enabled by Russian authorities when they controlled the area. Some 90 people died in the violence.
But the inclusion of these scenes, which biographers of Zamenhof said had a profound effect on the linguist who was born in the eastern city, is unacceptable, Chojnowski said.
“This must show the city in the best light,” he said. “It is unacceptable that they are presented as anti-Semites.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Fast Forward Brooklyn event with Itamar Ben-Gvir cancelled days before Israeli far-right minister’s US trip
-
Culture How Abraham Lincoln in a kippah wound up making a $250,000 deal on ‘Shark Tank’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.