‘No Jews Allowed’ Banner Seized From Polish Hotel
(JTA) — Polish police seized a banner reading “no Jews, speculators and traitors allowed” from the entrance to a hotel that reportedly is owned by an ultranationalist who is jailed for anti-Semitic hate speech.
Officers were sent Thursday night following the surfacing of images on social networks showing the banner on the gate to the Dom Polski hotel in the eastern suburb of Cesarzowice, Paweł Petrykowski, a spokesperson for the police department of the Lower Silesia Province, told TVP, Poland’s national public broadcaster.
The hotel, which featured the banner since spring, is owned by Piotr Rybak, an ultranationalist who earlier this year was sentenced to three months in prison for burning an effigy of a Jew at a 2015 demonstration in Wroclaw against Muslim immigration, Cesarzowic Mayor Jolanta Szulc told TVP.
The regional prosecutor’s office is looking into charging Rybak with another indictment for racist hate speech in connection with the banner, Małgorzata Kalus, the prosecutor department’s spokespewoman, told TVP.
Several Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the From the Depths Holocaust commemoration organization, on Thursday called on Polish authorities to take down the banner and prosecute the parties responsible for it.
Rybak had been under house arrest until last week, when a District Court judge in Wrocław sent him to jail for violating the terms of his detention. Rybak violated those terms by participating in a nationalist march in Wroclaw on Nov. 11 that featured anti-Semitic rhetoric.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
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 the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
