Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Rock Hurled Inside Polish Synagogue During Yom Kippur Prayers

(JTA) — Unidentified individuals hurled a rock into a synagogue in Gdansk in northern Poland, shattering the glass of one window while worshippers, including children, were inside.

The assault on Gdansk’s New Synagogue occurred on Wednesday, during Yom Kippur, one of Judaism’s holiest days, the Jewish Religious Community in Gdansk wrote on its Facebook page.

The rock fell “in the atrium where women waiting for neilah — the final prayer of Yom Kippur,” the statement read. “There were children around. The rock flew several centimeters from where women were standing.” No one was hurt in the incident.

Police are investigating the incident, the statement also said.

The community in its statement said the incident recalled the actions of ultra-nationalists in the 1930s, who “would often target synagogues on Yom Kippur,” the text read. But such attacks are very rare in Poland today, where documented anti-Semitic incidents are mostly verbal.

In Poland, which is home to some 20,000 Jews, Deputy National Prosecutor Agata Gałuszka-Górska in May said that the number of anti-Semitic incidents had dropped by 30 percent, to 112 last year from 160 in 2016. Anti-Semitic hate crimes accounted for about 6 percent of all hate crimes recorded, she said.

In November, 60,000 people attended a nationalist march in Poland that featured anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Some local Jews say the government is tolerating ultra-nationalism that elevates the risk of anti-Semitic violence. But other leaders of Jewish organizations in Poland dismiss this claim.

Opposition by Israel and Jewish groups to Poland’s passing in January of a law that criminalizes blaming the Polish nation for Nazi crimes has fueled fresh reports of rising anti-Semitism in Poland.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.