Two Jewish heritage sites in the southeastern Polish town of Dolka were defaced over the weekend with anti-Israel graffiti and Nazi swastikas. The vandalism targeted the ruins of a shul destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, as well as a recently erected memorial at the Jewish cemetery—built by local townspeople to honor the once-thriving Jewish community and its coexistence with their Polish neighbors before the war.
The attack comes just days after a firestorm erupted over remarks made by far-right Polish European Parliament member Grzegorz Braun during a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in Jedwabne, where he shared a platform with Poland’s Chief Rabbi, Rav Michael Schudrich. Braun publicly denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, a statement met with applause from segments of the crowd and swift condemnation from Jewish groups worldwide.
“This is not an isolated incident—it is a symptom of something much deeper,” said Meir Bulka, chairman of J-nerations, an organization dedicated to preserving Jewish memory and heritage in Poland. “Poland stands at a crossroads and must confront this hatred immediately. When a member of parliament denies the Holocaust and receives applause, it sends a dangerous signal to the public.”
Bulka urged Poland’s newly elected president and prime minister to act, calling on them to publicly denounce Holocaust denial and to protect the few remaining Jewish sites and cemeteries throughout the country. “Poland’s Jewish population today is but a fraction of what it once was,” he said. “And yet, these attacks show how vulnerable even our memory remains.”
Local residents in Dolka gathered Sunday afternoon to denounce the incident and express their support for continued Jewish-Polish dialogue. “This town values the legacy of its Jewish neighbors,” one resident said. “This act of hate is not who we are.”
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Thousands of Jews make an annual pilgrimage to the killing fields in Poland, filling the coffers of these murderous collaborators. It is quite unfathomable, but the pull of kivrei avos, and unfortunately, the need to see with their very eyes the concentration camps where millions were exterminated and were not zoche to kever Yisroel, brings so many yidden to that accursed country. You have to be a real “pollack” to cut off the branch you’re sitting on. Yes! Jews bring good money to the thriving, albeit, bizarre trade of ogling how their forebears were killed.