The Guardian

Poland’s Jews fear for future under new Holocaust law

Behind the new law denying Polish complicity in Nazi atrocities, many fear there lies a growing strain of antisemitism
Supporters of the far-right National Radical Camp (ONR) - separated by police from counter protesters in the foreground - gather in support of the Holocaust bill in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw on 5 February. Photograph: Dawid Zuchowicz/Agencja Gazeta via Reuters

Even on a clear day, history hangs over Warsaw like smog. Flattened during the Nazi German wartime occupation and rebuilt during communist rule, what Poland’s capital may lack in architectural charm it makes up for with a litany of monuments, statues, plaques and shrines dedicated to collective suffering and individual sacrifice.

One lesser-known memorial is a small plaque on the wall of the Warszawa Gdańska railway station, a nondescript socialist-era building on the north side of the city. It was from here that many Poles of Jewish origin departed in the wake of the “anti-Zionist campaign” in March 1968, when cold war politics and a power struggle within the Polish Communist party led to an antisemitic propaganda campaign forcing thousands of Polish Jews to leave the country.

“Loyalty to socialist

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