WARSAW, Poland (JTA) – An effigy of a haredi Orthodox Jew was burned at the end of a demonstration in Poland against taking in Muslim refugees.
Dozens protested Wednesday evening in front of the City Hall in Wroclaw, in western Poland.
When one of the demonstrators set fire to the effigy, which was holding the flag of the European Union, others chanted “God, Honor and Fatherland.”
Piotr Kadlcik, a Polish-Jewish activist, told JTA, “Recalling anti-Jewish stereotypes proves that we are still divided and that cooperation is not possible.”
The protest comes in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks on multiple sites in Paris that left at least 129 dead. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks; police believe that one of the terrorists may have entered the European Union with the flood of Syrian refugees.
During the protest, participants shouted “United Catholic Poland! National radicalism! Down with the European Union!”
“Our duty, the duty of lawmakers and the government, is to say that we won’t take a single Islamist in to Poland because Poland is for Poles,” proclaimed one speaker.
The demonstration was organized by the National Radical Camp and All-Polish Youth.
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