The town of Cesarzowice is just outside Wroclaw, a major city that fell under scrutiny not long ago for similar reasons: in November 2015, Piotr Rybak, a leader of the National Radical Camp, a Polish extreme right, anti-communist and nationalist political party, burned an effigy of a Jew at an anti-immigrant demonstration.
The National Radical Camp was also one of the organizers of this year's 60,000 person march in Warsaw, the country's capital, on Poland's Independence Day, November 11. The march featured banners with the words "White Europe" and "Clean Blood" in Polish. The extremist group is a successor to the anti-Semitic movement that took place in the 1930s, adopting its name, flag and symbols to relaunch in 1993.
Rybak was accused of chanting hateful phrases, including that all Jews in Poland should "drive to Israel" during the November 11 march. Some Polish reports claim that Piotr Rybak is also the owner of the hotel in Cesarzowice where the anti-Semitic message was posted.
Rybak's message has a certain resonance with recent words by the US president during his visit to Poland.
In his July 5 speech in Warsaw, US President Donald Trump posed the question "whether the West has the will to survive" against "radical Islamic terrorism."
"Just as Poland could not be broken, I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken," Trump said. "Our values will prevail, our people will thrive, and our civilization will triumph."
"I am here today not just to visit an old ally, but to hold it up as an example for others who seek freedom and who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization," he added.
— Aneta Mościcka (@aneta_moscicka) November 21, 2017
After two years of litigation following the 2015 protest, Rybak, who was charged with inciting hate, managed to reduce his sentence for burning the effigy from 10 months to three months, and the three-month jail term was then downgraded further to electronic tagging in October 2017.
Under his three-month house arrest, Rybak was required to observe all legal norms and stay at home from 7pm until 9am. However, Rybak took part in the nationalist march in November, where he recorded a video with a friend saying, "We wish all Lefties and Jews today would go the nearest pharmacy and buy pills with coal, because that works better."
Four days later, Rybak was arrested in his home and transported to a police detention center, where he will likely spend three months behind bars.
