Local politician in Poland makes antisemitic joke at council meeting

A local politician in Poland used language that critics said was antisemitic during a regional council meeting about agriculture.

“Why don’t Jews buy land? Because you can’t cheat the earth,” Waldemar Wojciechowski, a representative of the right-wing Law and Justice ruling party, said at a meeting Tuesday of the council of the Lodz District.

The meeting was on a subject unrelated to Jews and Judaism, and Wojciechowski was quoting a saying to make a point about the need to be fair to farmers, the Gazeta news site reported Wednesday.

Marcin Bugajski, head of the Civic Coalition opposition movement’s faction in the parliament of the Lodz District government, condemned Wojciechowski’s remark.

“I believe that was an antisemitic statement,” Gazeta quoted Bugajski as saying. “It is a scandal to perpetuate such stereotypes. Besides, these words were utterly irrelevant to the discussion.”

Separately, a monument for Holocaust victims in Częstochowa, near Krakow, had a swastika and other far-right symbols painted on it, the Czestochowa Naszemiasto news site reported. The incident was reported to police, who are investigating.