February 7, 2013

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — The Polish Embassy in London is protesting a column in The Times that accuses Poles of anti-Semitism.

Amb. Witold Sobkow in a letter to the newspaper The Times protested against the column by controversial regular columnist Giles Coren.

Coren, imitating the poor English of the Poles, wrote in the Feb. 2 edition of The Times: “In Poland man who not like Jews simple throw them down well with pitchfork still alive, drink vodka, big laugh ha ha, then is fill in concrete and dance on grave. And is not then afterwards say like scaredy cat coward, ‘I am sorry for the unintended offense.'”

“In Mr. Coren’s imagination, Poland appears to resemble Borat’s world. He ignores the fact that in Poland we build synagogues, not burn them as in some countries, and welcome freedom of faith and worship. When it comes to the Righteous among the Nations, Yad Vashem mentions 6,339 Polish rescuers, and only 19 from the UK. This fact speaks for itself,” Sobkow wrote in his letter to The Times.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski urged his fellow Poles to join the protest against calling the entire Polish population anti-Semites.

Coren addressed the controversy on Twitter.”Poles now writing in to tell me the reason they hate Jews is that they collaborated with the Nazis to bring about the downfall of Poland” he tweeted. He also tweeted that in the column he also painted “England as a nation of anti-Semites.”

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