(JTA) — The person widely-regarded as the most powerful politician in Poland called Israel a “great country” whose establishment is a “modern-day miracle” in a speech in which he also condemned anti-Semitism and attempts to boycott the Jewish state.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a founder of Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice Party, made the statements Monday during an event organized by the From the Depths Holocaust commemoration group in honor of people who are believed to have helped Jews during the Holocaust.

In his address at the Warsaw Zoo, where From the Depths held an event honoring presumed saviors of Jews, Kaczynski said that “the European left, but also other political forces, typically treats Israel with anti-Semitic” attitudes. He condemned anti-Semitism “in the strongest terms.”

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Speaking after Yehiel Bar, the deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Kaczynski revisited a remark that Bar made in his address, in which he called Israel a “small country.” Kaczynski said: “In its own way, Israel is not a small country but a great one” that needs to be viewed as a manifestation of a divine plan “without which Israel could not exist.” That it does exist, “is a modern-day miracle,” Kaczynski said.

At the event, From the Depths gave an award to Daniel Kawczynski, a British lawmaker, in honor of his great uncle, his wife and their daughter whom Kawczynski said were killed by Germans for sheltering Jews. They have not been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, which, pending rigorous historical research, confers the title on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

From the Depths founder Jonny Daniels said Yad Vashem is looking into Kawczynski’s actions as per a request for recognition filed by From the Depths. The group gave Kawczynski an award created this year by the group bearing the name of Jan and Antonina Żabiński, who rescued hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust at the zoo.

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Earlier this year, Leslaw Piszewski, the president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland, and Anna Chipczynska, head of the Warsaw community, sent a letter to Kaczynski saying Polish Jews are increasingly fearful due to rising anti-Semitism and government inaction.

But other leaders of Jewish groups working in Poland, including Chabad Poland, From the Depths, the TSKZ cultural organization, dismissed this criticism as partisan – a claim rejected by Piszewski and Chipczynska.

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