Specter of Anti-Semitism Rising Once Again in Poland : Prejudice: Although the country is nearly bereft of Jews, the ancient issue is beginning to infiltrate politics.

Four months ago, someone painted a small, rusty-red swastika on a stone pillar a few steps from the Israeli ambassador’s home.

He drives by it every day, neighbors walk dogs past it, children play nearby. No one has tried to obliterate the ugly symbol.

Graffiti and other signs of anti-Semitism are being seen again in Poland, even though it is nearly bereft of Jews, and the prejudice of the streets has begun to infiltrate politics.

Some rightist politicians are fanning nationalist emotions and, with a seeming inevitability, anti-Semitism.

On the other side, prominent anti-Communist figures like Adam Michnik, editor of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, and Zbigniew Bujak--both leaders of the pro-government Democratic Action party--have been sounding the alarm.

Solidarity chairman Lech Walesa, indignant at suggestions of bigotry on the part of himself or some of his followers, declared, “Lech Walesa is not and will not be anti-Semitic.”

In a resolution July 29, Walesa’s national Citizens Committee condemned both prejudice and the use of unfounded charges of anti-Semitism to smear political opponents. Members of the committee have accused foreign journalists of exaggerating the extent of anti-Semitism in Poland.

The late sociologist Aleksander Hertz, a Polish Jew, said anti-Semitism grew in the 19th Century in response to Poland’s humiliating partitions, Russian influences and the prosperity of a burgeoning Jewish population, which both the declining aristocracy and impoverished peasants resented.

In politics, anti-Semitism peaked just before World War II, when it was a major tenet of the popular National Democrats. University students hounded Jewish colleagues and anti-Semites organized boycotts of Jewish businesses.

Three million Polish Jews were killed by the Nazis. Some of the half-million who survived owed their lives to Poles who hid them, but others were betrayed by Polish acquaintances.

Polish Jews who lived through the Holocaust were traumatized by it and feared trying to reclaim homes and property from Christians, particularly after a pogrom in 1946 that took 48 lives in Kielce. Most of them emigrated to Israel or the United States.

An official Communist purge of “Zionists” prompted the last big wave of emigration in 1968, reducing the number of Jews to 5,000-15,000 in a nation of 38 million people.

For the first time in centuries, Poland is without a large Jewish population, and profound changes have resulted.

Before the war, Jews were about 10% of the population, concentrated in towns and cities, and made up a large part of the middle class. The landed aristocracy disdained commerce and peasants stuck to their farms, so much of the small business, trade and industry were left to Jews.

Half a century after Nazi occupation, Poland still has not come to grips with the loss of its Jewish population. Any discussion of Jews is likely to provoke strong emotions, often defensive.

Poland’s only rabbi, Pinchas Menachem Joskowicz, said he has observed more anti-Semitism recently. He used to find respect and friendliness when he walked the streets in his traditional Hasidic garb, Joskowicz said, but now encounters hostility.

“Two weeks ago, I had guests from Israel, and we went for a walk,” he said in an interview. “Then youths, maybe 21, maybe younger, started shouting ‘Jews to Palestine!’ and other slogans too. I did not pay any attention, let them shout.

“But when we walked a few meters they approached us and started hitting one of the guests.”

Joskowicz said he now avoids walking at night and does not know what to tell Jews from abroad when they ask him if it is safe to visit Poland.

There is a tendency to blame Jews for the nation’s troubles.

“I keep hearing that a gang has gotten to the feeding trough, they are probably Jews and they are destroying us,” Walesa told a meeting of his national Citizens Committee on June 24.

He said such remarks do not mean anti-Semitism is increasing, but that the government must do a better job of explaining itself to the people.

Farmers who occupied the Agriculture Ministry in June, demanding guaranteed prices, were heard muttering about the “Jewish government.”

That government is led by a devout Roman Catholic, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who identifies with Christian-Democratic politics and sometimes is accused of being too solicitous of the church.

Allegations that Jews run the government rest on the fact that some prominent Solidarity politicians are Jews. Two examples are Michnik and Parliament member Bronislaw Geremek, leader of the Citizens Parliamentary Club, who are of Jewish descent but do not practice the religion.

Communist functionaries used such information in the past in the vain hope of discrediting Solidarity.

In August, the National Party, a far-right group based in the southern city of Krakow, said it was unfair for an ethnic minority to have dominance in the government. The Grunwald Society, created by nationalistic Communists, contended recently that “German and Jewish chauvinists” were the greatest threats to Polish sovereignty.

Government spokeswoman Malgorzata Niezabitowska, who wrote a book on the remaining Jews in Poland with her husband, a photographer, said anti-Semitism is coming to the surface in the more liberal atmosphere since Communist rule.

“Now everything is free,” she said. “Many good things have come out, but also some bad things.”