Arson Fire in Warsaw Synagogue Ignites Outrage, Fear

A fire set by arsonists ripped through the vestibule of the Polish capital’s only active Jewish synagogue Wednesday, touching off a wave of fear and outrage in a country haunted by a history of troubled relations with Jews.

The early morning blaze was so intense that it sucked the vaulted ceiling in the entry clean of plaster and reduced the temple’s massive oak doors to crumbling sticks of charcoal. Were it not for its early detection, police say, the fire would have engulfed the main prayer hall of the century-old temple, the heart of Warsaw’s tiny Jewish community.

Investigators found two tin cans amid the charred rubble and a sack of sawdust outside the building. Police late Wednesday said they were searching for a man in a yellow raincoat and a woman dressed in black who were apparently seen near the synagogue at the time of the fire.

“This is among the worst acts of vandalism against Jews in Poland in 30 or 40 years,” said Rabbi Michael Schudrich of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, an international Jewish organization with offices next to the synagogue. “People are very upset and very perturbed that something like this could happen in 1997.”

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski condemned the arson as an act of barbarism and assured Jews in Poland and abroad that Poles want good and friendly relations.

Most of the 3.5 million Jews who lived in Poland before World War II were killed during the conflict or later emigrated. An estimated 8,000 remain, several hundred of whom attend the tucked-away synagogue, which survived the Nazi occupation only because German cavalry soldiers turned it into stables.

“This [incident] is especially painful for us Poles because it has been directed against a Jewish community in Poland--a community which has lived in our country for 800 years and had been so painfully treated by the history of the 20th century,” Kwasniewski said.

Most Jewish leaders say Polish-Jewish relations have improved in recent years, with both sides striving to put aside differences. Many ordinary Poles are delving into their Jewish ancestry for the first time, and the Polish government, eager to join European defense and economic institutions, is actively patching up its relations with Jews at home and abroad.

Last week, the Polish Parliament passed long-awaited legislation to return some Jewish community property seized in World War II and under communism. And in a solemn demonstration of solidarity, a standing-room-only crowd--including some of Poland’s highest-ranking politicians--joined a special prayer service Wednesday night at the synagogue, which still reeked of burning wood and paint.

“We feel we are not alone here,” Pawel Wildstein, leader of the Assn. of Jewish Communities, told the gathering.

Despite such efforts, the arson attack comes against a troubling backdrop of lingering anti-Semitism and a recent spate of incidents that has some Jews and non-Jews wondering if the pendulum might swing once again. “Poland is a strange country where people would like to blame others for their own misfortunes and imperfections,” said Tomasz Maj, 23, a student who visited the synagogue for the first time Wednesday when he heard about the fire. “There will always be those who look for somebody to blame.”

The fire followed by two days an anonymous telephone call to the Lauder Foundation threatening “a bomb has been planted or will be planted very soon.” Vandals destroyed dozens of Jewish tombstones in November in a cemetery in Oswiecim, the southern Polish town where Nazis ran the Auschwitz death camp. And in June, a bomb exploded outside Warsaw’s only kosher restaurant.

In the most controversial incident, prosecutors last month indicted prominent Solidarity-era priest Henryk Jankowski for an anti-Semitic sermon he delivered during the 1995 presidential campaign. During that Mass, which was attended by then-President Lech Walesa, Father Jankowski likened the Jewish Star of David to the Nazi swastika and the Communist hammer and sickle; upon hearing of his indictment, Jankowski charged that he was being persecuted by the country’s Jewish minority.

“There aren’t too many people who show their love for us--to the contrary, in recent times we have been observing anti-Jewish phobias and lack of tolerance,” Wildstein said. “We can only hope [for] goodwill and that our community will finally find understanding here.”

Schudrich emphasized that the attack was “the act of several people, not of an entire nation.”

But he and other Jewish leaders also said it presented Poland with a moment of truth: Will Poles make it safe for minorities to live in a country where only 2% of the population is non-ethnic Pole? “This is an alarm clock going off,” Schudrich said of the arson. “And it is time for the good people of Poland to wake up and be counted.”