Last update - 00:00 31/10/2006
Poland's education minister denies allegations of anti-Semitism
By The Associated Press
Poland's right-wing education minister on Tuesday rejected accusations that he and his party are anti-Semitic, adding that he encourages young Poles to feel empathy for the suffering of the country's Jews.
Many in Poland's Jewish community objected to the appointment of Roman Giertych, leader of the ultraconservative League of Polish Families, as education minister - in part because Giertych's grandfather, Jedrzej Giertych, was a prominent author of anti-Semitic writings before World War II.
Israel's ambassador to Poland, David Peleg, has refused contact with Giertych, and Israel's foreign ministry has called the League of Polish Families "an anti-Semitic party by definition."
"Why the Israeli ambassador doesn't want to meet with me, I don't know," Giertych, 35, told The Associated Press in an interview. "I don't accept the explanation that the reason is that my grandfather wrote anti-Jewish articles before the Second War."
"I have no responsibility for the activity of my grandfather," he said, adding that he rejects his grandfather's anti-Semitic beliefs.
"I don't agree with his statements on the Jewish minority," he said. "And even my grandfather changed his opinions on this after the war."
Many also said they were troubled by Giertych's founding of a right-wing youth movement, the All-Polish Youth, whose members reportedly have used Nazi gestures and slogans during some street rallies.
Giertych said he has no control over young people in the youth movement because he no longer runs it.
"I cannot be responsible for 4,000 young people who belong to an organization that I am no longer the president of," Giertych said.
He said as education minister, he is doing all he can to encourage young Poles to develop greater empathy for the suffering of Jews.
Giertych said he wants more school trips to the site of the Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland, and noted that he attended the 65th anniversary memorial in July of a postwar massacre of Jews by their neighbors in Jedwabne, Poland.
"What can I do to better solve this problem? I am against any kind of anti-Semitism," Giertych said. "I talk about it, I think about it, I do what I can do to preserve Polish young people against it."
"Why is this claim against me the source of an international problem? I don't understand," he said.