Photo courtesy: Anti-Semitism Watch..com
Warsaw: A Polish court on Monday sentenced a man to 10 months in prison for inciting ethnic hatred after he publicly set fire to an effigy of an Orthodox Jew following an anti-migrant rally last year.
"The verdict is harsh because it was an act of serious social harm," judge Marek Gorny said, quoted by the Polish news agency PAP.
He added that Polish citizen Piotr Rybak had followed "the worst Nazi examples" by setting fire in the western city of Wroclaw to the effigy, which was made to represent a bearded Orthodox Jewish man dressed in a traditional long coat and hat.
The incident, which took place following a small anti-migrant protest organised by right-wing nationalist group ONR, drew local condemnation.
Wroclaw mayor Rafal Dutkiewicz sent footage of the demonstration to the prosecutor's office, saying that it sounded like there were cries of "we're burning a Jewish effigy" when it was set ablaze.
Rybak said he would appeal the ruling.
"I should have been acquitted because I acted for the good of the nation," he claimed.
Private news channel TVN24 reported that Rybak allegedly told investigators that his objective had been to criticise US billionaire financier George Soros -- but not because of his Jewish roots.
He claimed Soros was financing what he called the Islamisation of Europe and Poland.
Poland was once home to the world's largest Jewish population, numbering around three million people or 10 percent of the Polish population in 1939.
But only about 300,000 survived the Second World War after Nazi Germany occupied Poland and set up the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on its territory.
