The director of Poland’s leading Jewish museum has criticised the country’s foremost Catholic university for failing to take disciplinary action against a priest-professor who claimed that Jews have been guilty of carrying out ritual murder against Christians.
Zygmunt Stępiński, director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, likened the priest’s words to “Nazi or Stalinist propaganda”, as well as to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous antisemitic text.
The statement in question was made by Father Tadeusz Guz, a professor at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL). While giving a lecture in Warsaw, he said that:
“We know that the facts of ritual murders cannot be erased from history…because we, the Polish state, have in our archives, in surviving documents, we have through the ages – when Jews lived together with our Polish nation – we have binding rulings after ritual murders.”
False claims that Jews abducted Christian children and used their blood for ritual purposes – the so-called “blood libel” – have appeared periodically through European history. While initially most common in western Europe – beginning in England in the 12th century – by the 18th century they had become widespread in Polish lands.
Such accusations against Jews often involved figures from the church. In the city of Sandomierz, the cathedral still contains an image depicting alleged ritual murder by Jews (pictured above). As late as 1946, an allegation that Jews had kidnapped a Polish child contributed to a pogrom in Kielce that killed 42 Jews.
Although such claims were false – and are now widely accepted as an antisemitic canard – a survey conducted by the Centre for Research on Prejudice at the University of Warsaw found in 2017 that 24.5% of Poles agreed that “such kidnappings took place”. That figure had risen from 10.3% in 2009.
After Guz gave his lecture in May 2018, the Polish Council of Christians and Jews – which is devoted to improving dialogue between the two groups – formally protested against his “absolutely unacceptable” words.
“Accusations against Jews for ritually murdering Christians, although officially rejected by the church, unfortunately still return in the imagination of some Catholics,” wrote the council.
“We appeal to the archbishop [of Lublin] and the rector [of KUL] to take strict disciplinary measures against the person who advocates such anti-Jewish, but also anti-Catholic, statements,” they continued.
In response, the rector of KUL, Antoni Dębiński, and Lublin’s archbishop, Stanisław Budzik, released a statement saying that they found Guz’s statements to be “unacceptable”, reports Więż. But they noted that he had made them privately, outside of his university work.
Dębiński nevertheless referred the case to KUL’s disciplinary officer. In October 2020, she decided to discontinue proceedings. The Council of Christians and Jews appealed against that decision, but it was upheld by KUL’s disciplinary committee last month, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.
Among the justifications for its decision, the committee noted that Guz had been expressing “private views…outside the workplace”. It added that, while they “could be difficult for Jewish communities to accept, they were not slander or lies, but knowledge gained from academic analysis of available source materials”.
The committee also claimed that the issue in question is “part of a still unsettled academic discussion”. As such, Guz’s statement should be seen as “part of the academic discourse on this issue, which, it should be emphasised, still remains unresolved”.
That position has now been met with an angry response by Stępiński, director of POLIN, who expressed “amazement and indignation” at the decision not to discipline Guz.
“[While] respecting the autonomy of the university, I cannot remain silent when the world receives a statement straight from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Nazi or Stalinist propaganda,” he wrote. “Let me remind you that in the not-too-distant past, similar statements led directly to social unrest and bloodshed.”
“I must protest publicly and call on the university authorities to take a clear position on this matter,” added Stępiński, in his open letter to KUL’s new rector, Mirosław Kalinowski.
KUL’s decision was also condemned by the Never Again Association, a leading Polish anti-racism NGO. Its director, Rafał Pankowski, told the Algemeiner Journal that Guz’s “whole lecture was antisemitic”.
Guz “argued that Jews as a community have failed God by not converting to Christianity”, that the Talmud was based on “lies”, and that Karl Marx was a “Jewish nationalist”, said Pankowski, who also noted that Guz has given antisemitic lectures in the past, including claiming that Jews financed Hitler and the Holocaust.
In response to Stępiński’s complaints, KUL on Saturday issued a statement saying that, while it condemns “any forms of antisemitism in social and academic life”, its disciplinary commission “acts independently” and that therefore the rector can have no influence on its decisions, reports Dziennik Wschodni.
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
