Konstanty Gebert: How Political Developments in Poland are Impacting the Jewish Community Today

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s Cabinet approved a bill which would criminalize the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” in reference to Nazi-run extermination camps in occupied Poland.

Come here Konstanty Gebert speak about how this law, and other developments, are impacting the Jewish community in Poland.

Gebert is co-founder of the (unofficial) Jewish Flying University, 1979 and, in September 1980 in Warsaw, of an independent white-collar trade union that soon merged with Solidarność. After avoiding interment in the 1981 coup, Gebert became, under the pen name of Dawid Warszawski he still uses, well known as editor and columnist of underground publications.

In 1989, he covered the round table Solidarity-government talks on transition to democracy, and helped launch the new independent daily Gazeta Wyborcza, where he is columnist and international reporter, writing about the Middle East, the Balkans, human rights and international humanitarian law, and Jewish issues. In the same year he became a co-founder of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews. In 1997, he founded the Polish Jewish monthly Midrasz, of which he was the first editor in chief; and in 2006, he started, and was first director of, the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is board member i.a. of the Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund, the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, and the European Institute of Jewish Studies Paideia in Stockholm.