JTA: Poland’s president heckled at 50th anniversary of anti-Semitic purge

Poland’s president asked for forgiveness for an anti-Jewish wave that drove Jews from the country in March 1968, but said today’s Poland is not responsible for the events of 50 years ago.

“I bow my head with great regret as president. To those who have been expelled, I would like to say ‘Please, forgive me, forgive Poland and Polish people,’” Andrzej Duda said Thursday at the University of Warsaw at a commemoration of the events in Poland known as March 1968.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, countries under the influence of the former Soviet Union condemned Israel. In 1968, Polish students protested against censorship. In addition to suppressing the students, the communist government engineered a massive anti-Semitic campaign that would see Jews dismissed from jobs and thrown out of the universities. Several thousand Jews left Poland for good.