Like the Dutch practice of blackface, it’s a tradition that endures.
Children use sticks to beat an effigy of Judas on Good Friday, April 19, 2019, in the town of Pruchnik, Poland. By Rick Noack Rick Noack Foreign affairs reporter focusing on Europe and international security Email Bio Follow April 23 at 7:37 AM BERLIN — It’s difficult to see what’s not anti-Semitic about the tradition that was filmed in the Polish town of Pruchnik over Easter.
In Greece, the burning of a Judas effigy has remained a tradition — a controversial spectacle most recently accompanied by a laser show. Similar traditions exist in parts of South America and the Middle East. Greece and other countries where such burnings are commonplace have rejected criticism by referring to the New Testament and Judas’s betrayal of Jesus.
In 2015, for instance, right-wing extremist Polish groups burned a similar effigy depicting an Orthodox Jew in the city of Wroclaw to protest the European Union’s migration policy, shortly after the Islamic State’s attacks in Paris the same year. Poland’s left-wing opposition has accused the right-wing Polish government of emboldening such far-right groups through its more extreme rhetoric. Last year, the right-wing Law and Justice party pushed a law through Parliament that was originally expected to ban all references implying that Poland or Polish people bore some responsibility for the Holocaust, which was committed by the Nazis on Polish soil.
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