Zbigniew Rau’s words came as he opened a two-day conference on combating anti-Semitism in Warsaw on Monday, news agencies reported.
The event has been organised as part of Poland's turn at the rotating chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
It has attracted government officials and members of various international and civil society organisations, in addition to academics, leaders of Jewish communities and local activists.
In addition to Poland’s top diplomat, conference speakers on Monday included the OSCE’s Secretary-General Helga Schmid, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Ahmed Shaheed, and Wojciech Kolarski, an aide to Polish President Andrzej Duda, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
Rau told the event that any behaviour motivated by anti-Semitism and racial discrimination must be strictly penalised. He added that it is one of the key ways to demonstrate that "we honour Holocaust victims and pay tribute to them every day."
“Referring to the shared centuries-old history of Poles and Jews and Poland’s role as a guardian of Holocaust memorial sites,” Rau “highlighted Poland’s commitment to combating anti-Semitism also in the wider context of the fight against religious intolerance and strengthening intercultural and interfaith dialogue,” the Polish foreign ministry said in a statement.
At the same time, the Polish foreign minister cautioned that “anti-Semitism will not disappear overnight" and that "forward-looking proposals” were needed, according to the statement.
In a letter to the conference participants, Polish President Andrzej Duda warned that “anti-Semitism is the most dangerous of all forms of racism and discrimination,” and the Holocaust was its “shocking result.”
Before the start of the conference, Poland’s top diplomat and OSCE officials laid flowers at Warsaw’s Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, which commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, a heroic Jewish insurrection against the German Nazis during World War II, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, president.pl
Click on the audio player above for a report by Radio Poland's Elżbieta Krajewska.