The far-right All-Polish Youth group burnt and drowned an effigy of controversial sociologist historian Jan Tomasz Gross yesterday, following the publication last week of Golden Harvest, (Zlote Zniwa) which recounts how some Poles gained financially from the flight of Jews during and after the German Nazi occupation of Poland.

About thirty members of the All-Polish Youth - an organization which declares that its aim is to raise Polish youth in a Catholic and patriotic spirit and was formerly the youth wing of the League of Polish Families - gathered yesterday in the western city of Wroclaw to protest against what they say is the fabrication of history by Jan Tomasz Gross.

Gross’s previous publications, including Neighbours (2001) and Fear (2006) also raised controversy, with critics claiming that the author slanders Polish history.

According to the Slavic tradition, an effigy of Marzanna, the Slavic goddess associated with death and winter, made of straw and rags, is set on fire on the first day of Spring and drowned in a river on the first day of spring to celebrate the end of winter.

All Polish Youth observed the custom yesterday in their own particular in a particular way – by burning and drowning a figure of Jan Tomasz Gross.

“Gross tells lies about Poles. It’s not true that Poles contributed to the Holocaust,” Robert Winnicki, leader of the All-Polish Youth in Wroclaw told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

In the previous years, members of the organisation burnt and drowned a figure of Erica Steinbach, president of the German Federation of Expellees with bad reputation in Poland, to protest against her perception of Germans being victims of Poles who expelled them from their motherland. (mg/pg)

Related audio