WARSAW (EJP)--- Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich was attacked in a Warsaw street a day before he was to take part in a prayer meeting Sunday with Pope Benedict XVI at the Auschwitz-Birkenau former Nazi death camp, Polish officials said.
The assault took place mid-day Saturday in the centre of Warsaw, Polish Interior Ministry spokesman Tomasz Sklodowski told Agence France Presse.
"The rabbi, who was in the street, was suddenly pushed by a young man but he was not injured," he said.
Sklodowski added that "the timing and the circumstances of the attack lead us to believe that it was a provocation of an anti-Semitic and anti-Polish character, aimed at showing Poland as an anti-Semitic country."
Isolated case ?
But Schudrich himself was sceptical over such a theory.
"It was absolutely not a provocation. It was an isolated case. In every country there are stupid people," he said.
"Obviously, this incident caused me pain, but the police reacted very
quickly and treated this seriously."
Schudrich added: "A young man approached me and insulted me. I reacted and he sprayed me with tear gas then fled. If I had not reacted, he probably wouldn’t have done anything."
Witnesses including people accompanying Schudrich gave police a description of the attacker, and a composite image of the suspect has been drawn up, the ministry spokesman said.
Police have launched an inquiry into the incident.
Schudrich was set Sunday afternoon to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, in a solemn ceremony at the Auschwitz-Birkenau former Nazi death camp located near Krakow, in southern Poland.
The ceremonies were to be headed by Pope Benedict XVI, who was to say a prayer in German at the camp during the last, highly symbolic part of his four-day visit to Poland.
