Krakow cracks down on antisemitic "Lucky Jew" figures ahead of European Games

From Inside the Games:

European Games 2023 host Kraków has announced it wants to end the sale of so-called "lucky Jew" figurines and paintings, which depict Orthodox Jews with stereotypically anti-semitic facial features and counting gold coins.

Poland’s second-largest city had launched a consultation process last year over the sale of the figurines.

Museums, religious associations and other institutions were canvassed for their opinion.

Kraków is located just 66 kilometres from Auschwitz, the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centres where 1.1 million, most of them Jews, were killed.

The European Games, which is expected to feature more than 20 sports with more than 5,000 athletes from 50 countries, is set to be the biggest sports event staged in Kraków in association with the Małopolska region.

"These figurines are anti-semitic, and it’s time for us to realise that," Robert Piaskowski - the cultural representative of Kraków’s Mayor, Jacek Majchrowski - told the Algemeiner Journal, an American-based newspaper which covers Jewish-related news.

"In a city like Kraków, with such a difficult heritage and a painful past, it should not be sold. Enough of sweeping it under the rug. Our position is a breakthrough. We finally named the phenomenon, we showed it. I hope this will be the beginning of an important conversation about Polish-Jewish relations, empathy and seeing the other."

The figurines usually show a stereotypical Jew clutching a coin or a bag of money.

This painting of a Jew counting his money includes instructions that makes it into an antisemitic mezuzah:

“The portrait of a Jew counting money should be hung next to the entryway of a home or office, on the lefthand side of the door. If you cross the threshold, you should glance at it so that you will have good fortune in business. 

"The picture has two hanging loops. On Saturday we hang the picture upside down so that the money gathered by the Jew during the previous week falls out of his sack and remains in the house or the office.”

Perhaps even more disturbing is that some of these "lucky Jews" are candles - where Poles can literally burn the Jews.

Krakow is not banning the sale of these figures, instead trying to convince shop-owners not to sell them. 

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