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Mayor of Ben-Gurion’s Polish hometown adopts IHRA antisemitism definition

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion looks through documents in his Tel Aviv office, January 1959. Photo by Fritz Cohen, Photography Department of Israel’s Government Press Office via Wikimedia Commons..
Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion looks through documents in his Tel Aviv office, January 1959. Photo by Fritz Cohen, Photography Department of Israel’s Government Press Office via Wikimedia Commons..

Płońsk mayor Andrzej Pietrasik on Monday signed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) declaration against antisemitism in the Polish city where David Ben-Gurion was born.

Pietrasik signed the declaration ahead of Monday’s 19th March of Silence in Płońsk, held on the 84th anniversary of the liquidation of the local ghetto. Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Ya’akov Finkelstein, also attended the event, the embassy wrote on X.

The IHRA working definition for antisemitism includes ancient and classical examples of this hatred, alongside newer phenomena that include demonization of the Jewish state.

Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, left Płońsk 120 years ago, in 1906, at age 19. He settled in pre-state Israel, still under Ottoman rule, as part of the Second Aliyah.

According to Yad Vashem, approximately 5,000 Jews lived in Płońsk on the eve of World War II, constituting about half the town’s population. Only a few dozen survived the Holocaust.

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