Gazeta Polska, Toronto
Julian Ilicki
Nieco rezultatow moich poszukiwan na webie, a propos "wywiadu z Geremkem".
Julian
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http://www.polish-bus.com/html/fp154.html
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Glos Polski
Address: 390 Roncesvalles Ave Toronto
Tel: ( 416 416 ) 5339469 5331623
Principal: Wieslaw Magiera
Gazeta
Address: 215 Roncesvalles Ave Toronto
Tel: ( 416 ) 5313230
Principal: Zbigniew Belz
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http://www.now.com/issues/15/52/News/feature2.html
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Jewish conspiracy theories flourish in Polish press
City and province advertise in papers that say Jewish bankers run the world
By COLIN LESLIE
With its bustling array of eastern European shops and cafes,
Roncesvalles is one of Toronto's more enchanting streets, an
appealing blend of earthiness and sophistication accented by the
verdant airiness of nearby High Park.
But these days there's a discordant note on Roncesvalles, a bitter
disharmony involving Toronto Jewish groups, gay and lesbian
rights advocates and diehard right-wing community leaders from
the west-end Polish-Canadian neighbourhood.
The dispute involves the content of some of the Polish-language
newspapers headquartered on Roncesvalles, publications whose
editorial practices have prompted charges of gay-bashing and
anti-Semitism.
Do Jews Rule The World And Poland? reads a headline for a
1995 front-page article in the weekly Glos Polski (Polish Voice),
just one example of the kind of language that has touched off
animosities. The story came with a cartoon of two hook-nosed
figures wearing pointed hats decorated with Stars of David,
dropping humans into a boiling cauldron.
City advertises
"The USA and the USSR (after the second world war) were part
and parcel of the same world-dominating system, sharing common
goals and ideology - a system operated by Jewish chauvinists,"
the article says.
Exacerbating the situation is the fact that Glos Polski, along with at
least one other newspaper at the centre of the dispute, receives
public support in the form of ad revenue from the city of Toronto
and the province. The ads come despite restrictions that prohibit
both levels of government from doing business with anyone who
engages in discrimination.
Comprising a mixture of Polish and recycled local Toronto news,
Bible quotes and recipes, Glos Polski has a weekly circulation of
close to 3,000. Priced at $1.25 a copy, it's distributed through
Polish specialty shops on Roncesvalles.
"A journal like Glos Polski, if it had been printed in English, would
long ago have been charged under the anti-hate laws," says Sol
Littman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "It is in a sense much
cruder than anything (Holocaust denier Ernst) Zundel has turned
out."
A second Polish-language paper located on Roncesvalles is the
daily Gazeta, which Littman says is not as bad as Glos Polski.
Gazeta, with a weekday circulation of 5,000 - rising to 12,500 for
its Friday weekend edition - often comes under attack for its
wide-open letters-to-the-editor pages.
In a missive published last year, for example, an individual by the
name of Ben Prak wondered whether the Holocaust wasn't
planned by Jewish leaders as an attempt at population control.
Holocaust debate
"Before the second world war, there were about 20 million Jews
in the world. In the situation where the independence of Israel was
regained, how many could have returned to the land of their
forefathers? Twenty million would not fit...," Prak wrote.
"Maybe this whole 'Holocaust' was a small experiment that didn't
succeed for them? Of course, you need to find someone to blame.
They can't lay it on the Germans, since they paid them lots of
money." Prak goes on to suggest that the culprit Jews have
chosen is Poland.
One month later, a letter to the editor by Henryk Dambrowski
argued that Jews are controlling Canada's economy - and
planning to crash the real estate market. The crash won't affect
Jews, the author concluded, because Jewish people are big on
offshore banking.
Gay stereotypes
Meanwhile, Kazik Jedrzejczak, president of the 212-member
Polish Gay and Lesbian Association, accuses Gazeta of
promoting other harmful stereotypes. Jedrzejczak, whose group
has filed complaints against Gazeta with the Advertising Review
Board and the Ontario Human Rights Commission, is angry over
the fact that the paper identifies gays with the word pederasta,
which the tabloid uses interchangeably for both gays and
pedophiles, rather than gej, a newly coined term commonly used
by the media in Poland.
"They are like dinosaurs here," says Jedrzejczak.
(A spokesperson for the Ontario Human Rights Commission
declined to comment. "Unless a complaint has gone to tribunal,
we can't confirm or discuss it.")
Andrzej Kumor, Gazeta's news editor, dismisses Jedrzejczak's
complaint by saying that the paper is justifiably preserving the
Polish language, rather than using words imported from English.
"They want us to be politically correct. In my personal opinion,
pederasta is a neutral word."
As for accusations that the tab is using letters to the editor to
promote hate, Kumor says this is a freedom-of-speech issue.
Other than removing vulgar words, Gazeta runs its letters "as is,"
he says.
"These are not our opinions, but there are people among our
readers who think like that, and we want to bring these opinions
to the surface and discuss them."
Robert Varin, president of the Polish National Union of Canada,
which owns Glos Polski, is similarly dismissive about complaints
against the paper. Varin says the complaints against his paper are
nonsense.
Crosses line
"These guys are paranoid. If you say something that is critical of
them, they say it is anti-Semitic." He says the only problem with
the article questioning if Jews ran the USA and the USSR after
the second world war was that the accompanying cartoon was in
"bad taste."
But even among other Toronto Polish community leaders, Gazeta
and Glos Polski are prompting unease.
Marek Malicki, president of the Canadian Polish Congress, which
includes among its members Glos Polski's owner, says some of
what comes out of the weekly is over the line. "I've publicly stated
that this kind of article is anti-Semitic and shouldn't be appearing
in a paper," he says.
Malicki goes on to say that he rejects the idea of trying to curb
such content by banishing Glos Polski from the Canadian Polish
Congress fold. "If someone is a member of an umbrella
organization, it may be easier to deal with them," he says.
Steven Shulman of the Canadian Jewish Congress, however,
advocates a more vigorous response. "We're not interested in
cutting freedom of the press at all, but there is a line, and certainly
racism or anti-Semitism don't belong in a newspaper, period."
What especially irks Shulman and others is the fact that public tax
money is helping support both Gazeta and Glos Polski through ad
revenue.
The city of Toronto regularly runs ads in Gazeta, having placed
four so far this year about such topics as property taxes. Though
Glos Polski has had no city ads this year, last year it had one -
valued at about $120 - according to David Dell, director of
information and communication services for the city of Toronto.
Over the past 30 months, the province has purchased
approximately $1,669 worth of ads in Gazeta and another $3,523
in Glos Polski, according to Robert Farnley, general manager of
Ontario's Advertising Review Board.
City concerns
Asked to comment on the fact that city advertising money is used
to support a publication that airs such views, Dell says, "We have
no way of reading every ethnic paper that is in another language.
"(Given what you've read to me), I would think the city would
have some concerns."
Janice Dembo, a spokesperson for the Toronto mayor's
committee on community and race relations, adds that anyone
receiving paid city advertising is required to sign a
nondiscrimination statement. But Dembo goes on to say that while
council has the authority to cut off dealings with publications that
violate the statement, a lack of resources means the city is forced
to rely on complaints - rather than pro-active monitoring - when it
comes to ferreting out abuses.
Farnley says the province follows similar practices regarding
potentially racist content in publications that receive government
advertising business.
"It's only if someone complains about it that we review it,
because, obviously, we don't read Polish," Farnley says.
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Julian Ilicki, Ph.D. e-mail: julian...@soc.uu.se
Uppsala Univ., Dept. of Sociology, Box 821, S-751 08 Uppsala, Sweden
voice, office: +46 - 18 4711513 voice, private: +46 - 18 204747
fax, Dept.: +46 - 18 4711170 cellular: +46 - 70 7533731
http://www.soc.uu.se/staff/julian_i.html
http://www.soc.uu.se/~julian/