(Adnkronos) – For the first time, Polish police prevented a group of IDF soldiers attending a ceremony at the former Birkenau concentration camp from carrying an Israeli flag. Ynet reports this. A delegation of 180 Israeli officers and security officials – the website writes – who were taking part in the ‘Witnesses in Uniform’ Holocaust commemoration program yesterday were stopped at the entrance to the former camp when a local police officer refused to let them in with their flags.
Israeli officers and local agents failed to reach an agreement with the police and the soldiers had to enter without flags. The soldiers claim that the incident was humiliating and that the decision was motivated by anti-Semitic beliefs. “No ceremony has ever been interrupted halfway through, never in Treblinka, Warsaw or Majdanek,” a participant tells Ynet. “This shows that we are still fighting anti-Semitism in Europe, and there are still those who try to change the Zionist narrative and the sacredness of this place for us.”
