Abstract: This paper explores the enduring issue of antisemitism, framed as “the oldest hatred,” through an interdisciplinary lens that integrates legal, political, and historical perspectives. By examining the persistence and evolution of antisemitism in modern society, the study underscores the importance of Holocaust education as a critical tool for understanding and combating prejudice and discrimination. Grounded in the analysis of existing legal frameworks, including those established by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the European Court of Human Rights, the paper investigates how state policies and linguistic manipulation have historically reinforced antisemitic ideologies. A Polish university academic staff survey reveals educators’ perspectives on Holocaust education’s relevance in contemporary education. The findings highlight the need for a multidimensional approach that fosters critical thinking, societal awareness, and empathy to prevent future atrocities. The study concludes that combining historical awareness, legal knowledge, and ethical engagement in Holocaust education is essential for combating rising antisemitism and fostering a more informed and inclusive society.
Abstract: This article examines how sacred vocabularies from Orthodox Christianity and Judaism function in racialised public discourse in Poland and Ukraine between 2020 and 2025. It asks how terms such as imago Dei/tselem Elohim, neighbour-love and chesed, holiness/purity, suffering/martyrdom, and exile/return are mobilised across pulpit, policy, and platform communication. Drawing on a corpus of 23 publicly available texts, the study applies comparative rhetorical discourse analysis informed by Burke’s concepts of identification and logology and Pernot’s account of the religious dimension of rhetoric, alongside a coding scheme focused on topoi, metaphors, frames, appeals, and boundary work. The findings show convergences in dignity claims, memorial warning, and care rhetoric under conditions of war and displacement but also clear divergences: Jewish discourse more often mobilises peoplehood as a rhetoric of continuity and communal protection, whereas Orthodox discourse more often ties sacred language to national-historical self-location, ecclesial autonomy, and opposition to russkii mir (“Russian world”). Across the retained corpus, dog-whistle-like discourse appears mainly as an object of quotation or denunciation, while explicit counter-speech is widespread. The article concludes that sacred language remains an active rhetorical resource for defining dignity, injury, solidarity, and belonging, although its function varies across arenas, traditions, and the corpus’s asymmetries.
Abstract: This article examines why Ukrainian Jewish refugee women who arrived in Warsaw after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine refused or postponed aliyah to Israel following the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent Gaza war. Drawing on qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted in Warsaw between November 2024 and February 2025, the study identifies trauma-related fear, heightened risk perceptions, and anticipatory anxiety about renewed violence as key factors shaping decisions to remain in Poland. Over time, respondents developed a tangible sense of rootedness in Warsaw, reinforced by sustained assistance from local Jewish communities, non-Jewish civil society, and public institutions. In respondents’ accounts, the depth and continuity of this support emerge as a distinctive feature of the Warsaw context when compared with more episodic forms of aid described in wider refugee research. At the same time, interviewees reported enduring emotional, cultural, and spiritual ties to Israel, reflecting transnational and situational forms of belonging rather than a linear model of “return.” The findings complicate conventional assumptions about homeland, safety, and migration choice, and contribute to debates on diaspora identity under conditions of overlapping geopolitical crises.
