Polish police on Wednesday said they had arrested a teenager suspected of being involved in an arson attack on a Warsaw synagogue.
In a statement published on X, formerly Twitter, Polish police said they had “arrested a 16-year-old man, Polish citizen, involved in the incident” that happened overnight Tuesday-Wednesday.
The Noźyk synagogue is the only one in Warsaw that survived World War II and the Holocaust, according to Yacov Livne, Israel’s ambassador to Poland.
Poland’s Deputy Interior Minister Czeslaw Mroczek added that the teenager was “suspected of having tried to torch the synagogue”.
Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, quoting the country’s chief rabbi, had earlier said that “someone tried to set fire to the Nożyk synagogue with a Molotov cocktail”.
“Thank God no-one was hurt,” the minister posted on X.
“I condemn this shameful attack on the Nożyk synagogue in Warsaw,” Polish President Andrzej Duda wrote online. “Antisemitism has no place in Poland. There is no place for hate in Poland.”
An AFP journalist at the scene saw a black scorch mark across a window that appeared to have been caused by flames, but there was no major damage to the synagogue.
A statement from the Jewish community organisation in Warsaw to AFP expressed its “concern and indignation” at the attack.
“Fortunately, the synagogue was empty at night and the material damage is minor,” it added.
The fire from the Molotov cocktail burned itself out outside the building, said the text, from Eliza Panek, vice president of the Jewish community in Warsaw.
“For the moment, we don’t know anything about the person or persons behind the attack, or their motives,” she added.
Warsaw police told AFP they “always take this kind of incident seriously” and would do everything to ensure those responsible were punished.
So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack and authorities have not suggested a possible motive.
But Sikorski’s message speculated on who might have carried it out on the 20th anniversary of Poland’s membership of the European Union.
“Maybe the same ones who scrawled the Stars of David in Paris?” he said.
French prosecutors started an investigation after several dozen Jewish symbols were daubed on buildings in Paris in October, as tensions increased amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
France believes that Russian security services were behind the vandalism, according to an official French source, but Russia has denied any involvement.
The European Jewish Congress, however, linked the attack with rising antisemitism in Europe, saying the organization found it “profoundly distressing that since Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel, attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions have spiked in Europe and elsewhere.”
