| HAVERFORD TO REMOVE ANTI-POLISH NEO-NAZI HATE SPEECH FROM WEBSITE 11/8/2006 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 4, 2006
HAVERFORD TO REMOVE ANTI-POLISH
NEO-NAZI HATE SPEECH FROM WEBSITE
The outrageous anti-Polish material attributable to one of Haverford
College's alumni will be removed from its website, according to
John Van Ness, spokesman for the Pennsylvania school.
Mr. Van Ness told the Anti-Bigotry Committee of the Polish American
Congress that Haverford had not been monitoring its alumni's personal
commentaries as closely as this one shows it should have and
acknowledges the need to reconsider such a policy.
The racist piece appeared in the college's alumni magazine as a virulent
attack on the heavily Polish Catholic community of Greenpoint in
Brooklyn, N.Y. calling the people there "morons" and "vermin." The
recent grad also says he dreamt of a Greenpoint where the churches
will be converted into parking lots.
Greenpoint is also the place where the Anti-Bigotry Committee and the
Holocaust Documentation Committee of the Polish American Congress
are headquartered. The Congress has members and Greenpoint has
residents who bristle when they hear Polish people referred to as
"vermin."
Many of them lived in Poland at the time of the German occupation of
World War II. "Polish swine" and "vermin" is what the Nazis liked to
call them while they were torturing or killing them.
"Now a school like Haverford, often described as 'prestigious,' sends
them this arrogant new neighbor who moves in and starts writing about
them pretty much the way Adolf Hitler referred to Slavic people like
the Poles, Jews and Gypsies as 'untermenschen' (sub-humans) in
Mein Kampf," said Frank Milewski who heads the Anti-Bigotry
Committee.
His group has been in existence more than twenty years and has
confronted all sorts of bigots. Often, when a bigot is exposed and
embarrassed by the confrontation, the bigot makes excuses like "just
kidding" or "just a satire," according to Milewski.
"And that's exactly what this Son of Haverford claimed when
reporters from the N.Y. Daily News and The Sun picked up the
story -- 'just a satire,'" said Milewski who believes this incident
discloses more about this alumnus and about Haverford than it
does about the people of Greenpoint.
Dealing with an individual who was using the vocabulary of a
Nazi, the Polish anti-prejudice unit expected something
different than what the Daily News reported. In its 11/3 edition,
the newspaper gave them an unexpected surprise by noting,
"members of his father's Polish-Jewish family died in the
Holocaust."
Contact: Frank Milewski
(718) 263-2700
(516) 352-7125
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