Polish Science Fiction writer and reporter Rafal Ziemkiewicz was slammed for his antisemitic views, as expressed in his 2020 book Cham Niezbuntowany (Rudeness Untouched), in which he claimed that young Israelis are “killing machines” and that Jewish people today are “ruthless” because of the “myth of the Holocaust.”
He was called out by Polish NGO Otwarta Rzeczpospolita (Open Society) which claimed the book promotes “hate based on nationality” which is forbidden under Polish law and is therefore considered antisemitic.
Ziemkiewicz is the author of the 2004 book Polactwo (Polishness) in which he described Poland as a post-slavery society suffering from low self-esteem because of its socialist past.
By 'slavery' he means that ethnic Poles were in a 'slave-like' state to powerful 'elites'.These elites might have also been ethnically Polish, but didn’t reflect the 'true will' of the people, the theory goes.
He also holds the opinion that writer and publisher Adam Michnik, who is of Jewish origin, holds far too much power in Poland because of his control of newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
Ziemkiewicz is also a well-known writer of science fiction, a genre in which he won several awards for his books, which usually depict a future society in which Europe is ravaged by Islamic terror or other social problems.
Science Fiction, as a genre, had been greatly shaped by writers of Jewish-origin, among them Stanislaw Lem, who wrote in Polish, Jewish-American writer Harlan Ellison and the creator of the Twilight Zone Rod Serling . Making the phenomenon of a racist writer in that genre slightly surprising. In 2019, Polish science fiction and fantasy became much better known around the world thanks to The Witcher series of books which was adapted to a Netflix show with actor Henry Cavill. Penned by Andrzej Sapkowski, the books and the show do not mention Jewish people at all but take place in a fictional world in which humans must slay monsters and face the darkness in their own hearts. Note: In the original version of this article Czech writer Karel Čapek was described as a Jewish-writer. According to Pierre Pe'er Friedman, who translated works by Čapek from Czech to Hebrew, this is a common misconception in Israel not grounded in fact. The writer thanks Pavel Kremen for informing him of this mistake.