Police in the northern Polish city of Gdansk are searching for a man who threw a rock into a synagogue as Jews were praying inside towards the end of the Yom Kippur holiday on Wednesday.
On Thursday, police released security footage showing a man in a dark shirt and jeans walking up to the New Synagogue and throwing a stone into a window.
In a statement, police said the incident occurred at 6 p.m. local time and appealed to anybody who recognized the man to contact police.
They said they had spoken to witnesses and were working to determine if the act was a "hooligan prank" or motivated by religious hatred.
In 1938, when Gdansk was still part of Germany and was known as the Free City of Danzig, the same synagogue was also attacked during Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, an explosion of violence by Nazi Germany against Jews.
Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz said he was "appalled" by the Yom Kippur incident, especially because it took place during prayers marking the end of the Jewish Day of Atonement.
"Such things should not happen in the city of freedom and solidarity," Adamowicz said, referring to Gdansk's history as the cradle of the Solidarity movement that helped topple communism.
He called on residents to gather Thursday evening outside the synagogue in a show of prowwww.
Poland's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich said the last such incident in Poland occurred more than 20 years ago when a firebomb was thrown into the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw.
"What happened should never happen and must be condemned in clear and strong terms. Yet this does not represent the true face of Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity and freedom," Schudrich told The Associated Press.
He said that people were gathering for prayers when the rock was thrown and that a few people were nearby, but that nobody was hurt.
On its Facebook page, the Jewish Religious Community in Gdansk wrote, "Today, during the Yom Kippur festival, there was an attack on the New Synagogue in Gdansk Wrzeszcz. The perpetrator threw a large rock through the window. In the gallery where the rock fell, women were waiting for Neila, the final prayer of Yom Kippur. Children were nearby. The stone flew a few centimeters from the face of one of the women. It was thrown into the illuminated room from a close distance. Police and prosecutors appeared on the spot. Investigation into the incident and the identification of the perpetrator are ongoing."
The community added that attacks on synagogues during Yom Kippur "were quite often the practices of nationalist militias" in Poland in the 1930s.
The World Jewish Congress called the attack "shocking and dismaying" and said the incident evoked "the terrible tragedies that occurred in German-occupied Poland during the years of the Holocaust" because it took place on Yom Kippur.
"We trust that the local police authorities in Gdansk are investigating this matter with the diligence it deserves and that the perpetrator of this cowardly act will be swiftly brought to justice," WJC President Ronald Lauder said.
"In recent years, Jews in Poland have been able to worship with a sense of security, and we hope that this attack does not herald negative change in that positive environment."
Meanwhile, in France, the double door of a Paris apartment building was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti on Thursday. The words "Here live the Jewish scum" were scrawled on one door and the words "notably on the third floor" above a drawing of a target were scrawled on the other door.
The Paris Municipality responded quickly, sending a team to remove the graffiti.
According to the French Interior Ministry, 214 anti-Semitic threats were reported to authorities in 2017 compared with 258 the previous year, a fall of 17%. However, the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported across the country rose, from 77 in 2016 to 97 in 2017.
