Polish Senate Speaker takes 'legal steps' against Jersey City mayor over defamation

Karczewski told the wPolityce.pl website that he treats Mayor Steven Fulop's words very seriously but declined to comment further.

Fulop took to Twitter on Thursday to suggest that Karczewski's has "zero credibility" amid an international row over a monument to thousands of massacred Poles which may be removed from Jersey City.

Here is truth to power outside of a monument. All I can say is this guy is a joke. The fact is that a known anti-Semite, white nationalist + holocaust denier like him has zero credibility. The only unpleasant thing is Senator Stanislaw. Period. I’ve always wanted to tell him that https://t.co/xG0MUHiaIJ

— Steven Fulop (@StevenFulop) 3 maja 2018

According to the Polish-Jewish Forum's Paweł Jędzejewski, Fulop's comment was defamatory as well as "unethical" and "irresponsible".

Meanwhile, Jersey City councillor James Solomon told private Polish broadcaster Polsat that the Polish community should have been consulted about plans, which came to them as a surprise on Monday, to put the monument in storage while its home at Exchange Place is converted into a park.

The monument, erected in 1991, honours some 22,000 Poles, mainly officers and also members of the intelligentsia, who were executed in the Katyn forest in Western Russia and other locations in the Soviet Union in 1940.

Karczewski earlier on Friday indicated that he would consider legal action against Fulop. (vb)