Warsaw, Poland – American Leads a New Generation of Polish Jews

Warsaw, Poland – The anti-Semitic hooligan picked on the wrong guy when he yelled a slur, hurled a punch and fired pepper spray at a Jew walking near a synagogue here last May.

The target — short, skinny, middle-aged Michael Schudrich — was a native New Yorker who didn’t believe in turning the other cheek. He retaliated with a left cross, and despite being blinded by the pepper spray, gave chase as the assailant turned tail and fled. “I went into automatic New York mode,” Schudrich recalled.

The bully didn’t realize that Schudrich was not just any Jew, but the chief rabbi of Poland. News of the assault was reported around the world, magnified by Schudrich’s presence the next day with Pope Benedict XVI at a previously planned ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland. Read the Compleat story.