Polish leader slams Jewish cemetery desecration

Poland's president condemned the recent desecration of a Jewish cemetery, calling it an act of hate against both Jews and Poles, according to a letter released Thursday. About 100 gravestones at a large Jewish cemetery in the southern town of Czestochowa were found smeared with Nazi symbols and slogans over the weekend, in what the Jewish community has described as one of the worst cases of such desecration in Europe in many years. "This act of aggression is unusually shocking, especially because the Czestochowa graveyard belongs to one of the most impressive Jewish cemeteries in Poland," President Lech Kaczynski wrote in a letter dated Wednesday to the head of the Jewish cultural and social association of Czestochowa, Halina Wasilewicz.