Polish mayor dies after stabbing onstage at concert

WARSAW, Poland — The mayor of Gdansk, Poland, a leading liberal critic of the populist, rightwing national government, died Monday after being stabbed at a public charity concert Sunday night, the minister of health told reporters.

Pawel Adamowicz, 53, mayor of the northern port city since 1998, was known as a supporter of gay rights, and he had campaigned for the rights of immigrants in a country whose governing party has leaned heavily on anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“It was impossible to win against everything that had happened to him,” Lukasz Szumowski, the health minister, said of the stabbing. “God rest his soul.”

The attack stunned a nation that is increasingly divided politically. Tens of thousands of Poles joined rallies all over the country Monday evening to condemn violence and hate speech.

Police officials said the assailant was arrested at the scene and described him as a 27-year-old, mentally disturbed man with a history of violence and no clear political motive.

The attack took place at the nation’s largest charity event, held every year to raise money for medical equipment. It was just before 8 p.m. Sunday, and tens of thousands of people had gathered for a concert to promote the charity.

A countdown had begun to signal the start of an extravagant laser light show called “Light to the Sky.” One second before fireworks were set to explode, a young man burst onto the stage and stabbed Adamowicz several times, including in the heart.

The assailant then circled the podium waving a black knife and screamed that he had been thrown in jail under Civic Platform, the political party to which the liberal mayor once belonged.

“That’s why I killed Adamowicz,” the man shouted.

Adamowicz’s injuries included “a deep wound to the heart, a wound to diaphragm and other injuries of internal organs,” doctors at Medical University of Gdansk said.

Despite their efforts to save him, he died Monday afternoon.

As the city went into mourning, Poland grappled with the question of whether the toxic and aggressive tone of the country’s political debate could have instigated the attack.

The conservative governing party was quick to condemn the assault.

“We usually disagree with Mr. Mayor Pawel Adamowicz when it comes to political views on how to lead Poland, but today we are with him and his loved ones unconditionally, as are — I hope — all of our compatriots,” President Andrzej Duda wrote on Twitter after the attack.

Alexandra Skorupka-Kaczmarek, a deputy mayor of Gdansk, said Monday morning that Adamowicz’s friends and family were struggling to understand what had happened.

“We’re all asking the question of how one can attack an innocent man,” she said. “Let’s eliminate the aggression from our public life, political life. Let’s not escalate this violence. Please, don’t use this tragedy for political and ideological ends.”

After the attack, police arrested a man who had threatened on Twitter the mayors of two other Polish cities, Wroclaw and Poznan.