Polish authorities are considering criminal charges against a lawmaker who allegedly said last week that the Nazi gas chambers were "fake" but blood libels were true.
Speaking to Poland’s Wnet radio on Thursday, lawmaker Grzegorz Braun, a member of the far-right Confederation of the Polish Crown party, said that “ritual murder is a fact, and such a thing as Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake”, according to the Polish Press Agency.
The incident followed a scandal over a ceremony earlier on Thursday that centred on the supposed denial of the slaughter of hundreds of Jews in 1941 in the eastern town of Jedwabne.
A spokesperson for the Warsaw district prosecutor’s office said that prosecutors were conducting a preliminary investigation into Braun’s potential denial of Nazi crimes.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry condemned the remarks. It said: “This fuels antisemitism, spreads hate, and desecrates the memory of millions murdered by the Nazis.”
A ministry spokesperson posted on X that Braun “should be brought to justice for these crimes. The sooner, the better.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described Braun’s words as “a disgrace” and said: “We must do everything so that no one in the world associates Poland with such people, such faces and such actions.”
Earlier on Thursday, Braun had attended a ceremony at Jedwabne, where far-right activists had gathered for the inauguration of a so-called memorial area that they had set up without a permit. Placed near the official commemoration site for at least 340 Jews murdered by Poles in 1941, the area features boulders with plaques blaming Germans for the murders, and revisiting Communist crimes, allegedly perpetrated by Jews.
Israel’s embassy in Poland condemned the event, writing in a statement: “Instead of honouring the victims, we witnessed manipulation. Antisemitic and pro-Palestinian slogans were used, inciting hatred and confirming that the Holocaust is still being politicised and exploited to distort history.”
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