A hard-right Polish MP has declared that ‘Poland is for Poles, not Jews’ in a sickening and inflammatory speech outside Auschwitz.
Grzegorz Braun, the head of the Confederation of the Polish Crown party, compared promoting Jewish life in Poland to ‘inviting Hannibal Lecter to move in next door’,
The 58-year-old, who has long been accused of anti-Semitism, added: ‘Jews want to be super-humans in Poland, entitled to a better status, and the Polish police dance to their tune’.
Braun spoke on Saturday at a press conference in the town of Oświęcim, the Polish town known for being the home of the memorial and museum of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
It was there that 1.1million people were executed, the vast majority of them being Jews.
Braun used the press conference to condemn the government’s latest plans to adopt a new policy on combatting anti-Semitism and supporting Jewish life.
The plan is likely to be approved by the country’s cabinet by December.
But Braun, who is also a member of the European parliament, said the plan ‘singles out one particular group…[for] special privileges…[and] is tantamount to discrimination against all Polish citizens of non-Jewish descent’.
The comments were immediately condemned by Poland’s justice minister, Waldemar Żurek, who said Braun’s words ‘dramatically harm the Polish state on the international stage, but also in our own country’.
He pledged to launch an investigation into Braun’s ‘scandalous and unacceptable’ comments: ‘We will not allow anyone to express such views with impunity. We will pursue them resolutely.
‘It is truly shameful for Poles that someone like this, in the 21st century, after what happened in Poland during World War Two, is turning this place [Auschwitz] into some hideous political game’.
Braun has long been accused of being an anti-Semite.
In 2021, he gained infamy after he approached a public Hanukkah display in the country’s Parliament building before extinguishing the hanukkiah, the candelabrum that holds the candles that represent each night of the holiday.
He called the Hanukkah display ‘anti-Polish’, and opposes restitution for Holocaust survivors.
Last year, Polish leaders condemned a series of arson attacks on a Warsaw synagogue that was left visibly scorched.
The Nożyk Synagogue, the only synagogue in the city to have survived the Holocaust, was hit with three firebombs last May.
Nobody was hurt and the damage appeared minimal, but the violence sparked concern from Jewish leaders, and prompted authorities to urge a ‘strong and robust’ response.
‘If it (the bottle) had gone 15 centimetres to the left it would have reached the window and possibly inside the synagogue. There’s a library there,’ Poland’s chief rabbi Michael Schudrich told reporters.
The fire ultimately burned itself out outside the building, according to Eliza Panek, vice president of the Jewish community in Warsaw.
