Grzegorz Braun MEP has claimed in a radio interview that Jews engaged in ritual murders and that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were a “fake”.
Braun, who stood in the Polish presidential election polling just over 6 per cent added on July 10 that the Auschwitz Museum was blocking research on the existence of the gas chambers to stop any challenge to the Holocaust narrative.
The interview with conservative radio Wnet ended abruptly after Braun’s remarks, with the interviewer saying “There really are limits.”
Braun was then reported to the public prosecutor by MPs from the Left party for “Holocaust denial”, which in Poland is classified as a crime.
He had previously gained notoriety with highly visual stunts such as his dousing of the Hanukkah menorah in the Polish parliament, the burning of the EU flag, taking down Ukrainian banners and targeting an LGBT exhibition.
Braun’s presidential campaign was further marked by his storming into a maternity ward in a hospital in protest against an abortion carried out in the ninth month of pregnancy.
As an MEP, he has also been clear in his opposition to Israel’s activities in Gaza, as evidenced by him interrupting the European Parliament commemorating the victims of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
He has protested the celebration of Jewish culture and history in Poland and in a presidential debate called the display of the daffodil, the symbol of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish uprising, “shameful”.
He was also involved in an incident in which he disrupted a seminar on the Holocaust because it was addressed by historians Braun accused of being anti-Polish for their suggestions that Poles were actively involved in the Holocaust.
It was Braun’s alleged anti-Semitism that has caused all three right-wing groupings (European Conservatives and Reformists, Patriots for Europe, Europe of Sovereign Nations) in the European parliament to deny him entry into their ranks.
Braun’s latest remarks were the first time he had openly ventured into alleged Holocaust denial territory.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was quick to condemn Braun and challenged the main opposition party the Conservatives (PiS) and the other right-wing opposition party Confederation to dissociate themselves from the maverick MEP.
Braun was expelled from the Confederation party earlier this year after he took a decision to stand against that party’s official candidate Sławomir Mentzen taking his “Confederation of the Polish Crown” faction with him but had been elected to the EP on a Confederation ticket.
Tusk also attempted to link Braun with the Border Defence Movement (ROG) led by nationalist Robert Bąkiewicz. Its members have been patrolling the Polish-German border and showing videos to substantiate claims that Germany was pushing illegal migrants into Poland.
The Tusk government has restored controls on the country’s western borders but has also banned people from filming and taking photographs on that frontier. It accused the ROG of interfering with the work of the border guards.
The present border dispute with Germany was a reversal of roles between PiS and Tusk’s party from the situation back in 2021. At the time, the Liberals criticised the then-PiS government for limiting access to the border with Belarus for humanitarian and pro-migration organisations during a wave of illegal frontier crossings facilitated by the Belarusian authorities.
Braun was opposed to any migration into Poland but in his political activities has concentrated on opposing Ukrainians coming to and living in Poland as the “Ukrainisation of Poland” rather than any anti-illegal migration activities on frontiers with Germany or Belarus. He has been circumspect about criticising either the Russians or Belarus for the migration crisis on Poland’s eastern border.
A devout Catholic who favoured the use of the Latin mass, Braun supported Poland leaving the European Union, capital punishment for murder and treason and a total ban on abortion.
He has already had his parliamentary immunity removed over the Hannukah menorah and other incidents and was facing additional investigations about his actions and remarks in Poland.
