The Polish Government has asked the European Parliament to lift the legal immunity of Grzegorz Braun MEP so that he may face charges for his recent remarks in which he called the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp “a fake”.
Poland’s prosecution service announced on September 5 that it wants to charge Braun, who finished fourth in the spring’s presidential election, polling 6 per cent of the vote, of denying Nazi crimes, an offence which could lead to a three-year prison sentence.
In a radio programme in July, Braun said: “Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake.”
He later doubled down on his claim in a podcast interview saying that he believed the “hypothesis of the existence” of gas chambers at Auschwitz to be “a tenuous one, not based on verified facts” and that for him, “this hypothesis has become less and less convincing over the years”.
Auschwitz was originally set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland in 1940 to house Polish “political” prisoners before later becoming primarily a site for the extermination of Jews, who formed the majority of the 1.1 million killed.
Braun was one of the founder members of the Confederation party and stood for it in the European Parliament election. He parted with it earlier this year to fight the presidential election and now leads his own Confederation of the Crown party.
It calls for Poland to leave the European Union, the reinstatement of the death penalty and sees both Ukrainians and Jews as enemies of the Polish people and State.
As an MEP he has been refused membership of any of the right-wing political groups in the European Parliament because of his openly antisemitic views, which he has expressed in the parliament’s chamber protesting on Gaza during a Holocaust commemoration.
The EP can strip an MEP of immunity in a majority vote but processing and considering such requests is usually a lengthy procedure, lasting at least a few months.
In May of this year the EP lifted Braun’s immunity enabling him to face charges on a number of counts including the disruption of Hanukkah celebrations with a fire extinguisher.
He is also facing charges for an attack on an LGBT exhibition, the tearing down of the Ukrainian flag and forcing his way into a maternity ward to protest against an abortion carried out on a woman in the ninth month of pregnancy.
Polish journalist Robert Mazurek, commenting on Braun’s views and statements on You tube channel Kanał Zero in July, argued that Braun should not be penalised unless he were to advocate violence or other illegal acts.
“Grzegorz Braun and his views are a price we pay for having freedom of speech and democracy”, said Mazurek.
Polish law, though, makes Holocaust denial a criminal offence. It also outlaws propagation of Communism and fascism as alternatives to democracy in Poland.
