Polish Authorities Investigate Lawmaker for Saying Auschwitz Was Fake

Braun has engaged in a series of antisemitic acts, including extinguishing the flames of a public Chanukah menorah in Poland with a flamethrower in 2023.

By Shula Rosen

Prosecutors in Poland launched an investigation of a member of the European Parliament after he said Auschwitz was “fake.”

Grzegorz Braun, who has engaged in a series of antisemitic acts, including extinguishing the flames of a public Chanukah menorah in Poland with a flamethrower in 2023, denied the existence of the death camp on Polish radio Thursday.

In an interview on Poland’s Radio Wnet, Braun said that “ritual murder is a fact, and such a thing as Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake,” the news agency PAP reported. The interview ended abruptly after Braun’s remarks.

When he spoke of “ritual murder,” Braun is believed to have been referring to age-old accusations against Jews known as blood libels, which alleged that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to bake matzohs for Passover — something that has been proven false and is contrary to Jewish law.

A spokesperson for the Warsaw prosecutor’s office, Piotr Antoni Skiba, said authorities were opening an investigation into Braun’s denial of Nazi war crimes.

The director of the Auschwitz museum, Piotr Cywinski, declared that the museum would file a separate complaint regarding the incident. He added that “denying the fact that gas chambers existed is not only a demonstration of antisemitism and hatred; in Poland, it is also a crime.”

Although the incident is the first time authorities have launched a probe into Braun, it isn’t the first public antisemitic act he has engaged in.

In addition to trying to extinguish the public menorah, Braun temporarily blocked Poland’s chief rabbi and others from attending a commemoration of the 1941 murder of hundreds of Jews in the northeastern town of Jedwabne on Thursday.

Once police arrived on the scene, those attending were able to pass through.

Braun also interrupted a Holocaust moment of silence in the European Parliament “for the victims of the Jewish genocide in Gaza.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski also said that Braun is “doing work that harms Poland.” “If he were a Russian agent, he could not execute his task any better,” Sikorski said.

“I don’t understand why the authorities did not intervene when he was caught in the act,” he added, referring to his attempt to extinguish the menorah. “This is a man who disrupted a religious ceremony in Parliament … He physically destroys people’s property and damages exhibitions in the Sejm. When someone is caught red-handed, even if they are a member of parliament, they can be detained.”