Auschwitz Museum condemns "hideous, immoral, political" comments about refugees

In a statement published on social media on Thursday (Jan. 4), Auschwitz Museum Director, Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, said the following: "In recent days, we have all been appalled witnesses to the use of the Auschwitz victims' tragedy in hideous, immoral, political comments regarding refugees."

"It has breached the boundaries of what is acceptable in the civilized world," he stressed.

"I do hope the prosecutor's office will find legal measures to prevent this kind of comments and hold its authors to account. For freedom of speech does not mean freedom of disseminating discriminatory and dehumanizing calls. The responsibility, obviously, lies with the authors of said hideous comments but - unfortunately - also with those who publicize them and make them widely available public facts," Cywiński said.

"Holding a position of the memory of the ever fewer Survivors, I must warn against the moral downfall of the public discourse. I would like to remind that every single use of dehumanizing words is the first step to a tragedy. That's not the way to go!" - Auschwitz Museum director underscored.

On Sunday, Dec. 31, famous satirist Jan Pietrzak said the following words in Telewizja Republika: "I have a cruel joke about these immigrants, that they are counting that Poles are prepared, because we have barracks. We have barracks for immigrants: in Auschwitz, in Majdanek, in Treblinka, in Stutthof. We have plenty of barracks built by the Germans. And in them we will keep (here Pietrzak stumbled intentionally - edit.) the immigrants illegally pushed here by the Germans, because the people who flee to a better world aren't illegal."

"Illegal is the government that lets them in, so the Germans are illegal. Their motto for welcoming newcomers was illegal, outside the treaties, incompatible with any laws. This is an illegal German activity. We should really pay attention to it in the coming year as it seems they are really starting to walk over us," Pietrzak added.

On Monday (Jan. 1) Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Adam Bodnar informed on the X platform that he had asked the National Public Prosecutor Dariusz Barski to look into the case of Pietrzak's comment and launch an inquiry.

Also on Monday, the Auschwitz Museum condemned Pietrzak's words on X. "The tragedy of Auschwitz shows what ideas of hatred and contempt for other people lead to. The instrumentalisation of the fate of people who died in German camps in vile anti-migration rhetoric is a shameful and terrifying manifestation of moral and intellectual corruption,” wrote the museum on social media."

On Wednesday (Jan. 3), former editor-in-chief of "Wprost" and former lawmaker Marek Król said in Telewizja Republika that "the idea of relocation (of migrants - edit.) is a typically Nazi idea". Asked what should be done with "with these people," Król said that "they should be microchipped, just like we do with doggies". "It's cheaper, of course, to tattoo numbers on their left hands and then it'd be easy to locate them," he added.

On Thursday (Jan. 4), Chairman of the National Broadcasting Council Maciej Świrski informed on X a complaint procedure was launched into Marek Król's comment. "It's a standard procedure," Świrski added.