The prosecutor ordered the police to investigate Sunday’s march of nationalists on the 74th anniversary of Auschwitz camp’s liberation. The march was led by one of the well-recognised nationalist leaders, Piotr Rybak, who had been sentenced by the court for burning an effigy of a Jew on the Market Square in Wrocław.
"The course of the event has been recorded. The police have analysed the gathered materials and decided to pass on the findings to the prosecutor who will decide how to proceed. We think that some of the statements by the participants of that event may bear the signs of crime," said the deputy for the regional prosecutor in Oświęcim, Mariusz Słomka.
He added that the inquiry is focused on two participants of the march who are suspected of public inciting hatred against nationality and race. For the safety of the ongoing proceedings, the prosecution did not reveal the identity of the suspected persons.
Information about the prosecutor’s supervision over the inquiry has been confirmed by Małgorzata Jurecka from Oświęcim police. “I think we should approach this subject with cool heads. We must analyse it first and then, most likely, an expert will be appointed to assess the material,” said officer Jurecka.
Two events
Dozens of Polish far right nationalists gathered at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on Sunday to protest at the same time as officials and survivors marked the 74th anniversary of the camp's liberation in an annual ceremony.
The two parties gathered in different parts of the camp, now an open-air museum, and did not encounter each other. It was the first time the far right has held a protest at Auschwitz at the annual event, which is also International Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day.
At the official ceremony on Sunday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and other government officials were joined in prayer by some of the last remaining survivors of the death camp.
Nationalists' march
In another location at the site, far right protesters wrapped in Polish flags, some of the stamped with the words "Polish Holocaust", laid flowers and sang the Polish national anthem.
Piotr Rybak from the Polish Independence Movement said in front of a camera: "the Jewish nation and Israel is doing everything to change the history of the Polish nation. The Jewish nation is doing everything to change the history of this camp. Polish patriots cannot allow this. Polish patriots cannot allow anyone to change the history of Poland and this camp".
Rybak is a well-known figure as media across Poland were highlighting his trial in which he was sentenced for burning an effigy of a Jew on the Market Square in Wrocław.
Anti-Semitism on the rise
The protest comes at a time of surging anti-Semitism in parts of Europe and as critics accuse the PiS of trying to build a nationalist sense of grievance among Poles by seeking to minimise Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
During decades of communist rule, Poles were taught to believe that, with a few exceptions, the nation had conducted itself honourably during a war that killed a fifth of the population.
Many still refuse to accept research showing thousands had participated in the Holocaust - in addition to the thousands that had risked their lives to help the Jews - and feel the West has failed to recognise Poland's own suffering during the war.
More than 3 million of Poland's 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across Europe were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by the Germans on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.
According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazis also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.
Diplomatic relations between Poland and Israel were strained last year after the PiS government sought to impose jail terms for suggesting the nation was complicit in the Holocaust.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters, PAP