The Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw has launched an inquiry into a comment made by Poland's famous satirist Jan Pietrzak. The inquiry has been launched into the incident itself and therefore no one has been charged as yet, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office said. On Dec. 31, Pietrzak said: "We have barracks for immigrants: in Auschwitz, in Majdanek, in Treblinka, in Stutthof. We have plenty of barracks built by the Germans."
"By order of the Prosecutor General and due to reports coming in to the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw, an inquiry has been launched today regarding a comment made a participant of a program aired on December 31, 2023, in Telewizja Republika," prosecutor Szymon Banna, a spokesperson for the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw, told PAP on Tuesday.
He added the inquiry would pertain to a public defamation of a group of people due to their nationality and ethnicity.
"At the moment, evidence material is being collected. The inquiry has been launched into the incident, which means that no one has been charged," Banna explained.
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 Jan Pietrzak's comment made in Telewizja Republika 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."
"Cruel joke about these immigrants"
On Sunday, Dec. 31, 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.
The video is not available at Telewizja Republika's YouTube channel, but fragments can be found at the X social media platform (formerly known as Twitter).
"A bottomlessly stupid comment"
Asked about Pietrzak words, President Andrzej Duda's chief of staff Marcin Mastalerek said the president "was outraged by them".
"Jan Pietrzak even said that it was a cruel joke. It wasn't a joke. There are topics and issues in Poland that should not be exploited," he stressed.
"To me it was a bottomlessly stupid comment, I protest againts it. If I met Jan Pietrzak, I would tell him that," Mastalerek added. "It wasn't taken out of context. It was a comment devoid of the logic of reality and decency."
Mastalerek also noted, however, that "this is what freedom of speech is about, that we don't sic a prosecutor on Jan Pietrzak because he said it, we don't sic a prosecutor on a TV station". He added that Justice Minister Adam Bodnar "prefers to notify the prosecutor's office".
"If that's how he understands freedom, then it's his business, but we, however, must not agree to this," the presidential aide said.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, tvn24.pl, PAP