The campaign of slandering Karol Nawrocki continues. Unfortunately, the propaganda spread by individuals affiliated with the Civic Coalition (KO) is also influencing how Poland’s president-elect is perceived abroad. Contributing to this narrative, as reported on the website of Deutsche Welle, is historian Professor Paweł Machcewicz — a close associate of Donald Tusk, known, among other things, for removing portraits of Polish heroes such as Witold Pilecki, Father Maximilian Kolbe, and the Ulma family from the Museum of the Second World War.
Defamation on Demand
In an interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Polish historian Paweł Machcewicz described the election of Karol Nawrocki as President as a “disgrace for Poland.” He repeated well-worn accusations, claiming that Nawrocki had ties to “aggressive, anti-communist football hooligans,” among whom “many are neo-Nazis with corresponding tattoos,” and that “Nawrocki spent many years in this criminal milieu.”
Machcewicz also recalled that upon assuming the position of director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk in 2017, Nawrocki dismissed 60 employees, which he referred to as “purges.”
Furthermore, Machcewicz appeared to align himself with German sensibilities by stating that “nationalist, often xenophobic slogans of PiS and Confederation resonate especially with young people, particularly young men. These parties stoke fears — above all, fears of Germany, which allegedly seeks to dominate us economically and impose the rule of LGBT circles. In their view, the European Union is nothing more than a puppet in the hands of the Germans.”
“PiS has, over the past 20 years, truly succeeded in demonizing Germany. Germany could pay compensation to former concentration camp prisoners. There are no more than a few thousand of them. In three or four years, they will be gone as well,” Machcewicz claimed.