The Prosecutor’s Office is conducting an inquiry into Grzegorz Braun’s questioning of Nazi crimes committed at Auschwitz concentration camp, said Piotr Antoni Skiba, spokesperson for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw.
The case is being handled by the Śródmieście District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw. Prosecutor Skiba emphasized that the proceedings are being conducted under Article 55 of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) Act, which concerns the denial of Nazi crimes.
MEP Grzegorz Braun, during a Thursday interview on Radio Wnet, questioned the existence of Nazi crimes committed at Auschwitz (“Auschwitz with gas chambers is unfortunately a fake”). Following these remarks, the host, journalist Łukasz Jankowski, decided to end the interview with Braun.
The journalist stated that he would not continue the conversation because “there are certain limits to political cynicism, chasing votes, and sensationalism.”
“Radio Wnet does not allow a few simple things on air—one of them is whitewashing the German regime of the Third Reich era; another is the unfounded—let me be clear—undermining of the scale of the Holocaust of the Polish nation, including those Polish citizens of Jewish origin during World War II,” Jankowski said.
The interview was conducted over the phone, as Braun was in Jedwabne during the anniversary of the July 10, 1941 massacre.
Later that afternoon, Left-wing MP Anna Maria Żukowska announced on social media that she would file a criminal complaint. “I am filing a notice to the prosecutor’s office regarding the suspected crime under Article 55 of the Act of December 18, 1998, on the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Publicly and contrary to facts denying the crimes referred to in Article 1(1) of the above-mentioned act constitutes a criminal offense, prosecuted ex officio, and punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to three years,” Żukowska wrote on Twitter.
She stressed that “there is no place in Poland for denying the existence of the Auschwitz extermination camp and the crimes committed there by the German occupiers.”