Grzegorz Braun, a member of the European Parliament for Lesser Poland and a member of the Sejm, the lower house of the bicameral parliament of Poland, addressed reporters at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial on Saturday and made a speech that could have been taken straight from the Nazi manifesto, declaring that Jews “want to be superhumans in Poland,” accusing them of trampling on Polish sovereignty, and claiming that the Polish police “clatter before their hooves.”
Reporters pressed him on the government’s new national strategy to counter antisemitism. Braun said the document “establishes a strategy of inequality before the law” because “Poles are treated as second-class citizens in their own country.”
He leaned into the slogan he repeats at rallies: “Poland for the Poles. Other nations have their own states, the Jews have theirs.” He insisted that any government effort to address antisemitism is illegitimate because Jews “should not be in Poland at all.”
Standing only meters from the preserved barracks and the ruins of the gas chambers, Braun described the Auschwitz memorial as “a de facto extraterritorial zone.” He said, “This is no longer the Polish state, a sovereign country in which Poles are free. It is a space governed by foreign influence.”
He then escalated: “The Jews want special rights. They want to be treated as a caste, above the law. They want to be superhumans in Poland. And our police, instead of defending Poles, clatter before their hooves.”
Braun promised that if his nationalist party gains power, it will dismantle the International Auschwitz Council entirely. “If we live to see the next elections in good health, the Confederation of the Polish Crown will scatter the International Auschwitz Council to the four winds,” he said. The council’s job is to safeguard the site of the extermination camp.
Braun dismissed the outrage that followed as “a festival of ritual condemnation from politically correct officials.”
Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek called the remarks “scandalous” and “unacceptable,” promising immediate action by prosecutors. He noted Braun’s long record of incitement and said, “There is no place for antisemitism in Poland. Such statements cause dramatic harm to the Polish state on the international stage and within our own country.” Żurek stressed that speaking this way at Auschwitz, “a unique and sacred place,” turns national tragedy into “a disgusting political spectacle.”
Żurek has already sought to remove Braun’s parliamentary immunity for earlier offenses, including Holocaust denial. Earlier this month, the European Parliament approved that request, clearing the way for prosecutors to charge Braun with assault and incitement on religious grounds. His trial is scheduled for December 8.
The setting cannot be separated from the message. Auschwitz, established in 1940 in German-occupied Poland, became the largest of the Nazi extermination complexes. More than one million Jews were murdered there—gassed, shot, tortured, worked to death, starved, or killed by disease and random violence. The site stands as a permanent testimony to what Jew-hatred unleashes.
The Jewish presence in Poland before the war was immense—about 3.3 million people, among the largest Jewish populations in the world. Warsaw alone had more Jews than almost any city on earth. After the Holocaust, a vast majority of Polish Jewry had been murdered. Survivors returned to destroyed communities, postwar violence, and later state-driven antisemitic campaigns. Today, only a small number of Jews live in Poland, a fragile remnant of a civilization that once thrived in the heart of Europe.
Surveys of Jewish communities and European monitoring bodies show that Polish Jews report a climate that feels unsafe and increasingly hostile. Many speak of a growing sense that antisemitic rhetoric circulates freely, even among political leaders. Braun’s remarks reveal the danger plainly: hatred presented as national self-defense.
Braun’s speech at Auschwitz was an assault on truth and an attack on the tiny Jewish community that remains in Poland. It was also a test of Poland’s willingness to defend memory and protect minority life. Braun’s rhetoric is hatred without restraint, presented as patriotism.
Poland’s institutions now face a decisive choice. A nation that failed its Jews once cannot afford moral ambiguity now. The duty to safeguard historical truth and confront antisemitism is not abstract and not optional. It is the essential measure of a country standing before its own history.
A Case Study of a Political Career Built on Jew-Hatred
Braun’s speech at Auschwitz did not appear from nowhere. It sits atop a long public record defined by antisemitism, Holocaust distortion, and incitement.
During his tenure in the Sejm, he destroyed equipment at a Holocaust lecture, shouted insults at organizers, and later stormed the podium during other events marking Jewish history. In December 2023, he used a fire extinguisher to spray a hanukkiyah in the parliamentary chamber, calling Jewish ritual practice “a Satanic cult.”
He has repeatedly denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, referring to them as “fake,” and argued that those who accept historical fact are “accused of terrible things.” He has invoked the medieval blood libel and claimed Jews teach that non-Jews are destined to be “slaves, subhumans, at the mercy of the Jewish Übermensch.”
On the international stage, Braun has demanded that Israel be designated a “terrorist state” and called the Israeli government “the largest and most criminal terrorist organization.” He disrupted a moment of silence dedicated to Holocaust remembrance by shouting, “Let’s pray for the victims of the Jewish genocide in Gaza,” repeating the phrase until he was removed.
Despite this record, Braun still placed fourth in this year’s presidential election, showing that his rhetoric resonates with a segment of Polish voters.
This is the context in which his Auschwitz remarks must be understood. When Braun stands outside the site of mass murder and insists that Jews have no place in Poland, he is not making an isolated statement. He is carrying forward a political program rooted in conspiracy, hate, and the deliberate distortion of history.
