On the same day Holocaust survivors walked the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau for the annual March of the Living, a Polish lawmaker stood before his parliament, held up an Israeli flag , with the Magen David (Star of David) replaced by a swastika, and declared Israel “a new Third Reich.” The timing was not accidental.
On Tuesday, Konrad Berkowicz, a member of Poland’s far-right Konfederacja (Confederation) party, stood in front of the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, accusing Israel of committing “genocide” with “exceptional cruelty” in Gaza and repeating unverified claims about the use of phosphorus munitions against civilians. As he compared Israel to the Nazi regime, he held up an Israeli flag with the Magen David (Star of David) replaced by a swastika and declared Israel “a new Third Reich,”, saying Israel’s “flag should look exactly like this.”
The Israeli embassy in Poland called the display an “antisemitic horror” and demanded that Polish authorities “act upon this disgrace.” The embassy’s statement on X drove the point home: “On Israel’s official Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Polish MP desecrated the Israeli flag and compared the Jewish symbol and the Jewish state to Nazis, instead of showing solidarity with Holocaust victims.”
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), whose working definition of antisemitism has been adopted by dozens of governments, explicitly identifies “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as a form of antisemitism. The accusation takes the most documented genocide in modern history, strips it of its Jewish victims, and weaponizes it against the very people who survived it. Nazi Germany’s explicit, bureaucratically organized program was the systematic extermination of every Jew on earth, including men, women, and children, purely on the basis of their birth. Israel is fighting a war against Hamas, a terrorist organization that massacred 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, and which has openly declared its intention to repeat that massacre. Calling that equivalence “criticism of Israeli policy,” as some of Berkowicz’s defenders have framed it, is not a distinction that holds up to five minutes of honest scrutiny.
The US Ambassador to Poland, Tom Rose, himself an observant Jew who had marched in the March of the Living earlier that same day, responded with undisguised fury on X: “SHAME SHAME SHAME on YOU!! Maybe even you have noticed that we Jews aren’t so easy to push around anymore, are we? We stand with our friends, and we know how to fight and defeat our enemies!!!”
Within the Sejm itself, the backlash was swift. Speaker Włodzimierz Czarzasty called the display a “blatant violation of the dignity of the Sejm” and announced he was preparing a motion to fine Berkowicz under parliamentary rules. Czarzasty also instructed legal services to examine whether Berkowicz had committed a crime, specifically, publicly insulting the flag of a foreign state and promoting Nazism. Under Polish law, displaying Nazi symbols can carry a prison sentence of up to three years. Another MP, Sławomir Ćwik, called for the case to be referred to prosecutors.
Poland’s Foreign Ministry issued its own condemnation, calling the act “reprehensible” and “deeply offensive not only to Jews and Israelis, but also to all those for whom the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes constitute an important element of memory and identity.” The ministry added pointedly: “Poles have a particular responsibility to preserve the historical memory of the Holocaust.”
Berkowicz, 41, has held his Confederation seat since 2019 and has a documented record of antisemitic statements, including repeatedly accusing Israel of “murder” in social media posts. His party has roots in a strand of Polish far-right nationalism long associated with anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitic rhetoric. The most extreme face of that movement, former Confederation figurehead Grzegorz Braun, who physically attacked a Chanukah (Hanukkah) ceremony inside the Polish parliament in 2023, broke from the party last year and is currently on trial for that incident.
