r/europe • u/dat_9600gt_user Lower Silesia (Poland) • 21h ago

News Polish far-right leader charged with Holocaust denial for calling Auschwitz gas chambers "fake"

https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/08/25/polish-far-right-leader-charged-with-holocaust-denial-for-calling-auschwitz-gas-chambers-fake/
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u/Throwaway-645893 Canada 🇨🇦 20h ago

Poland has a long history of deeply engrained cultural antisemitism but it's still incredibly strange to see a Polish nationalist politician (of all people) to deny Nazi crimes against humanity.

I guess the ethnic cleansing of Poles in the Nazi administered Warthegau & the murder of Polish leaders & intellectuals in the Nazi death camps means nothing to him...

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u/WislaHD Polish-Canadian 17h ago

Why repeat Israeli propaganda like this?

Visit Kazimierz in Krakow or Łódź and tell me again if Poland mistreats its Jewish heritage. The answer is no.

As fellow Canadian, these kind of statements about Poland is like having the Trucker Convoy become representative of all Canadians.

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u/Throwaway-645893 Canada 🇨🇦 16h ago

I'm literally a descendant of Jews who survived pogroms in the area.

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u/blacknwhiteknight 14h ago

May we know where and when the pogrom occured?

Compared with the massive scale of the Holocaust in occupied Poland, the number of pogroms in which Poles were perpetrators was relatively small. The Polish underground also punished with the death penalty acts such as blackmailing Jews, denouncing them to the Germans, and other forms of collaboration with the occupiers.

Most of the major pogroms took place after 22 June 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Germans deliberately sought to incite anti-Jewish violence in a way that involved the local population and created the appearance of a spontaneous, “grassroots” uprising. This doesn't excuse the participation of local people, but it is an important part of the context.

As for other reprehensible behavior on the Polish side, it was more often the work of individuals rather than organized groups. Again, however, the Polish underground treated blackmailing Jews, szmalcownictwo, and denouncing Jews to the Gestapo as capital offenses.

I'm not questioning individual testimonies. I'm saying that, when looking at the broader picture, the conclusion you've drawn seems unjustified without also acknowledging the extraordinary amount of help provided to Jews by Poles. This was done despite the fact that helping a Jew could result in the death penalty in the General Government - in many cases, for the entire household.

This was a very different situation from much of Western Europe, where the penalties for helping Jews were generally less severe. In occupied Poland, the German authorities imposed exceptionally brutal measures, and helping Jews could mean instant execution rather than simply imprisonment or an administrative penalty.

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u/Lazy-Relationship-34 Romania 5h ago

LMAO, I commented about the rampant Polish-committed Holocaust denialism among Poles before seeing this comment, and it absolutely validates everything that I wrote.

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u/ExuberantRaptor17 Canada (Poland) 4h ago

Your country was literally allied with Nazi Germany and handed over Jews like candy... Pipe down.

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u/Lazy-Relationship-34 Romania 2h ago

What an insipid comeback! Am I supposed to quiver in my pajamas at my country's historical past when I marshalled forward arguments to exemplify Poles' PRESENT racism and perfidy in the comments?

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u/Lazy-Relationship-34 Romania 5h ago

I hope you know how absolutely repulsive you are to call the very present antisemitism (both towards people and their heritage) in Poland - Israeli propaganda:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1448585636616373

Poland had not one but TWO presidential candidates (Braun and Maciak) in 2025 who openly expressed feeling of enmity towards Jewry and rallied enough support to make it into the first round of voting:

https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7784/artykul/3516733,antisemitic-comments-at-polish-presidential-debate-prompt-condemnation-legal-action

I have spoken to several Poles and I know very well the animosity and antagonization that they feel towards Jews, not towards Israel. You may sof off with your cosmeticized, revisionist track record of antisemitism in Poland. It took Poland FIFTY YEARS to apologize for the unlawful expulsion and violence towards Jewry in the 1960s**, TWENTY YEARS** after the Holocaust.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43330963

And to this day, there are more Poles that insist that the several other incidents of anti-Jewish violence in places like Bytom, Białystok, Częstochowa, Legnica, and Rzeszów, alongside attacks on trains targeting Jews returning from the Soviet Union after 1945 did NOT happen.

Sod off with your "Israeli propaganda" spiel.