Polish FM warns against anti-immigrant rhetoric and antisemitism
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has spoken out to condemn a recent series of racist incidents and Holocaust denial claims in the country.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has spoken out to condemn a recent series of racist incidents and Holocaust denial claims in the country.
"There is no consent to the escalating campaign of racism and the antisemitism it fuels, he said in a video recording posted on the X platform on Saturday.
Sikorski cited a recent incident at the Eurofolk festival in the eastern city of Zamosc where artists from Spain, Senegal, Serbia and India were reportedly subjected to verbal abuse. Some residents demanded that police intervene to stop a "refugee invasion."
He said this was not an isolated case in the country and that "anti-immigrant hysteria is harming Poland, awakening its worst demons."
Sikorski also condemned two recent cases of Holocaust revisionism.
He spoke about Thursday's commemorations of the 84th anniversary of the WWII mass murder of the Jewish citizens in Jedwabne, where he said stones were placed near a new memorial with inscriptions suggesting Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland "enjoyed autonomy" and "lived in symbiosis with the Germans."
Sikorski also slammed far-right MEP Grzegorz Braun, who had questioned the existence of gas chambers in Auschwitz.
"Captain Pilecki did not volunteer for Auschwitz so that some scoundrel could now question his report for political gain," he said, referring to Witold Pilecki who voluntarily had himself imprisoned at Auschwitz to gather intelligence on the German-Nazi death camp.
"Holocaust denial is excluding us from the ranks of civilised nations," Sikorski warned.
He argued that Poland had the right to control its borders and verify the legal status of foreigners but this should not lead to racial hatred.
Sikorski further said that the past shows how "the word turned into action" and "the history of Germany teaches us that racial hatred ends in gas chambers."
"Poland has always been a hospitable country and Poles are better than those who denigrate strangers and fuel the spiral of hatred. I appeal to people to come to their senses," he said. (PAP)mmr/jd
