Polish far-right leader Grzegorz Braun has been charged with denying Nazi crimes, a criminal offence in Poland that carries a prison sentence of up to three years.
The charges relate to statements last year in which Braun, who has a long history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, suggested that the gas chambers at Auschwitz, which was the Nazis’ main killing centre during the Holocaust, are “fake”.
Braun was summoned to appear as a suspect at the Kraków branch of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state historical body that has the power to prosecute crimes relating to the periods when Poland was under Nazi and communist rule.
A group of his followers gathered outside the building to express their support for Braun, who finish fourth in last year’s presidential elections. Since then, his Confederation of the Polish Crown (KKP) party has risen to around 9% in polls, making it a potential kingmaker after next year’s parliamentary elections.
After meeting with Braun, IPN prosecutor Robert Janicki announced that they had presented Braun with charges for “publicly and contrary to the facts denying the crimes of genocide committed by officers of the Third Reich in the German concentration and extermination camp KL Auschwitz-Birkenau”.