Far-right MP charged over attack on Jewish ceremony in Polish parliament
Far-right MP Grzegorz Braun has been charged by prosecutors over an incident in December in which he attacked a Jewish ceremony taking place in parliament by using a fire extinguisher to put out Hannukah candles.
As well as that alleged crime of insulting a religious group – which carries a potential prison sentence – Braun has been hit with further charges relating to other incidents, including one in which he disrupted a lecture by a Polish-Jewish Holocaust scholar.
Members of Poland’s parliament have legal immunity from prosecution, but that can be removed at the request of prosecutors if a majority of MPs agree. In January, MPs from every parliamentary group apart from Braun’s own Confederation (Konfederacja) supported stripping him of immunity.
Parliament has voted to remove the legal immunity of the far-right MP who last month attacked a Jewish religious celebration.
Prosecutors want to bring seven charges against him over that incident and several others https://t.co/ETGoUkzJDP
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 17, 2024
Today, Szymon Banna, a spokesman for the district prosecutor’s office in Warsaw confirmed to the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that they have now formally issued charges against Braun. He added that the MP had not pleaded guilty to the offences.
One of the charges is for the crime of insulting a group of people due to their religious affiliation. Others are for damaging property at the Holocaust lecture and during a separate incident in which Braun removed a Christmas tree from a courthouse because it was decorated with EU and LGBT+ flags.
The MP has also been charged with violating the physical integrity of former health minister Łukasz Szumowski, of using violence to force him to behave in a certain manner, and of slandering him.
Those charges relate to an incident in 2022 during which Braun led a group that forced its way into the National Institute of Cardiology, which Szumowski is the director of. Szumowski said that Braun attacked him and falsely accused him of being under the influence of alcohol.
Braun, who has served as an MP since 2019, has a long history of promoting conspiracy theories relating to Jews, LGBT+ people and the COVID pandemic.
After the attack on the hanukkiah in December, he took to the parliamentary rostrum to declare that “there can be no place for the acts of this racist, tribal, wild Talmudic cult on these premises…I am putting an end to acts of satanic, racist triumphalism”.
His actions were, however, condemned by politicians from across the political spectrum, including both the current ruling coalition and the main opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party.
A lecture by Polish-Canadian Holocaust scholar Jan Grabowski at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw was abandoned yesterday after a far-right MP disrupted the event in order to prevent „anti-Polish propaganda in which [Poles] are cast as villains”https://t.co/dekupZ5Pi4
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 31, 2023
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
