Polish prosecutor investigating anti-Jewish demonstration at the gates of Auschwitz

The Associated Press reports that the Polish prosecutor is investigating the antisemitic protest by dozens of ultra-right adherents who assembled on Sunday at the gates of Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp. The assembly happened at the same time as the commemoration of the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by the Soviet Army, which has since been designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“The Jewish nation and Israel are doing all they can to alter the history of the Polish nation. Polish patriots must not allow this,” declared Piotr Rybak of the self-described “Polish Independence Movement”, which organized the ultra-nationalists’ assembly.

Rybak has previously been convicted of burning a Jew in effigy. Now he can be seen in television footage saying, among other things, that “We must tell the Jewish occupiers… that we are the lords of this country.”

There were 3.2 million Jewish people living in Poland prior to the Second World War, 3 million of whom were murdered by the Nazis. That number accounts for roughly half of all the Jewish people who lost their lives during the war.