Polish police probing reports of anti-Semitic comments outside Auschwitz

Official commemorations marking the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were held in southern Poland on Sunday. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki took part in that event.

Before the official ceremonies, some 200 nationalists marched to the former Auschwitz I death camp from the nearby town of Oświęcim, Poland's PAP news agency reported.

According to the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, the organiser of the nationalist march, Piotr Rybak, told those taking part: “It's time to fight Jewry and to free Poland from it!”

A police spokesman said the demonstration by nationalists had taken place outside the former German Nazi death camp rather than on its grounds.

Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński said on Sunday: "I will never agree to any actions affirming Nazism and anti-Semitism."

The German Auschwitz-Birkenau camp operated from 1940 until its liberation by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945. The anniversary is commemorated across the globe as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as non-Jewish Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, were murdered by the Germans at Auschwitz during World War II.

(pk/gs)

Source: PAP