Yad Vashem: Polish parliamentarian’s effort to silence historian ‘a new low’
A member of the Polish parliament allegedly assaulted a Polish-Canadian historian on May 31 who suggested that Poland was complicit in Nazi atrocities.
Polish Parliament member Grzegorz Braun in 2019. Credit: Adrian Grycuk via Wikimedia Commons.
Jan Grabowski was speaking at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw when Grzegorz Braun reportedly took the microphone from his hand, smashed it into the podium and sought to disable the sound system before police intervened.
“This incident represents a new low in attempts to stifle discussion about the complicity of Poles in the persecution and murder of their Jewish neighbours during the Holocaust,” stated chair of Yad Vashem Dani Dayan.
“This act of vandalism is more than an ugly attack on an internationally renowned scholar. It is an attack on academic freedom, on the historical record and on Holocaust remembrance,” he said.
According to a Google translation of Braun’s statement in Polish, the politician said he was protecting “the Polish nation against a provocative attack on our historical sensitivity.”
Braun has been described as far-right and a proponent of antisemitic conspiracy theories. “The American empire here is the political and military tool of Jewish blackmail against Poland,” he has said.
Grzegorz Braun zachował się tak jak trzeba. ???????????? pic.twitter.com/zmFPLwFZAy
— coolfonpl ???????? (@coolfonpl) May 31, 2023
