Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Tens of thousands of Poles marched in Warsaw today in a City that historically was ravaged by the brutal onslaught and the occupation by the Nazis during the Second World War. A city that still bears the marks of heavy fighting in some of the walls that were left standing after Warsaw, saw banners that read, “White Europe”, “Europe will be white” and “clean blood” – clear references to ethnocentric racial overtones which played to some of the neo-Nazi groups that had turned up.

The fact that marchers flew in from various parts of Europe – including Jayda Fransen who was pictured next to Marian Lukasik, the London based Britain First activist. Organised by a group called the National Radical Camp, many in the demonstration suggested to news agencies that they were not part of far-right groups, though the nationalistic themes promoted by far-right groups resonated with them. It was also co-organised by a Polish youth group called ‘All-Polish Youth’, with social media accounts of sympathisers of both groups promoting rabidly antisemitic and anti-Muslim sentiments. The banners that were carried during the organisation also promote a view that Jews, migrants and Muslims, for example, would not be welcome in a Poland shaped by such polarising and extreme groups.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, one of the handful of counter-protestors, who happened to be Jewish said,

“We are really in fear”

The comment was made as police ringed the 30 or so counter protestors for their own safety.

The National Radical Camp has also held events to mark a pogrom against Jews in 1936, showing roots based in Nazi ideology and one of their recent banners that they unfurled over a bridge in Warsaw read,

“Pray for Islamic Holocaust”

We simply cannot sit back and allow the history and future of Poland to be reshaped by those who hate and in a country where over 3 million Jews and Roma were murdered in concentration camps. Men and women in Poland continue to state that they were not responsible for the annihilation of Polish Jewry and blame the Holocaust solely on the Germans. The reality is that many in Poland also colluded and kept the Nazi war machinery working, including the murder of Jews and Roma. Now is the time to stand up and make clear that never again will far-right extremism, Nazi ideology or hatred against Jews and other communities, take root in this proud nation. We all must do what we can to ensure that the forces of light win over the forces of darkness – if not only for the safety and security of Europe but for the memory of those who are not with us today and who were murdered in the death camps in Poland.