Polish prosecutors charged far-right leader and European Parliament member Grzegorz Braun with denying Nazi crimes Tuesday over comments in which he called the gas chambers at Auschwitz “fake.”
Prosecutor Robert Janicki said Braun was charged with publicly denying, “contrary to the facts,” genocide committed by Nazi Germany at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The offense carries a fine of up to three years in prison. Braun pleaded not guilty but did not dispute having made the statements.
The MEP was summoned as a suspect to the Kraków branch of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, a state body empowered to prosecute crimes related to the Nazi occupation and communist eras.
The case stems from two interviews he gave in July 2025. In one, he declared that “Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake”; in another, he described accounts of their use as a “propaganda narrative” underpinning a “quasi-religious cult.”
The existence and use of gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau is extensively documented. Around a million Jews were killed in the camp, along with around 100,000 Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses and criminals.
Poland sought to strip Braun of his parliamentary immunity over the remarks, and the European Parliament approved the request in March. Braun, who has a long record of antisemitic rhetoric, is already on trial over separate alleged offenses, including his use of a fire extinguisher to disrupt a Hanukkah celebration in the Polish parliament in 2023.
