Grzegorz Braun, Polish far-right MEP, during a meeting in Krakow, Poland on Oct. 24, 2025. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

Polish authorities have charged lawmaker Grzegorz Braun, a far-right politician notorious for his repeated antisemitic statements and outspoken criticism of Israel, with denying Nazi crimes after he called the gas chambers at Auschwitz “fake,” in the latest incident to thrust his inflammatory rhetoric back into the spotlight.

On Tuesday, prosecutor Robert Janicki confirmed that Braun, who heads the Confederation of the Polish Crown party, had been charged with publicly denying, “contrary to the facts,” the genocide committed by Nazi Germany at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Under Polish law, publicly denying Nazi crimes is a criminal offense punishable by a fine or up to three years in prison.

Even though Braun, a member of the European Parliament who finished fourth in last year’s Polish presidential election, pleaded not guilty, he did not dispute making the remarks at the center of the case.

Summoned by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, a state institution that investigates and prosecutes Nazi and communist-era crimes, Braun is under scrutiny over remarks he made in two interviews in July 2025.

In one interview, he declared that “Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake.” In another, he dismissed accounts of their use as a “propaganda narrative” fueling a “quasi-religious cult.”

Braun was previously stripped of his parliamentary immunity over such remarks in March. He is also on trial over separate alleged offenses related to a 2023 incident in which he used a fire extinguisher to put out the candles of a lit Hanukkah menorah in the Polish parliament, calling the display “anti-Polish.”

Last year, he once again ignited public outrage with inflammatory remarks accusing the local Jewish community of receiving preferential treatment.

“Poland is for Poles. Other nations have their own countries, including the Jews,” Braun said during a press conference in Oświęcim, a town in southern Poland that is home to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp memorial and museum.

“Jews want to be super-humans in Poland, entitled to a better status, and the Polish police dance to their tune,” he continued.

In the past, Braun has repeatedly criticized the government’s efforts to combat antisemitism and strengthen Jewish life across the country, even as attacks on the community have dramatically surged since the start of the war in Gaza and Jews continue to face an increasingly hostile environment.

He has also vowed to dismantle the International Auschwitz Council if his party comes to power, stripping it of its legal authority and “scattering it to the four winds,” and has even opposed restitution for Holocaust survivors.