Kanye West concert in Poland will be canceled, newspaper reports

Stadium managers in Poland say they will cancel a concert by US rapper Kanye West, local media reports, days after he postponed a show in France amid a furore over his past antisemitic comments and celebration of Nazism.

The decision by Slaski stadium in the western city of Chorzow, reported by Wyborcza newspaper on its website, comes just over a week after Britain blocked the 48-year-old from travelling to the country to headline a festival.

There is no immediate comment from the rapper, now known as Ye, who in January apologized for his behavior, which he attributed to untreated bipolar disorder, and renounced past expressions of admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Authorities in Poland had already signalled they would seek to ban the planned June 19 concert.

“In a country scarred by the history of the Holocaust, we cannot pretend that this is just entertainment,” Polish Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska said on Thursday.

More than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War Two. Nazi Germany killed more than 3 million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jewish population.

“The concert will not take place,” wyborcza.pl reports a representative of the stadium as saying. “We will inform the organizer in a few hours. Our lawyers are preparing a letter regarding this matter.”

Ye was barred from Australia last year after releasing a song promoting Nazism and advertising swastika T-shirts on his website.

He has performed in the United States and Mexico City this year, with further concerts planned in Europe and Asia.