Polish government pressured to act following report on neo-Nazis

Poland’s right-wing government is facing pressure to act forcefully against far-right extremists following an expose of Polish neo-Nazis who celebrated Adolf Hitler, burning a swastika and dressing in Nazi German uniforms.

Private news channel TVN24 broadcast hidden-camera footage Saturday of neo-Nazis celebrating what would have been Hitler’s 128th birthday in a wooded area in southwestern Poland last spring. The participants chanted “Sieg Heil” and praised Hitler as they burned a large swastika, some of them dressed in the uniforms of Nazi soldiers.

The report revealed that the same neo-Nazi group, “Pride and Modernity,” was behind a November protest where pictures of centrist European Parliament lawmakers from Poland were hung on mock gallows in the city of Katowice. The far-right participants at that protest called the lawmakers traitors to Poland for having voted against the Polish government in a resolution in the European Parliament over alleged rule of law violations and the government’s response to an Independence Day march organized by far-right nationalists.

— AP