(Warsaw) A far-right Polish MP emptied a fire extinguisher on a menorah, a candlestick symbol of Judaism, in Parliament on Tuesday, an act immediately condemned by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
“An unacceptable thing happened. It’s a shame,” Tusk told reporters as Parliament Speaker Szymon Holownia excluded Grzegorz Braun, an MP from the far-right Konfederacja party, from a parliamentary meeting.
The menorah was lit in Parliament on the occasion of the celebrations of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah (Festival of Lights), in the presence of Jewish personalities.
In video images published in the Polish media, we see Mr. Braun dousing the menorah and filling a hall of parliament with a cloud of fire extinguisher foam.
The president of the Diet (lower house) condemned a “slap in the face for the Polish Parliament”.
“As long as I am president of the Diet, there will be no tolerance for anti-Semitism, for deviations and for racism,” thundered Mr. Holownia who interrupted the debates.
At the end of a meeting of the Presidency of Parliament, Mr. Holownia indicated that Mr. Braun had received maximum financial sanctions and that a complaint against him would be filed with the courts. He said the MP could face a sentence of up to two years in prison.
” Shame ! A member of the Polish Parliament just did this. A few minutes after we celebrated Hanukkah there,” Israeli Ambassador to Poland Yacov Livne said on social media, posting a video of Mr. Braun putting out the menorah.
The majority of parliamentary groups, including the populist nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, condemned this act.
The lower house of Parliament was debating the morning policy speech delivered by Prime Minister-elect Donald Tusk. In the afternoon, she must carry out a vote of confidence, almost guaranteed, in her pro-European government, which puts an end to eight years of populist nationalist power in Poland.
In May, Grzegorz Braun attacked Polish-Canadian Holocaust historian Jan Grabowski, a professor at the University of Ottawa, with a microphone during a conference in Warsaw.