Neo-Nazis ceremony sets off revulsion and debate
WARSAW — An undercover expose of Polish neo-Nazis celebrating Adolf Hitler in a nighttime forest ceremony has sparked revulsion in Poland, a country where Nazi Germany murdered millions of people in concentration camps, ghettos and the bombing of cities.
In the week since the television expose was broadcast, political leaders in Poland have condemned the extremists. An investigation has led to the detention of six people and to the confiscation of fascist paraphernalia and ammunition.
There is widespread disbelief that young Poles could celebrate Hitler, who believed that Poles and other Slavs were “Untermenschen,” or subhuman, and forced many into labor for Nazi Germany or put to death.
The debate was sparked by a report broadcast Jan. 20 by private news station TVN24 that showed members of a Polish neo-Nazi group, Pride and Modernity, celebrating the 128th anniversary of Hitler’s birth in a forest at night last spring.
Using hidden cameras, TVN24 captured footage of them preparing for the ceremony by dressing in SS and Wehrmacht uniforms and nailing swastikas to trees.
Mostly young men, they raised a toast to Hitler, whose photo also hung from a tree, praising him and making the stiffarmed “Sieg Heil” salute as a large wooden swastika burned. The ceremony included a birthday cake decorated with a swastika.
The ceremony took place 33 miles from Auschwitz, where Nazi Germany killed more than a million people, most of them Jews from across Europe but also many Poles. On Saturday, a ceremony will be held at the former death camp to mark the 73rd anniversary of its liberation by Soviet troops.
Sociologists and other experts have long been warning of a rise of farright extremism in Poland.