I do not ever-ever.-want to hear someone say Poland isn’t one of the most racist, antisemitic countries, ever again.
WARSAW—Tens of thousands of Poles marched across downtown Warsaw on Saturday, in an independence-day procession organized by a nationalist youth movement that seeks an ethnically pure Poland with fewer Jews or Muslims.
The largely young crowd shot off roman candles and chanted “fatherland,” carrying banners that read “White Europe,” “Europe Will Be White,” and “Clean Blood.” Some of the marchers flew in from neighboring countries—Slovakia, Spain and Hungary—waving flags and symbols those countries used during their wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany.
“There are of course nationalists and fascists at this march,” said Mateusz, a 27-year-old wrapped in a Polish flag, “I’m fine with it. I’m just happy to be here.”
The march, organized by a group called the National Radical Camp, underscores the increasingly rightward politics of a growing section of Polish youth. The Radical Camp presents itself as the heir to a 1930s fascist movement of the same name, which fought to rid Poland of Jews in the years just before the Holocaust. A second group, All Polish Youth, also named after an anti-Jewish interwar movement, co-organized it.
Officials in the city government said they thought the march reflected poorly on Poland, but they said they had no choice but to approve the demonstration, as it fulfilled the legal requirements: It qualified as a celebration of Polish history. “This is not the type of event I would take my children to,” said Agnieszka Kłąb, spokesperson for the Warsaw City Council.
Police estimated the crowd at 60,000 people.
The Radical Camp has been holding independence-day marches since 2009. Until several years ago, it struggled to attract more than a few hundred people. In the past three years, it has become the largest independence-day occasion in Poland, and one of the largest nationalist marches of its kind anywhere in Europe. Saturday’s was expected to be the largest ever.
“It’s getting more and more vicious,” said Jakub Skrzypek, 25, one of about a dozen counterprotesters standing behind a banner that read “We Are Polish Jews,” and surrounded by police. “We are really in fear.”
The Radical Camp’s followers argue, on their social-media accounts and in their literature, that the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe is part of a conspiracy driven by Jewish financiers, who are working with Communists in the European Union to bring Muslims into Europe, and with them, Shariah law and homosexuality.
The group has regularly held events to mark a 1936 pogrom against Jews. Its symbols were displayed on a banner that appeared over a Warsaw bridge, reading: “Pray for Islamic Holocaust.”
