A journalist and historian has been summoned for questioning in Poland after tweeting that Nazis didn’t want to exterminate Poles during World War II. The probe was launched under the law that bans the denial of Nazi crimes.
Katarzyna Markusz, who writes for the Jewish Telegraph Agency and runs the news and culture website Jewish.pl, is due to appear for questioning next week at the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a Polish state research body that investigates crimes against the Polish nation committed between 1917 and 1990.
According to the notice, cited by Polish media, the IPN initiated the investigation under a law that bans the public denial of crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. If found guilty, Markusz could face up to three years in jail.
In a now-deleted tweet from June, Markusz wrote: “There have never been mass extermination camps for Poles. During the war, they could walk the streets, work, live. Nobody killed them for being Polish.”
According to the OKO.press website, the complaint against Markusz was filed by a blogger, who founded the entity called ‘Center for Prevention of Anti-Polonism’.
Markusz told OKO.press that the investigation is ongoing, and she has not been charged with a crime yet. The IPN did not comment on the matter.
Markusz was previously investigated over a tweet in which she said that “Polish participation in the Holocaust is a historical fact.” The charges that she had “insulted the Polish nation” were dropped in February.
Responding to the new probe, Markusz again insisted that she was stating “a historical fact.”
“We are again wasting time and taxpayers’ money on an obviously political investigation,” she told Tok FM radio. “History can’t be changed by the orders from prosecutors or politicians.”