The District Prosecutor’s Office in the city of Wrocław, Poland, indicted former priest Jacek Miedlar on hate speech and Holocaust-denial charges.
Another charge claimed that he insulted the late Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Catholic anti-Communist activist whose political opponents often accused him of having Jewish roots as a tactic to discourage people from voting for him, JTA reported.
The prosecutor’s office said a speech that Miedlar gave at a nationalist march in Wrocław on Nov. 11, 2017, incited hatred.
Miedlar told the crowd at the march: “Dear ladies and gentlemen, that synagogues can stand here on our Polish soil in Wrocław, and that Dutkiewicz [mayor of Wrocław] and Jews can get drunk in them with Talmudic hatred, this is only the result of our tolerance.”
Miedlar, who pleaded not guilty, could face up to three years in prison if convicted on the charges.
The prosecution also drew attention to other statements inciting hatred against Jews and Holocaust denial that Miedlar made in 2018, including an instance where he publicly set fire to a portrait of Mazowiecki and called him a “Communist scab” who “never concealed his Jewish-communist Bolshevik inclinations.”
Mazowiecki’s son filed a complaint to the prosecutor’s office, according to JTA.
