Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski abruptly left a local TV studio after answering a question from the anchor about whether his American wife’s Jewish ancestry would harm his chances as a candidate in next year’s presidential elections.
The public fuss over the question on the interview on Poland’s largest private broadcaster raised anew questions regarding antisemitism in the country.
Poland’s top diplomat later issued a statement dismissing allegations of antisemitism, but called on the television station to “restore journalistic standards.”
In the interview broadcast on TVN on Tuesday evening, the presenter asked Sikorski in her final question for his reaction to a newspaper report that “the ancestry of your wife is a problem” for some members of his party.
“I would say that there is already a secular tradition that the first lady should be a person of Jewish origin,” he responded.
Agata Kornhauser-Duda, the wife of Polish President Andrzej Duda, had a Jewish grandfather, while her predecessor as Poland’s first lady, Anna Julia Komorowska, had a Jewish mother.
The foreign minister’s wife, Anne Applebaum, is a journalist and historian.
Sikorski left the studio while the credits were still rolling, causing the anchorwoman to look up in startlement.
He later tweeted that “making the origin of a candidate’s wife an issue in the presidential election is unacceptable.”
The popular television station is a subsidiary of U.S. media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery.
The anchor subsequently apologized and said she had not intended to insinuate anything by the question.
