Karol Nawrocki was a key promoter of laws that prohibit speech blaming Poles for Nazis crimes.

By Canaan Lidor, JNS

Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing historian and key promoter of legislation that restricts speech about Polish complicity in the Holocaust, won that country’s presidential election on Sunday, according to the national electoral commission.

Last month, Nawrocki appeared to reference Israel at a debate, when he said that “there is no state that is a chosen nation to live out its history.”

Backed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party as an independent candidate, Nawrocki won 50.9% of the vote, narrowly beating the liberal candidate Rafal Trzaskowski, a former mayor of Warsaw, according to the election board’s statement based on a full count of the votes.

As president, the anti-E.U. Nawrocki may use his veto power to block key policies of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a pro-E.U. politician whose Civic Platform won the legislative election over the PiS party in 2023. Tusk’s party lacks the three-fifths parliamentary majority needed to override a presidential veto.

Nawrocki’s previous position was as head of the Institute of National Remembrance—Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, a state institution that provided the bulk of research for laws passed under PiS in 2018 and 2019 that criminalized public speech attributing responsibility for the Holocaust to Poland or the Polish nation. The laws were partly repealed when their criminal provisions were removed, but they can still serve as the basis for civil court action and fines.

The laws, criticized by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as counterproductive to historical research of the genocide carried out by the Germans and their collaborators against the Jews during World War II, triggered a major crisis in bilateral relations between Israel and Poland. Warsaw had been a staunch ally of Israel in the European Union before the spat.

Push against history

In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued his harshest condemnation to date of the push against the historical record. He slammed as “outrageous” remarks by Poland’s then-prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, a member of the (PiS) party, who mentioned Jewish collaborators with the Nazis in dismissing talk of Polish ones.

“There is a problem here of an inability to understand history and a lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people,” Netanyahu stated at the time.

During a presidential debate in April, Nawrocki was asked by journalists about his attitudes to Israel, which another candidate on stage had accused of “genocide.” Nawrocki’s response entailed a rejection of the biblical description of the Jews as chosen people.

“I also believe that there is no state that is a chosen nation to live out its history,” he said, adding, “I am a Pole who, as a future president, will build his relations with all countries in the world.”

During the same debate, Nawrocki defended his promotion of the laws of 2018-19.

“I am fighting for this truth. Poles are not antisemites. Many Poles lost their lives during World War II saving Jews,” for example the Ulma family,” he said, adding, “I am not anti, I am pro-Poland.”

Thousands of Poles risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust. Millions of Poles were murdered by the Germans. Many Poles betrayed Jews to the Nazis or persecuted them directly during the Holocaust and in its immediate aftermath.

“We will save Poland,” Nawrocki told supporters on Sunday. “We will not allow Donald Tusk to hold all the power and have a monopoly of evil power that does not care about public finances—power that takes away our big dreams and takes away our aspirations.”

Nawrocki met with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last month. On a visit to Poland last week, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem dismissed Trzaskowski as “an absolute train-wreck of a leader.”