Prosecutors in Poland have indicted an Iranian-born German citizen for making statements denying the Holocaust during a tour of the former Nazi-German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which he then published in an online video.

If found guilty of denying Nazi crimes, he could face up to three years in prison.

On Friday, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state historical body that has prosecutorial powers, announced that it had filed an indictment against the suspect, who can be named only as Reza B. under Polish privacy law.

The alleged offence took place in November 2022 during a tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which manages the site of the former camp that was established and run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War Two.

The IPN says that, while standing next to the infamous gates to Auschwitz II-Birkenau – the part of the camp where around 90% of victims were killed, mainly in gas chambers – Reza B:

“publicly and contrary to the facts denied the crimes committed by members of the camp staff against Jewish people, questioned the criminal use of gas chambers and crematoriums in that camp, and recorded this statement in a video, which he then posted on YouTube and on his Facebook profile, making it available to anyone using the internet”.

Around 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz, 1 million of them Jews, who were transported for extermination from various parts of German-occupied Europe.

While some prisoners died from the harsh conditions in the camp, most were executed en masse in gas chambers immediately after arrival. Their bodies were then burned in crematoriums.

Reza B., who is aged 55 and was born in Tehran but is now a German citizen, has been indicted for denying Nazi crimes, an offence that carries a prison sentence of up to three years in Poland.

The IPN revealed that, when questioned as a suspect, Reza B. “did not respond to the charges brought against him and refused to provide explanations”.

Almost six million Polish citizens, around half of them Polish Jews, died during the brutal German-Nazi occupation between 1939-45.

Nazi Germany also transported millions of Jews from other parts of Europe to their deaths in occupied Poland, where it had established the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Chełmno, Bełżeć, Sobibór, Treblinka and Majdanek.

Poland now strictly enforces its laws prohibiting the denial of Nazi crimes and the promotion of Nazi ideology. Last year, an Israeli teenager seen doing a fascist salute at Auschwitz was fined for propagating Nazism.

Earlier this year, Polish far-right leader Grzegorz Braun was stripped of immunity by the European Parliament to face Holocaust denial charges in Poland for his claims that the gas chambers at Auschwitz are “fake”.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Dieglop/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)