To Not Was Not a Scandal. It Was an Offer.

When a swastika appears in the Polish parliament, the easiest response is to speak about the brutalization of language or the collapse of civic standards. That is not enough. Konrad Berkowicz’s display in the Sejm on April 14, 2026, of an Israeli flag with a swastika in place of the Star of David, alongside his description of Israel as the “new Third Reich,” was not a loss of self-control. It was a political test. It asked a colder question: how far can the symbolic contamination of public life now be pushed in Poland while still producing visibility, applause, and electoral value? 

That is why this should not be read as an isolated scandal. Poland is no longer dealing with disconnected episodes. It is dealing with a sequence. In December 2023, Grzegorz Braun used a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles in parliament during a ceremony with members of the Jewish community. In January 2024, the Sejm removed his immunity, opening the way for prosecution. Yet the deeper lesson of that episode was not only that it happened. It was that it did not function as a terminal disgrace. The state reacted, but reaction did not become deterrence. 

The threshold then moved again. By 2025 Braun was publicly denying the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and in March 2026 the European Parliament stripped him of immunity in connection with Holocaust-denial allegations and other cases. Reporting around that decision also noted that his trial over earlier anti-Jewish incidents had already begun and that he used the courtroom itself as a stage for inflammatory rhetoric. This is not the behavior of a man who believes he has reached the edge of public tolerance. It is the behavior of a politician who believes the edge keeps........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)