An extensive probe was launched in Poland earlier this year after footage aired by a private television broadcaster appeared to show a group of neo-Nazis glorifying Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Private broadcaster TVN said at the time that the footage was a result of its investigation into nationalist groups in Poland and included recordings of the Pride and Modernity organisation’s celebrations of Adolf Hitler’s birth anniversary in May 2017.
The revelations caused outrage and condemnation in Poland, a country that suffered massive damage after being invaded by Nazi Germany in World War II.
The alleged celebrations filmed by TVN featured Nazi German flags, an altar to the Nazi German leader, and the “Sieg Heil” Hitler salute.
Both the ruling conservatives and Polish opposition called for the Pride and Modernity organisation to be delegalised.
But a spokesman for Poland’s secret services coordinator has said a man detained by the country's Internal Security Agency (ABW) in a probe has indicated the "Hitler birthday party" had been specially commissioned in return for payment.
The spokesman added that security services hoped TVN would cooperate in official inquiries.
Justice Minister and Prosecutor-General Zbigniew Ziobro said prosecutors were probing whether someone had paid for the “birthday party” to be held, and that they were also investigating how a TVN journalist had been invited to the event.
Meanwhile, conservative news website wpolityce.pl says it has accessed details of an ongoing investigation into the case that appear to indicate that the infamous "Hitler birthday party" was in fact a pre-arranged event "staged on order from mystery men" and “a sham for which its organiser was paid PLN 20,000” [EUR 4,500, USD 5,300].
“A mysterious paymaster, big money and a TVN journalist” appear to have been at the centre of the case, wpolityce.pl said.
It added that the television exposé had set in a motion a response involving prosecutors, officers from the Internal Security Agency, police and other law enforcers, while sending a false message out into the world about Poles supposedly harbouring Nazi sentiment.
“Was the neo-Nazi TV spectacle courtesy of TVN a sham and a pre-arranged show for money from an unknown source?” wpolityce.pl’s Wojciech Biedroń, the author of the article, asks.
He argues that “there are many indications that the group of disguised people in a forest near [the southern Polish town of] Wodzisław Śląski were in fact paid actors.”
Biedroń concludes with a series of questions: “Who really financed this event and what was the actual role of [TVN] journalists and their station in this event? Did they expose something that was already in existence or did they instigate it?”
(gs/pk)
Source: wpolityce.pl, IAR