PM Szydło defends anti-migration policies at Auschwitz

At a ceremony commemorating the 77th anniversary of the first transport of prisoners who entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, PM Beata Szydlło said that “Auschwitz is a lesson showing that everything needs to be done to protect one's citizens.” These comments caused outrage from many international news outlets and politicians. “Such words in such a place should never come out from the mouth of a Polish prime minister,” said Donald Tusk, European Council president and former Polish PM. The remarks were interpreted as defending her nationalist government's migrant policy, and some pointed out that Szydło quoute eerily mirrored what Nazi official Heinrich Himmler said in 1933 on the opening of the Dauchau concentration camp. “Here all the Communist and Reichsbanner [pro-democratic paramilitaries] and Marxist functionaries who threaten the security of the state will be concentrated as it is not possible in the long run, if the state apparatus is not to be greatly overstressed, to leave the individual Communist functionaries in local court prisons,” Himmler was quoted as saying in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten. Government's spokesperson Rafał Bochenek later said that the quote was taken out of context. “If someone wants to, they will find bad intentions in any comment,” he tweeted. Also in her speech, Szydło said that it was a great task for politicians to make sure that “such terrible events as those that took place in Auschwitz and other places of martyrdom never happen again.” Over million people, mainly Jews, were murdered by the Nazi Germans in the Auchwitz concentration camp during the World War II.