26 October 2007
A Polish senator who questioned the Nazi Holocaust has been given a top ceremonial role in parliament, despite being from the losing side of Sunday's parliamentary election. Senator Ryszard Bender was named by President Lech Kaczynski as "speaker senior", a post that will give him ceremonial duties at the re-opening of parliament on 5 November.
Bender has questioned whether the Nazis had gassed people at Auschwitz saying "Auschwitz was not a death camp, it was a labor camp. Jews, Gypsies and others were annihilated there through hard labor. Actually, labor was not always hard and not always were they annihilated." After an outcry following the comments, Bender complained at the law banning denial of the Holocaust. "Through the unfortunate law, Jewish fundamentalists seek to claim Auschwitz and Birkenau camps for their Holocaust, while those and other camps were the scene of the holocaust of Poles, too," he said.
"Someone like this should not have any political functions," said Stefan Niesiolowski, a senior official of the centre-right Civic Platform, which defeated the ruling party of Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother, the outgoing prime minister, in the election. "We do not want to start with boycotts and fights, but this is a scandal."
Bender is an ultra-nationalist who entered the senate on the platform of the Kaczynskis' Law and Justice party. The Kaczynskis’ have good relations with Jewish groups and Israel, but the prime minister's former coalition included a far-right party that was often accused of xenophobia. The president's office said Kaczynski had no choice but to name Bender as chairman for the first sitting of parliament, as he is the oldest senator.
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