Lubomyr Luciuk
Sept 13, 2026
On 10 September 2026, Grzegorz Braun, a Member of the European Parliament, took a hammer to a monument commemorating members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in the village of Białystok in Poland’s Lublin voivodeship. He then publicized the vandalism himself, turning an act of destruction into political theatre.
This was not an isolated outburst. Braun has built a career around intimidation, hooliganism, Holocaust denial and hostility toward Ukrainians, Jews and LGBT people.
Consider that record.
In January 2023, Braun entered a regional court in Kraków and tore down a Christmas tree decorated with Ukrainian and European symbols and LGBT colours, which he then tossed into a garbage bin. The European Parliament documented this incident.
In December 2023, Braun entered the Polish parliament during a Hanukkah celebration and used a fire extinguisher to douse the candles of a menorah. He then hurled insults at the Jews assembled there. The European Parliament recorded that too.
He wasn’t done yet.
In July 2025, Braun declared that “ritual murder is a fact” while insisting the gas chambers at Auschwitz were a “fake.” He thus combined an ancient antisemitic blood-libel myth with a denial of the Nazi gas chambers.
In November 2025, outside Auschwitz itself, Braun escalated his antisemitic rhetoric, claiming that Jews sought privileged status in Poland and proclaiming: “Poland is for Poles.” This was not some careless remark at a political rally. He chose to deliver this sermon at the gates of hell.
Nor is his bigotry reserved for Jews and Ukrainians.
In March 2025, Braun attacked an exhibition in Opole about the local LGBT community. He sprayed the words “stop pervert propaganda” across the exhibit’s panels. Three months later, in June, he struck another LGBT exhibition in the Polish parliament. The Speaker of the Sejm subsequently banned him from the parliamentary building.
Braun’s bigotry extends to women’s reproductive rights as well. In April 2025, he stormed into a hospital in Oleśnica and attempted to make a “citizen’s arrest” of a gynecologist who had performed an abortion. He accused her of murder and tried to prevent her from leaving. The doctor was later cleared of wrongdoing.
Criminal proceedings have been brought against Braun, but he has repeatedly frustrated them. In the Oleśnica case, prosecutors were unable to formally present the charges to him on five
occasions. Polish authorities subsequently asked the European Parliament to authorize his detention so that he could be brought to justice.
There is a pattern here. Braun goes after the symbols and rights of people he regards as enemies. He tears down their exhibitions. He destroys their memorials. He desecrates their religious observances. He seeks to menace a physician over a woman’s reproductive decision. He traffics in Ukrainophobia, homophobia and Holocaust denial. And he does it in full view, often in front of cameras, transforming aggression and ruin into political spectacle.
Enough is enough.
I have formally written to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola asking that Braun’s conduct be referred to the Advisory Committee on the Conduct of Members for disciplinary review, and that — if a breach is established — he receive the strongest reprimand or sanction available, made public.
Members of the European Parliament serve in an institution that claims to defend democracy, human rights, religious freedom and the dignity of minorities. That all rings hollow so long as one of their own makes hatred, menace and destruction his trademark.
The original Brownshirts were Hitler’s street-fighting paramilitaries: thugs who used intimidation and brutality to terrorize opponents, attack minorities and create an atmosphere in which democratic politics could be displaced by fear and force.
I thought that was all beyond us.
Apparently not.
There is now a Polish neo-Brownshirt afoot whose surname – how grimly ironic – means “Brown.” While I do not know who or what Braun intends to target next, his outrages are unacceptable. He should not be sitting in the European Parliament.
Never again.
