In Poland, a member of parliament staged an anti-Semitic prank with a fire extinguisher

A far-right Polish lawmaker used a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles. An anti-Semitic attack in parliament just hours after Donald Tusk pledged to reform Poland has galvanized support in the Jewish community, a rabbi says.

A Polish lawmaker from a far-right party extinguished the candles on a menorah lit in honor of Hanukkah in the Polish parliament, disrupting a meeting before a vote of confidence in the new government, The Guardian writes.

Television showed how Grzegorz Braun, an MP from a far-right party, sprayed a menorah with a fire extinguisher. The space filled with smoke. Parliament adjourned to deal with the incident and MP Brown was suspended for the rest of the day.

Donald Tusk, whose new government won a vote of confidence on Tuesday, earlier gave a keynote speech in parliament outlining his plans to take office, calling the incident a “disgrace.”

“This is unacceptable. This cannot happen again,” he said.

Rabbi Sholom Ber Stambler, who has lit the menorah in parliament for the past 17 years, said Brown was “an anti-Semite who wanted attention,” but suggested the stunt actually had the opposite of its intended effect.

“I have received so many phone calls and messages from Polish MPs, people who live in Poland; everyone expresses so much solidarity and concern to me, sympathizes and apologizes for this,” Ber Stambler said in a telephone interview.

Ber Stambler was in the next room when Brown launched the attack, but his children were still around the menorah and foam from the fire extinguisher got into their mouths, he said.

“He wanted to destroy a very uplifting atmosphere of tolerance and religious freedom,” said Ber Stambler, a spokesman for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “We have been doing this for 17 years and… each time it has been easy to organize and MPs from different parties have joined in and respected it,” he said.

Asked immediately after the incident if he was ashamed, Brown replied: “It is those who take part in acts of Satanic worship who should be ashamed.” He left the chamber after shaking hands with other far-right lawmakers.

Speaker of Parliament Shimon Holouna condemned Brown’s actions.

“There will be no tolerance for racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism… as long as I am speaker of parliament,” Holouna told reporters

Israeli Ambassador to Poland Yakov Livne wrote on Platform X: “SHAME. A member of the Polish parliament just did this. A few minutes after we celebrated Hanukkah there.”

US Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski also condemned the attack in a comment on X: “Poland survived the atrocities of the Holocaust, and this disgusting act of hatred reminds us all why we must remain vigilant and fight anti-Semitism every minute of every day,” he wrote.

Cardinal Grzegorz Rys of the Polish Catholic Church said in a statement that he was ashamed of Brown’s actions. “I apologize to the entire Jewish community of Poland,” he wrote.

Brown, a member of the far-right Confederation party, has falsely claimed in the past that there was a plot to turn Poland into a “Jewish state.” Earlier this year, he disrupted a planned lecture by Holocaust researcher Jan Grabowski, who was investigating Polish complicity in the Holocaust, resulting in the lecture being cancelled.

Ber Stambler said Brown was not only an anti-Semite, but also a complete phobe because he disrupted an important political day – the swearing in of a new government. “It was very important for me to light the menorah again after that, which I did,” he added.