Poland Is Not Ready to Accept a New McCarthyism

On Sunday, 500,000 people marched peacefully through the streets of Warsaw. The occasion marked the 34th anniversary of elections that led to Poland’s nonviolent exit from communism. But the mass showing was no ritual commemoration; it was both a celebration of the past and a protest against the current Polish government’s effort to return the country to autocracy.

The ruling Law and Justice government had spent the previous week mocking the march’s organizers and discouraging Poles from participating. On its official Twitter account, the party even went so far as to publish an outrageous video spot featuring footage of train tracks in front of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp with superimposed over the camp’s entrance. A few politicians walked back their party’s attempt to weaponize Auschwitz, but the offensiveness of the spot stoked public anxiety in the week leading