Karol Nawrocki, right-wing Holocaust revisionist historian, elected Polish president

(JTA) — Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing historian involved in Poland’s recent efforts to revise Holocaust history to minimize the role of local collaborators, has been elected president of Poland.

Nawrocki eked out a narrow victory over Rafał Trzaskowski, Warsaw’s liberal-centrist mayor, in a runoff election on Sunday. His election marks a return to power for the Law and Justice Party, which led Poland from 2015 until 2023 and endorsed Nawrocki, who was relatively unknown before entering the race late last year. It will stymie efforts by the country’s centrist prime minister to make reforms.

The election carried steep stakes for how Poland memorializes the Holocaust, when 3 million Polish Jews were murdered in a Nazi campaign supported by Polish collaborators.

Law and Justice promoted historical narratives about Polish victimhood and resistance to the Nazis, while delegitimizing research on Polish antisemitism or Poles who killed Jews. In 2018, the country passed a law that outlawed accusing Poland or the Polish people of complicity in Nazi crimes. Although the infraction was downgraded from a crime punishable with three years in prison to a civil offense, critics say it had a chilling effect on historical research.

Nawrocki heads the Institute of National Remembrance, which gained a reputation for advancing nationalist narratives about the Holocaust under the Law and Justice government. He centered that version of history in his campaign.

As Nawrocki rose in the polls and forced a runoff, he curried the support of backers of the fourth-place finisher in the general election, Grzegorz Braun, who ran an antisemitic campaign. Nawrocki told Braun that he would fight “all the disgusting attacks” on Poland by Holocaust scholars. He previously promised to end the tradition of lighting Hanukkah candles in the presidential palace, which Braun shocked the Polish parliament in 2023 by disrupting.