Polish men detained over Hitler’s birthday concert

WARSAW: Two men have been detained in Poland on suspicion of spreading fascism by organising a concert to mark Adolf Hitler’s birthday, a prosecutor told AFP on Sunday.

The men, who have not been identified, were detained during a series of raids in Dzierzoniow on Saturday evening by around 300 policemen and agents from Poland’s Internal Security Agency.

"The Polish men, the main organisers of the concert in question, were detained on Saturday. Tomorrow they will be questioned by prosecutors," Tomasz Orepuk, spokesman for the district prosecutor’s office in Swidnica, south-western Poland. Around 100 people showed up for the concert, according to Orepuk, and police confiscated neo-fascist paraphernalia including flags and banners.

The public propagation of totalitarian ideologies like fascism or communism and ethnic or racial hatred is banned in Poland, a country still grappling with the memory of Nazi occupation, and carries a penalty of up to two years behind bars. The raids in Dzierzoniow came as hundreds of neo-Nazis massed on Friday, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, just over the border in the eastern German town of Ostritz for a weekend festival.