Polish constitutional court judge apologises after likening Tusk to Hitler

A judge on Poland’s constitutional court – appointed by the ruling party in 2019 after serving as one of its MPs – has apologised to opposition leader Donald Tusk after a tweet in which she appeared to liken him to Hitler. However, she added that he should stop “giving reasons for such jokes”.

The controversy began when Krystyna Pawłowicz – known for her outspoken and often offensive remarks on social media – commented on Twitter under an image showing Tusk with his grandchildren.

Tusk had himself originally posted the photo showing the children watching Winnie the Pooh on television, but an anonymous Twitter user then posted an edited version in which it appeared that they were looking at Hitler. Beneath the tweet, Pawłowicz asked: “And which one is Hitler?”

Figures associated with and supportive of the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party often claim that Tusk and his centrist Civic Platform (PO) party represent German interests. They have regularly likened him and other PO figures to Hitler and the Nazis.

As a constitutional court judge Pawłowicz is theoretically supposed to be apolitical, but since being appointed to her current role she has continued to be a vocal presence on social media. “Why does the Polish opposition not want the existence of the Polish state?” she tweeted last year.

After facing condemnation for her latest comment about Tusk and Hitler, Pawłowicz initially told one critic to stop being “hysterical” about her “joke”. However, this morning she announced that she had deleted the tweet and “apologises to you [Tusk] for it”.

Yet in the same statement, Pawłowicz also accused Tusk of “speaking publicly about the current situation in Poland in the spirit of pre-war Germany” and called on him to “not give reasons for [making] such jokes”.

As examples, she cited two recent statements by Tusk. In May, the PO leader talked about wanting to “clean up [Poland] with an iron broom” once he came to power, which critics noted was a term also used by the Nazis.

Earlier this month, referring to an environmental disaster in the Oder river, Tusk tweeted that “PiS is like the mercury” allegedly poisoning the water, making the “whole country dead under the rule of [PiS chairman Jarosław] Kaczyński”.

Last month, PO announced that it was suing Gazeta Polska, a newspaper supportive of PiS, for a cover that appears to liken Tusk to Hitler. News broadcasts on state television, which is a government mouthpiece, have shown a clip of Tusk saying “Für Deutschland” (“For Germany”) over 100 times since last year.

While a PiS MP from 2011 to 2019, Pawłowicz regularly courted controversy. She declared that Poland is in a “culture war” against the “Soros agenda, leftist moral pathologies”; condemned “fifth columnists without Polish genes”; called the LGBT community “sexually disturbed, sick people who should be treated”; and described Poland joining the EU as a “sad day”.

Last year, while already serving as a constitutional court judge, she drew criticism for publishing the personal details of a 10-year-old transgender child. She also suggested that the EU was seeking to “force through a German into the office of the president of Poland” at the next elections.

This year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pawłowicz suggested that perhaps “Germany tolerates Russia’s aggression against Ukraine because – like Russia – they have a plan to revise their borders with Poland?” and “they support aggressive actions weakening Poland?” using “their agents in Poland”.

Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.