Presidential election in Poland: Karol Nawrocki: Historian with a difficult past

Karol Nawrocki is a newcomer in Polish politics. The 42-year-old received his doctorate is independent, he has never held a political office. As a candidate of the largest opposition party, the right -wing conservative PIS, he made it into the runoff election for the Polish presidency.

The fact that Nawrocki is non -partisan should appeal to the growing number of politicians in Poland. This was at least the calculation of the powerful PIS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski, to whom Nawrocki owes his nomination. “The candidate for the highest state office should be a man. Young, tall, impressive, family and foreign language skills,” said the 75-year-old. Nawrocki meets these requirements.

Nawrocki is the director of the Institute for National Memory (IPN), which roughly corresponds to the now dissolved Stasi documents. At the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, he had Soviet monuments smashed nationwide and staged this in the media. That brought him to the list of enemy foreigners of the Russian Ministry of the Interior. He therefore has a permit to possession of guns, Nawrocki said recently.

Amateur boxers and bouncers

Born in Gdansk, the hard guy likes to give. He grew up in the Sielce workers’ district and won a title in the amateur boxing as a young man. During his studies, he worked as a bouncer in a luxury hotel in the Baltic Sea bathroom Sopot. From this time, good contacts with the red light milieu are said.

Nawrocki stands for PIS’s policy, which Poland ruled from 2015 to 2023. The father of two children, whose wife brought her eldest son into marriage as the third child, wants to preserve Polish traditional values. He warns of the submission of skills to the EU and demands reparations from Germany to damage the Second World War. Nawrocki already had an audience with US President Donald Trump, who supports him.

Possible influx from the right spectrum

Most recently, Nawrocki made many negative headlines. For example, by taking over the apartment of a pensioner under dubious circumstances. According to Polish media reports, Nawrocki promised the old man to take care of him, but did not do so – the 80 -year -old ended up in an urban home.

It also recently emerged that Nawrocki took part in a battle of 140 Danzig football hooligans in 2009, in which several participants were later convicted. The political opponents of Nawrockis ask the question of whether a man with such a past is suitable for the highest government office. In the eyes of some voters from the right and right -wing extremist spectrum, these escapades could make the applicant likeable.