At the end of January 2025, media and Telegram channels reported: residents of Poland opposed the President of Ukraine attending events dedicated to the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
On January 27, on the day of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners of the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, messages spread across the Internet: supposedly Poles hung up posters with a portrait of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and the caption “A Nazi’s place is in the trash, not in Auschwitz.” It was alleged that similar posters were hanging throughout Poland, and the discontent was related to the invitation of the politician to events dedicated to Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The news was published, in particular, by Telegram channels “Ukraine.ru"(136,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Sheikh Tamir" (127,000), "Denazification of Ukraine" (50,000) and "Paratrooper's Diary"(37,000).
January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Poland took place ceremony dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Soviet troops. Event visited high-ranking foreign guests: British King Charles III, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and many others. Among them was Vladimir Zelensky.
Russian officials at the event not invited — the director of the museum in Auschwitz explained that this decision was caused by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Until 2022, Moscow representatives regularly participated in the ceremony, although criticized organizers for “distorting history.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, commenting on the decision made in 2025 by the leadership of the memorial museum in Auschwitz, named it was strange and noted that the invitation was received by people who “chose Bandera as their hero and applaud former SS soldiers."
Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, noting widespread dissatisfaction among Poles with Zelensky’s visit, used as evidence a photograph of leaflets allegedly posted in an unnamed Polish city. Judging by the photo, four identical posters are hanging on a cork notice board. These posters feature a portrait of Zelensky and a caption in Polish, which, translated, reads: “The Nazis’ place is in the trash, not in Auschwitz.” In addition to the leaflets, at the top of the board you can see the inscription “Zakaz palenia” (“No Smoking”) and an advertisement for a massage parlor in the lower right corner.
Despite the fact that all four leaflets are arranged in a chaotic order, the posters themselves look exactly the same. The posters are placed on an uneven surface, but there are no characteristic shadows or deformations on them. The unnaturalness is especially noticeable in comparison with an advertisement for a massage parlor: it is lit less evenly, and the corners of the sheet are bent. In addition, the buttons with which the leaflets with Zelensky are supposedly attached are in all four cases located at the same distance from the corners of the poster.
All this indicates that the leaflet with the portrait of the Ukrainian president, apparently, was processed in a photo editor, then copied and pasted in three other places. Service Forensically, which helps identify traces of digital manipulation of images, shows that the viral image contains traces of cloning. However, the analysis did not reveal any significant anomalies when examining the bottom left poster: this suggests that it could have been hung on a board and subsequently reproduced during photo editing.
Although Telegram channels report the appearance of similar posters throughout Poland, Verified did not find any other images with these leaflets in open sources. Moreover, such a protest is not reported in any authoritative Polish or Ukrainian source. The photo began to spread across the Internet on the evening of January 27, that is, after started commemorative events in Auschwitz, which were attended by the President of Ukraine. If the inhabitants of Poland were against his arrival, then most likely they would have expressed dissatisfaction earlier and then the corresponding evidence would have appeared. In general, it was not possible to find information about any mass protests by Poles against the visits of the Ukrainian leader, although he often visits the country on official visits (there were two in the first month of 2025 alone, 15 And 27 January).
The photo was distributed mainly through pro-Russian Telegram channels - for the first time it published on the “Sheikh Tamir” channel on January 27 at 18:06 Moscow time. “Sheikh Tamir” is one of the most active distributors of anti-Ukrainian fakes in the Russian-language segment of Telegram. The image of the flyer then went viral on X, including in tweets on English And Polish languages.
The rhetoric used by the creators and distributors of the fake coincides with statements by Russian officials who criticized Zelensky's invitation to commemorative events at Auschwitz. Official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, commenting on this topic, called the Ukrainian president a dictator who has tame Nazis with corresponding symbols, banners, ideology and heroes. The speaker of the Russian Foreign Ministry also stated that Zelensky’s appearance in Auschwitz caused outrage in Jewish religious circles in Poland, and Polish rabbis even boycotted the ceremony, but this statement turned out to be fake.
Thus, there is no evidence that Poles posted leaflets en masse to protest Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to Auschwitz on the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp. The only evidence of dissatisfaction is a photograph from an unknown city with obvious traces of editing.
Cover photo: social networks
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