Author and comic Stephen Fry has outraged the Polish community in Britain after speaking out about Poland's alleged anti-gay and anti-Semitic culture. In a Channel 4 Television interview on October 6, funnyman Fry accused Poland's Law & Justice (PiS) party of blocking a Gay Pride March in Warsaw in 2005, and he made a reference to the location of World War II Nazi German concentration camp Auschwitz.

His comments about Auschwitz, in which Fry appeared to suggest Poles collaborated with Germany, resulted in the Polish embassy in London protesting against Fry's remarks.

In the Channel 4 News interview, Fry said:

"There's been a history, let's face it in Poland of a right wing Catholicism, which has been deeply disturbing for those of us who know a little history and remember which side of the border Auschwitz was on and know the stories and know much of the anti-semitic and homophobic and nationalistic elements in countries like Poland."

The comments came at the tail end of the interview, in which Fry had been invited to comment on a letter signed by celebrities such as himself protesting the choice of European partners for the British Conservative Party. Channel 4 featured a report about Michal Kaminski, the PiS MEP, who has been invited to the Conservative Party conference taking place this week. Due to Kaminski’s and PiS’s apparently openly homophobic stance, the letter specifically protested the decision by the Tory European Group to ally themselves with PiS in the European Parliament.

Several Poles who are part of the UK-based community group TOPAZ said they reacted with disbelief and disappointment at Fry's remarks on Auschwitz.

"I too am deeply disappointed with this comment. I also thought more of Stephen Fry. I think the ideal comeback would be for a Polish Gay rights group to write to Stephen Fry to address his ignorance of Polish history during the Nazi occupation...Perhaps someone should arrange for him to visit Auschwitz and be escorted by a historian in a Polish documentary?  Perhaps it's also something for the Polish/Jewish alliance in the UK to address. Will George Matlock be inviting Stephen Fry to a London Bridge show?  asked Ania from TOPAZ.

To view the Channel 4 TV interview please click on the image below: