PROSECUTORS in Poland are investigating commentators who “joked” on a right-wing television station that migrants should be sent to Auschwitz or tattooed or microchipped as a part of European reforms.

Some companies have pulled advertising from the broadcaster over the past week after guests on TV Republika made the remarks.

The private station’s role as a platform for conservative views grew after the right-wing Law and Justice party lost control of the government and public media, which it had been using to cast large-scale migration into Europe as an existential danger.

Ikea, Carrefour and Mastercard all said that they were withdrawing advertising from the station.

The hateful on-air statements were made as the European Union attempts to overhaul its asylum system, including with a plan to relocate migrants who arrived illegally in recent years.

On Sunday, actor Jan Pietrzak said on TV Republika that he had a “cruel joke” in response to that idea.

“We have barracks for immigrants: in Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Stutthof,” he said, referring to the Nazi concentration and death camps.

Three days later, Marek Krol, a former editor of weekly news magazine Wprost, said migrants could be microchipped like dogs, but that it would be cheaper to tattoo numbers on their left arms.

Mr Pietrzak has since reappeared on air and while TV Republika programming director Michal Rachon said the channel deeply disagreed with Mr Krol’s statement, he did not say whether the editor was being banned from its programmes.

Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum director Piotr Cywinski condemned the “immoral” statements, adding: “This has gone beyond the limits of what is acceptable in the civilised world.”

The Never Again anti-racism association’s Rafal Pankowski said he was shocked by the comments but heartened by the disgust expressed on social media and by the companies pulling advertising.