Thousands of Poles crowded into the streets of Gdansk yesterday/SAT to bid farewell to the city’s mayor who was murdered in a crime that has prompted warnings from his colleagues of the dangers posed by a growing climate of hate.

Pawel Adamowicz died on Monday after being stabbed multiple times in front of thousands during a live charity event the night before.

Saturday was a day of national mourning in Poland, with flags flying at half-mast across the country. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, yesterday joined the funeral procession in Gdansk.

Adamowicz's attacker, a man known for violence and for suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, had only got out of prison last month.

He made no attempt to flee and said Adamowicz had to die because his old party, Civic Platform, was responsible for his incarceration.

While there is no evidence to suggest the murder was political, Rafal Dutkiewicz, who served as mayor of the southern city of Wroclaw for 16 years until retiring in November and was a friend of Adamowicz, claims that a growing and prevailing atmosphere of hatred in Polish politics played its part.