A 60,000-strong nationalist march in Warsaw which saw demonstrators tout white supremacist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic messages was largely an expression of patriotic feeling, Poland's Foreign Ministry has said.

Marchers hung a banner which said, "pray for Islamic holocaust" and carried signs with slogans like "white Europe of brotherly nations". Others chanted "pure Poland, white Poland" and "refugees get out!"

Although the country's government condemned racist and xenophobic ideas, it called the event "a great celebration of Poles, differing in their views, but united around the common values of freedom and loyalty to an independent homeland".

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, said there were "unfortunate incidents" during the march, but he called them a "marginal problem."

Mr Kaczynski added that he believed there could have been a "provocation".

Without specifying who might have tried to bait the marchers, he said: "Those who want to harm Poland know how to do it."

Poland has previously accused Russia of trying to create instability in the country.

​Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the march was "a dangerous march of extreme and racist elements".

"We hope that Polish authorities will act against the organisers," Mr Nahshon said in a statement. "History teaches us that expressions of racist hate must be dealt with swiftly and decisively."

Agnieszka Markiewicz, director of Warsaw office of the American Jewish Committee, a global advocacy group, said the march "was seriously marred by hateful, far-right throngs that threaten the core values of Poland and its standing abroad".

Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside. Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust "The Final Solution": The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks' three point split Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks. Hannah Bills

A small group of rights activists subsequently protested what they said was the authorities' failure to respond properly to the behaviour of the nationalists.

They protested in front of Warsaw city hall and a police station, chanting: "Warsaw free from fascism". One man held a banner saying, "Poland, wake up. Fascism is coming."

However, the Polish President issued the conservative government's strongest condemnation yet of the far-right views expressed at the march earlier this week.

He said "there is no place in Poland" for xenophobia, pathological nationalism and anti-Semitism and that the country must remain a land of open to all who want to come together and work for the good of the nation.