Help us stand up to Russia, pleads Polish PM
Poland’s prime minister has appealed for Europe to stand up to Russia in a bitter row over the origins of the start of World War II, saying it has a duty to protect the ‘‘historical truth’’.
It has cast a shadow over events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s most infamous death camp, by Soviet forces on Jan 27, 1945.
‘‘We abide by one key principle – always stick to the facts and protect the historical truth,’’ Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s premier, told
‘‘It is our duty, as Poland is custodian of the Holocaust and Second World War history. These atrocities happened on our soil occupied by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
‘‘But it is also a European duty, as the EU has risen out of the post-war ashes – 75 years on we still need to remind people of these tragedies.’’
Morawiecki’s comments are the latest in a row triggered last month when Vladimir Putin suggested Poland bore some responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1939. Portraying Russia as the saviour of Europe from Naziism, the Russian president cast Poland as much a perpetrator as it was victim of the Nazi extermination campaign, noting that a Polish diplomat in Berlin had lauded the programme at the time.
The resulting furore put the Kremlin and Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice government at loggerheads and prompted Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, to boycott a Holocaust forum in Jerusalem last week on account of Putin being given the chance to speak while he was denied. Duda will speak on Wednesday at a memorial event at Auschwitz itself.
Putin’s words provoked outrage in Poland, where it was seen as a blatant attempt to whitewash over Soviet collusion with Nazi Germany – the revisionist narrative glossing over the fact that the Soviet Union helped Hitler wipe Poland off the map of Europe following the signing of the MolotovRibbentrop Pact in August 1939.
When Soviet forces invaded Poland the following September it annexed large swathes of its territory, committing a series of massacres, most notoriously the execution of more than 20,000 Polish army officers in the forests of Katyn. Morawiecki said the Russian president lied repeatedly about Poland and claimed the Soviet Union could have liberated Auschwitz earlier than January 1945. Duda’s call for European solidarity may reflect a Polish desire to avoid being isolated by Russian policy toward Poland.