Stand up to Russia, Polish PM urges Europe

Putin accused of rewriting Second World War history in bid to isolate Warsaw from its Western allies

POLAND’S prime minister has appealed for Europe to stand up to Russia in a bitter row over the origins of the start of the Second World War, 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 The Sunday Telegraph. “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.”

Mr 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 Nazism, 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 on Thursday on account of Mr Putin being given the chance to speak while he was denied. Mr Duda will speak on Tuesday at a memorial event at Auschwitz itself.

Mr 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 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939.

When Soviet forces invaded Poland the following month they annexed large swathes of its territory and committed a series of massacres, most notoriously the execution of more than 20,000 Polish army officers in the forests of Katyn.

Mr Morawiecki said the Russian president had lied repeatedly about Poland and claimed that the Soviet Union could have liberated Auschwitz earlier than January 1945.

Mr Duda’s call for European solidarunder debris. Mr Koca said 128 people were receiving hospital treatment and 34 of them were in intensive care, but not in critical condition.

Rescue teams worked through the night with hands, drills and mechanical diggers in collapsed buildings in Elazig, where the overnight temperature dipped to -8C (17.6F).

“Our houses collapsed … we cannot go inside them,” said a 32-year-old man from Sivrice, epicentre of the quake. “In our village some people lost their lives. Our animals died. Our families gathered around the fire to spend the night, covered with blankets.”

AFAD warned residents not to return to damaged buildings for fear of further aftershocks. It said beds, blankets and tents were being sent. ity may reflect a Polish desire to avoid being isolated by Russian policy toward Poland. However, the Polish government itself faces allegations that it, too, is rewriting history by glossing over Polish collaboration in the Nazi “final solution”.

In 2018 the country sparked outrage when it made it illegal to attribute Nazi crimes to Poland.

Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry, said that Mr Morawiecki’s comments were “another criminal attempt to rewrite the history of the Second World War.”