Poland Marks 1939 Red Army Invasion

[henryk]

http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/18182 ... sion[quote]
Poland marks 1939 Red Army invasion
PR dla Zagranicy Peter Gentle 17.09.2014 14:30
Events have been held in many Polish towns and cities to commemorate the 75h anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the beginning of WWII.
President Komorowski unveils huge epitaph to over 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Stalinist secret service, known as the Katyn Massacre': photo - PAP/Jacek Turczyk
At 3.30 am on 17 September 1939, the Polish ambassador in Moscow was handed a note, in which Moscow announced that the Polish state had ceased to exist. In the wake of the Soviet invasion, mass arrests and deportations were carried out. By June 1941 over one a half million Poles were herded into trains, to work as slaves and forced labourers near the Arctic Circle and in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
In Poland, the invasion has often been described as a ‘stab in the back’, which Poland received from the Soviet Union seventeen days after the Nazi attack and less than a month after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
In Warsaw on Wednesday, President Bronislaw Komorowski unveiled the Katyn Epitaph – the first batch of plaques with the names of over 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Soviet NKVD police in 1940. The epitaph is located in the Warsaw Citadel, the site of a future Katyn Museum, now under construction. President Komorowski described the search for the truth about Katyń and the memory of that tragedy as one of the most important foundations of a free Poland. Komorowski admitted that the efforts to gain access to all documents relating to the Katyn massacre possessed by Moscow have failed.
President of the Institute of National Remembrance Łukasz Kamiński has told Polish Radio that the Polish nation has to preserve the memory of its plight under the Soviet occupation. “World War Two and the Katyń massacre of 1940 are the cornerstones of the nation’s collective memory,” he said, adding that Poland needs a museum dedicated to the Katyń crime. Lukasz Kaminski also stressed that for the past few years Moscow has been pursuing an aggressive propaganda in regards to Soviet policy during WWII, resorting to Stalinist lies including claims that the Soviet invasion of 75 years ago was undertaken to protect the Ukrainian and Byelorussian minorities in Poland’s eastern territories. (mk/pg) [/quote]
Note that the Katyn Museum was originally located at Fort IX Czerniaków.
http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/ ... ote]Poland marks 75th anniversary of Soviet invasion

September 18, 2014
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski
During an official ceremony Wednesday to mark the 75th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Red Army at the start of World War II Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski unveiled, in the Warsaw Citadel, the future site of Katyn Museum, a memorial plaque commemorating victims of Stalin's secret police (NKVD).

On Sept. 17, 1939, despite a Polish-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1932, the Red Army marched into then-eastern Poland, now in Ukraine. The Soviet Union acted on a secret pact reached with Nazi Germany in late August 1939 which agreed that the whole of Poland would be divided and annexed by the two countries.

One of the most painful episodes connected with the Soviet invasion was, in the spring of 1940, the killing, by NKVD, of some 22,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals in Katyn, western Russia, in an attempt to eliminate a swath of the country's elite.Victims were shot in the head from behind, and shoved into mass graves.

Soviet Russia only admitted to the atrocity in April 1990 after blaming the Nazi Germany for five decades.

Unearthing the truth about the 1940 Katyn Massacre was a major fundament of free Poland, President Komorowski said during the ceremony. It constituted "an essential experience of importance both for building a new Polish identity based on knowledge and tradition, and for the triumph of Poland's freedom expressed in the disclosure of the truth about the Katyn killings and a whole array of matters connected with September 17, 1939", Komorowski said.

Zbigniew Wawer, head of the Polish Military Museum whose branch the future Katyn Museum will be, called the Katyn executions "a Polish national hecatomb" and stressed that the killings would never have taken place without the Soviets' invasion of Poland.

Also on Wednesday in Strasbourg MEPs from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania signed a declaration commemorating the Soviet Union's aggression against the countries of Central Europe. The MEPs appealed for a halt to "the relativization of the Soviet Union's evil" and reminded that the Soviets' pact with Nazi Germany made them co-responsible for the outbreak of WWII.
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[henryk]

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 165&type=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOlRSOH ... detailpage
Commemoration at the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East in Warsaw.

[henryk]

https://eureconciliation.wordpress.com/ ... amentarium Museum Will Add Content Illustrating Soviet Aggression
March 20, 2014

In response to a letter sent by MEPs Sandra Kalniete (Latvia), Doris Pack (Germany), Jacek Protasiewicz (Poland), Tunne Kelam (Estonia), Vytautas Landsbergis (Lithuania), and Monica Macovei (Romania) the Parliamentarium Museum will add content illustrating Soviet aggression.

In their letter sent on May 22nd 2013, MEPs expressed their concern that the museum of the European Parliament did not adequately address the role of the Soviet Union in starting World War Two and their perpetration of grave crimes against humanity. “While the Parlamentarium museum addresses the grave atrocities committed by the Nazi Regime and Nazi Germany’s role as aggressor in World War Two, we find it disheartening that similar acts committed by the Soviet Union and their role as ally of Nazi Germany and co-aggressor at the start of the war are not mentioned.”

After reviewing the content, the Directorate General for Communication of the Parliamentarium Unit has confirmed that the section addressing the history before the European Union will be revised. Currently consultation is taking place with museums dedicated to Soviet crimes in order to select the most appropriate images. As the content has been confirmed we will update this article.
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