Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-137"
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"en.20050511.16.3-137"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Second World War began in September 1939 when my country, Poland, was invaded and occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union. This partition of Poland came about as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had been signed a week earlier in Moscow. Poland was not conquered by the fighting squads of the Nazi or Communist parties, but by the regular armed forces of its neighbours, or in other words by the German
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and by the Red Army. It should be added that the National Socialist Party, with Chancellor Hitler at its head, ruled over Germany at the time, having come to power on the basis of a democratic decision by the German electorate. Stalin and the Communist Party governed Russia, having been swept to power by the revolution.
We are currently celebrating the 60th anniversary of Germany’s capitulation, which took place on 8 May 1945 and has come to symbolise the end of the wrongful acts committed by Nazi Germany in the occupied countries. Yet it did not mean the end of the wrongdoing that began with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland in 1939. We won the war against Germany, but we lost the war against Russia. This meant that a foreign power, a foreign economic system and a foreign ideology were forced upon us.
We fought on all fronts in the Second World War, and we were there when the first and last shots were fired. As of 1941, our allies in the war against Germany included the Soviet Union. We acknowledge the role played by Russia in defeating Nazi Germany and the huge loss of life the country suffered in the process. Yet this does not alter the fact that Russia acted as though it had conquered Poland. What is more, our Western allies in the fight against Germany were also allies of the Soviet Union, and gave their consent to our enslavement in Yalta. We were forced to liberate ourselves little by little, firstly by decollectivising agriculture, then by setting free the Church, then by gaining acceptance for small and private businesses and finally by achieving the freedom to form trade unions, as well as freedom of speech and political freedom.
The only help we received from the rest of the world in this process came by way of the arms race, which was won over time by the USA, and, in particular, through the success of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ programme, which weakened the Soviet Union. The presence of American troops in Europe and the existence of NATO meant that Western Europe has been able to enjoy peace for the past 60 years. Now the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which are either members of NATO or have formed partnerships for peace, are also reaping the benefits. Each and every one of us shares a desire for peace and freedom, and for a future shaped according to our wishes.
The members of my generation, who experienced the Second World War at first hand, will not be with us for much longer, and we must ensure that future generations remember the truth about this war. We Poles find it a source of great distress that so many Western media outlets continue to use phrases that we find insulting, such as ‘Polish concentration camps’, or even ‘Polish gas chambers and crematoria’, which was how the British
had the temerity to refer to them in print. It is the case that some of these factories of death were located on Polish territory, but the fact remains that they were German, not Polish. Not all Germans bear the responsibility for such things, and we acknowledge that the German nation has distanced itself from its shameful Nazi legacy, but we are keen to ensure that future generations do not associate Poland with the crimes committed by the Nazis, as Poland was not responsible for them.
Similarly, the Russian people are not responsible for the crimes committed during the Stalin era, or in other words for the deportations, the gulags, the genocide that was committed in Katyn and the subjugation of Central and Eastern Europe. It was the Communist leaders of the Soviet state that were responsible for these crimes, and the Russians themselves also suffered enslavement. We wish to be reconciled with the Russian people and state, but we expect them to distance themselves unequivocally from their Communist legacy. The current leaders of Germany and Russia, or in other words the countries that started the Second World War, however, have given a joint interview to the German newspaper
in which they attempt to divert attention away from anything other than their mutual relations and the losses they suffered.
We are currently seeking to establish neighbourly relations with both Germany and Russia. As long ago as 1961, the Polish bishops sent a famous letter to the German bishops, which included the phrase; ‘we forgive and ask forgiveness’. We take the same approach to our current relations with Russia, yet forgiveness and reconciliation do not mean that we should forget. We would therefore call for there never again to be a repeat of such things as genocide, the subjugation of one nation by another, aggression and war."@en1
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