A memorial site with tombs of Polish World War Two Home Army (AK) soldiers in north-western Belarus is being levelled to the ground by the Minsk regime services, Lukasz Jasina, a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Thursday.
“The regime will pay for these acts of barbarity,” Jasina wrote on Twitter.
Cmentarz żołnierzy AK w Surkontach jest dewastowany przez służby mińskiego reżimu. Mylą się bardzo ci co myślą, że uda się wykorzenić ludzką pamięć o bohaterach. Reżim zapłaci za te akty barbarzyństwa. https://t.co/1y4g5ydGlt
— Łukasz Jasina (@RzecznikMSZ) August 25, 2022
Earlier in the day, Jasina said that Poland was seeking to verify a report by Belarusian journalist Tadeusz Giczan, who wrote that the memorial site in the village of Surokonty was being destroyed.
“The residents of Surokonty, a village in north-western Belarus, claim that police have arrived at the memorial site, and that heavy equipment has already started levelling the tombs of AK soldiers,” Giczan wrote on Twitter.
Residents of the village of Surkonty in north-western Belarus say that police and heavy machinery have arrived and started demolishing the graves of the Polish Home Army soldiers. If confirmed, this will be the largest Polish military cemetery destroyed by Belarus to date. pic.twitter.com/ubwYdwNz3u
— Tadeusz Giczan (@TadeuszGiczan) August 25, 2022
“If this information is confirmed, this will be the largest Polish military cemetery destroyed by Belarus,” he added.
The same information was also published on Thursday by the Glos znad Niemna (Info from the River Neman) website, which wrote that everything looked like a special operation.
“The roads leading to the site, where the act of barbarity has been taking place, have been blocked by militia. Outraged local residents trying to film or photo the incident have been threatened with prison terms,” the website wrote, explaining why it had been impossible to publish a photo of this “beastly act.”
Thirty-five AK soldiers who died during a battle against NKVD Soviet forces on Aug. 21, 1944, are buried there.
Belarusian authorities had earlier destroyed a Polish World War Two memorial in the western village of Mikulishki. The memorial consisted of the remains of the wartime headquarters of an AK unit whose members died in combat in the area in 1944. A collective tomb of AK soldiers has also been levelled to the ground in Stryjowka, north-western Belarus.
The Home Army was the main resistance movement in Poland during World War Two.