The Russian Defence Ministry accused Poland’s World War Two Home Army (AK) of exterminating Jews and Ukrainians in Warsaw before the city’s so-called liberation in 1945 by the Red Army. Russia celebrated January 17th as the 75th anniversary of the “liberation day” of Warsaw. Yet the Red Army reached the Vistula river five months earlier August 1944. According to historians, Russians did little to stop Nazi Germans from butchering Poles defending their capital city.
Moscow published a set of online documents deemed “recently declassified” that are supposed to prove that “units of the Home Army exterminated Jews and Ukrainians in the city.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński speaking to Polish Press Agency described the Russian charges as “provocative”. He considers it as a part of the Kremlin’s ongoing campaign to blame Poland for World War Two.
At the end of 2019 Russian leader Vladimir Putin accused Poland of collaboration with the Third Reich and complicity in the outbreak of the war.
Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki commented on the accusations on social media and called them “Orwellian”. He said, that it was the Soviets who were allied with Nazi Germany at the outbreak of the war and invaded Poland from the east shortly after the Germans entered the country from the west.
Mateusz Morawiecki said:
Another “historical revelations” in the Russian style. This time, the Home Army units were to murder Jews and Ukrainians during World War Two.
How much of such nonsense will be produced by those who for dozens of years blamed Nazi Germany for the Soviet crime in Katyń, failed to admit the secret agreements with Hitler in August 1939 as a result of which the partition of Poland was carried out, concealed the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s as a result of which perished over 8 million Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs and other nations that were members of the then Soviet Union?
And it seemed to me that the world of Orwell ended with the collapse of the Communist system. Are we witnessing a great comeback of it? This time “made in Russia”?
Moreover, Polish Prime Minister raised questions for Vladimir Putin to answer:
How did the Soviets justify their imperial zeal?
Here are a few examples and some questions for Mr Putin.
The Soviet Union entered Poland on September 17, 1939, along with Germany, and partitioned Poland. This was justified by the argument that the Polish state did not exist and the Soviet Union had to defend the Ukrainian and Belarusian populations.
And how did the Soviets justified deportations of Poles in 1940? That such people were considered an “uncertain element”, and it was therefore necessary to resettle them. On the other hand, why does Mr Putin fail to mention the hand in hand cooperation of the NKVD and the Gestapo against Poles, joint conferences and meetings of both institutions in the fall of 1939?
Why does Mr Putin not mention the Molotov meeting with Hitler and Ribbentrop in Berlin on November 12-13, 1940, during which the Soviets were offered entry to the Anti-Comintern Pact? What did Molotov say? “Russia’s participation in the three powers pact is quite acceptable,” such reply gave the Soviet Foreign Minister on November 25.
Of course, one can ask further questions, e.g. why for several decades did they fail to admit the genocide of Poles in Katyń, why they did not admit to the genocide of Poles in the 1930s, etc. etc.
These are, of course, rudimentary questions and in the face of obvious facts, it is a shame they even need to be asked. Obvious for history and for us. And what about Russia?