The 51st sitting of the Sejm began yesterday, during which a bill titled “on redress for victims and the families of victims of crimes committed on national, religious, or racial grounds in the years 1945–1946” was debated. The proposals put forward by the Left have sparked outrage, while Law and Justice (PiS) has moved to reject the bill.
The bill’s justification was presented by New Left MP Anna Maria Żukowska. The representative of Włodzimierz Czarzasty’s party compared a soldier of the Polish anti-communist independence underground, Romuald Rajs (nom de guerre “Bury”), to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. She described both as perpetrators of genocide. Żukowska argued that the bill was a matter of justice.
A representative of Law and Justice also took the floor, stating that the PiS parliamentary club had submitted a motion to reject the bill at its first reading. According to Marek Ast, the bill is anti-Polish, undermines the national interest, the memory of the “Cursed Soldiers,” and historical truth.
“The language used both by the MP and in the bill’s justification makes me feel as if I have been transported back to a bygone time,”
Ast said.
The MP added that, at that time, those fighting the occupier were called “spittle-covered dwarfs of reaction” or “bandits.” This, he explained, was meant to dehumanize Polish soldiers.
In May 1945, a Home Army (AK) unit broke up a concentration camp organized by the NKVD for AK soldiers. They managed to free 500 to 600 soldiers. The rest were killed or deported to Siberia.
“That is why I would like to read a fragment of the justification for this bill. This law grants veteran status to persons who, as a result of the actions of independence formations, suffered death or injury on national, religious, or racial grounds,”
argued PiS MP Piotr Król.
“Reading this bill, it turns out that NKVD soldiers can now turn to the Polish state for compensation, and UPA bandits can turn to the Polish state for compensation. (…) This bill is the most anti-Polish libel that has appeared since 1990,”
Król said.