The incident took place Tuesday afternoon near the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament, where the ROG members tried to carry a large wooden cross to a temporary memorial honoring Polish victims of World War II and Germany’s occupation of Poland.
Berlin police said about 15 people in fluorescent vests gathered shortly before 4 p.m. with banners and the cross. Officers barred them from marching together to the Polish memorial, the police said in a statement.
Police said the group was offered, through an interpreter, the option of holding a gathering in a nearby sculpture park or going to the memorial individually.
“When the group nevertheless moved together toward the memorial with the cross and banners, police officers applied measures restricting the liberty of six people,” Berlin police said. “Since resistance was offered, our intervention forces also used direct coercive measures.”
All six were released at the scene after police procedures were completed.
Video footage posted on social media later Tuesday showed scuffles between German police and members of the group.
Some activists, including ROG leader Robert Bąkiewicz, were restrained, handcuffed, and temporarily detained.
Maciej Wewiór, spokesman for Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said a Polish consul was dealing with the matter in Berlin.
“Our consul is on site and is acting, currently establishing the circumstances of the incident and the reasons for the detention,” Wewiór wrote on X.
Before the intervention, Bąkiewicz, a figure associated with Poland’s far-right nationalist scene, said in a video posted on X that the activists were not holding a public assembly. He said they wanted to pray at the memorial and place a cross and plaques there referring to German crimes during World War II.
He also appealed to the Polish embassy in Berlin to help negotiate with German police, saying he feared officers might use force.
The incident also drew reaction in Warsaw. Several dozen supporters of ROG and people linked to TV Republika, a conservative Polish television station, gathered outside the German embassy on Tuesday evening.
Several Law and Justice (PiS) politicians then went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying they intended to carry out a parliamentary inspection. The ministry building was already closed.
The temporary memorial, called the Stone of Remembrance, stands about 300 meters from the Reichstag, at the site of the former Kroll Opera House. Adolf Hitler announced Germany’s attack on Poland there on September 1, 1939, marking the start of World War II.
Germany’s parliament voted in December to build a permanent memorial to Polish victims of World War II at the same location.
For years, Polish officials have argued that such a memorial in central Berlin is important for Polish-German relations and for public recognition of the suffering of Polish citizens under Nazi occupation.
Knut Abraham, the German government’s commissioner for cooperation with Poland, has said the permanent memorial is likely to be completed in 2028, depending on its final form and materials.
The incident came as Poland and Germany were preparing to sign a defense cooperation agreement in Warsaw.
The agreement, to be signed by Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, is expected to cover joint exercises and military mobility, but not the kind of security guarantees included in Poland’s recent treaties with France and the United Kingdom.
The Border Defense Movement is an informal right-wing group, whose public actions focus on border control, migration, and Polish historical memory.
(rt)
Source: IAR, PAP