“On January 27, 1945, Soviet soldiers liberated the German Nazi death camp KL Auschwitz,” Andrzej Duda said in a message posted on his website on Thursday.
“What they found there continues to sow terror and elicit unequivocal moral condemnation to this day,” he added.
Auschwitz was where more than 1 million Jews and thousands of victims of other nationalities were murdered, including Poles, Roma, Sinti, and prisoners of war from the Red Army, Duda noted.
He added that “the same fate was shared by millions of Jews murdered in other German Nazi death camps: Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Kulmhof, Stutthof and dozens of others.”
“We must forge the future of the world based on a profound understanding of what happened more than 75 years ago in the heart of Europe, and what eyewitnesses continue to relate to us,” Duda said.
He stressed that “the last, decisive step leading towards World War II, the war without which there would have been no tragedy of the Holocaust, was the secret pact between Hitler and Stalin of August 23, 1939.”
“The truth about the Holocaust must not die,” Duda said in his message. “It must not be distorted or used for any purpose.”
The Polish leader also said that German Nazi concentration camps built in occupied Poland stand in "stark contrast" with his country’s "one thousand years’ long culture and history, with the Polish spirit of freedom, tolerance and solidarity."
The genocide of Jews, “albeit perpetrated almost all across war-time Europe, came as a particularly heavy blow to the Polish state, which was for centuries multinational and multi-confessional,” Duda said.
He added that the history of Jews in Poland and their annihilated world is now being retold through publications and scientific conferences, festivals, exhibitions, concerts and monuments, sponsored by state scientific and cultural institutions such as museums, theatres, archives and libraries.
"Gradually, Jewish religious communities, community organisations, publishing houses and magazines are being brought back to life," he argued.
"We support these actions, because German Nazism cannot have the final say in the narrative of the Polish Jews and their martyrdom," Duda said.
He added that the “commemoration of the tragedy of the Shoah should be an important and lasting element in education for peace – as a story that sinks deeply into human hearts, bringing down barriers of prejudice, division and hatred.
“It should be a lesson about how to show understanding and help those who are hardest hit by adversity.”
Duda also said in his message that “on the 75th anniversary of the symbolic end of the extermination,” during ceremonies on January 27 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum in southern Poland, where the ashes of more than 1 million Holocaust victims are buried, world leaders “will bear witness to the truth.”
“Together we will call for peace, justice and respect between nations,” the Polish president said.
(gs)
Source: president.pl