The opening ceremony was attended by deputy speaker of the Polish Sejm (lower house of Parliament) Małgorzata Gosiewska and Ruslan Stefanchuk, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada - Supreme Council), who came up with the idea for the event.
Entitled Warsaw-Mariupol – cities of ruins, cities of struggle, cities of hope, the exhibition shows the similarities between the two totalitarian regimes, the German regime in World War Two and the Russian regime of our time. It documents the aftermath of the atrocities committed by the Nazi Germany during the Warsaw Rising of 1944 and of the destruction of Mariupol and its environs by the Russian invaders in 2022.
Gosiewska said that the exhibition should be an eye-opener for many people, and even cause a shock so that the on-going war is not forgotten. She added that ‘what we see in the photographs are the war crimes and the murder of civilians’ .
Poland’s parliamentary leader stressed that the exhibition also carries a message of hope that ‘like Warsaw, doomed for annihilation on Hitler’s orders, raised from the ashes, Ukrainian cities, too, will rise to a new life’.
Friday is day 583 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, launching the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II.
(mk/pm)