Auschwitz survivors support Holocaust education center

From Radio Polonia
May 9, 2005

More than 150 former prisoners of the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz have signed a document founding the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.

They urged historians and educators to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust. The Centre will cooperate with the Jerusalem-based Holocaust Memorial Centre and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Polish foreign minister at the UN: we need truth in talking about the end of WWII

Poland's foreign minister Adam Rotfeld has addressed the UN General Assembly session in tribute to the victims of World War Two.

He called for revealing the whole truth about the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He recalled the losses which Poland suffered during and in the aftermath of World War Two and stressed that the end of the war meant a significant loss of sovereignty for Poland.

Rotfeld told the UN General Assembly that Poland wants to shape good relations with all its neighbours on the basis of historical truth..

Polish church prepares to face its past
May 10, 2005

10050. Polish church prepares to face the past. Bishop of the south-western Wroclaw diocese decided to form a commission which will investigate the involvement of local priests with the communist secret services. This is the third such commission after those formed by Lublin and Warsaw-Praga bishops over last year. Historians claim that 10 to 15% of priest and laymen who took an active part in life of the Church were agents of secret services. A large part of the services’ archives was destroyed in 1990 but some survived and are currently held by the Institute of National Remembrance.

Poland's Katyń Committee describes Moscow celebrations as 'a spectacle of lies'
May 9, 2005
Families of the victims of the Katyń massacre have protested in front of the Russian Embassy in Warsaw.

The head of the Katyń Committee described today's celebrations in Moscow as a ęspectacle of liesę.

The protesters say Polish-Russian relations should be based on truth. They urged Russia to acknowledge the Katyń massacre of Polish officers as a crime against humanity.

Polish president pays tribute to victims of Stalinism
08.05.2005

President Kwasniewski has opened a visit to Moscow. A day ahead of the main ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, he has visited a cemetary where victims of Soviet political repression between 1945 and 53 are buried. The cemetary also contains the symbolic tombs of the leaders of Polandąs non-communist wartime resistance who were later jailed in Moscow. The Polish president also laid a wreath at a monument to the victims of Stalinism sited outside the headquarters of the former KGB.
In a speech in the Polish city of Wrocław yesterday, president Kwaśniewski recalled that the day of victory did not have in Poland the same clear colours as in London or Paris. The end of the war did not bring a return to sovereignty. He said that the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union led to 'the fourth partition of Poland'. He included the massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyń Forest among a long list of Stalinist crimes and called it 'an unhealed wound' in Polish Russian relations.