President: We, Poles, have the right to know the truth
At 15:00 at Westerplatte, Gdańsk, the international part of the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War began. Prime ministers from twenty states participated in the commemorations, including the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Polish President, Lech Kaczyński, and Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, also took part in the ceremony.
Before the commemorations officially began, the participants placed a wreath at the Cemetery of Defenders of Westerplatte and lit blue cemetery candles there.
President Lech Kaczyński and the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, each delivered a speech at the Defenders of the Polish Coast Monument. An appeal in memory was read and then Donald Tusk, Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel delivered their speeches, followed by the prime ministers of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, and France, François Fillon. Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Prime Minister of Sweden – the country presiding the European Union in this half year – also spoke.
“Two generations have passed but the Second World War still requires reflection; Poland’s participation in the reduction of territory of Czechoslovakia was not only a mistake – it was a sin, and Poland can admit as much,” Lech Kaczyński said.
The President emphasised that totalitarianism and nationalism, chauvinism even, were the causes of WWII. “I am as certain of this statement,” he added, “as I am of the fact that the order established by the Treaty of Versailles was the first attempt at maintaining peace both in Europe and in the world, even if it did not last.”
“The Treaty of Versailles, signed after the First World War,” the President continued, “confirmed the independence of Poland and countries such as Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, also acknowledging the independence of nations and the rights of minorities.”
“The order established by the Treaty,” Lech Kaczyński said, “proved to be impermanent for numerous complex reasons. The first reason was the emergence of totalitarian political systems and, most importantly, the rise of the Third Reich which propagated an aggressive and vengeful ideology, opposing the achievements of European civilisation with its Nazism.”
The President said that, between 1933 and 1938, there were attempts, on the part of Western states such as France and Great Britain, at parleying with this totalitarian state. “Poland,” Lech Kaczyński said, “proposed, as early as in autumn 1933, that a preventive war be started but this was to no avail. The situation being as it was, we concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany and then also with the USSR.”
According to the President, a non-aggression pact was a necessity then and it is by no means comparable to the Russian-German Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23rd August 1939. “A policy of concession,” Lech Kaczyński claimed, “eventually led to the Anschluss and then to the Munich Agreement.”
The President added that “Winston Churchill was right in saying that a choice was made in Munich between war and dishonour; dishonour was chosen but there was war anyway.” “A question of the role of our country appears here. We were not present in Munich but the Agreement resulted in the violation of the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia – and such a thing is always evil,” Lech Kaczyński said.
“Totalitarianism,” he spoke, “is not the problem here – the problem lies in all imperialistic and neo-imperialistic tendencies.” “We have learnt that last year,” he added.
“Taking part in the partition of Czechoslovakia, in reducing its territory, was not only a mistake – it was a sin. We, Poles, can admit that and we seek no excuses to justify it, even if there were any such excuses to be found,” the President said. He added that we have to draw conclusions from the Munich Agreement and apply them to the present. “We must not yield to imperialism,” Lech Kaczyński said.
The war which started in 1939, in his opinion, was disastrous for our country. “Five and a half million Polish and Jewish people, even up to 5 million 800 thousand, perished in the war,” Lech Kaczyński reminded, drawing the attention of the audience to the Holocaust. He remarked that the citizens of Poland who perished were only a part of the 50 million victims of the war worldwide.
“But,” he emphasised, “there were also ‘other crimes’ committed before the war between Russia and Germany began. We must devote a moment’s reflection to Katyń – not only because of the facts, with which we are familiar today, but also because of the causes. Why did several thousands of Polish policemen, soldiers and border guards suffer such fate?” the President asked.
In his opinion, it was because of revenge. “This was a revenge for the year 1920, for the fact that Poland managed to repulse the aggression then,” he said. In his opinion, it was “not communism but chauvinism,” which, at that time, “was a characteristic feature of this political system.”