Can it be true that – after endless attempts – Moscow managed to convince Polish President L. Kaczyński to leave historical issues to specialists and not to let the past cast shadows over the current relations between Russia and Poland? This is what one would like to believe in reading the president Kaczyński's letter to Russian President D. Medvedev with an invitation to visit the January 27 celebration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Though critical exchanges are an integral part of politics, endlessly invoking past grievances and exploiting the memories of victims – those of Auschwitz or Katyn – really makes no sense.
In the context of the lessons of Auschwitz, one can't avoid recalling the April, 2007 attempt to capitalize politically on the memory of the victims of the most terrible of the Nazi concentration camps. At that time, the Russian exposition opened in 1961 was closed by the administration and Moscow's admitting to the occupation of Polish territories by the Soviet Union was set as a prerequisite for its reopening. The Polish side said the prisoners who were from West Ukraine and West Belarus, which the USSR got following the signing of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, had to be mentioned as Polish, not Soviet citizens. Poland also insisted on marking up the territories on a map at the memorial which the USSR “annexed” as the result of the Pact and on revising the exhibited statistical data accordingly.
Russia brushed off the demands as an unsavory political gesture. Evidently, Poland sought to make the victims of Auschwitz hostages to unsettled issues in the current relations between Moscow and Warsaw. Wasn't discussing the nationalities of the dead six decades after the tragedy sacrilegious? There are no nationalities in heaven. Any disagreements could be resolved without the public scandal, but certain forces deliberately gave the problem the international status and essentially presented an ultimatum on the occasion.
Though the problems were eventually removed, further developments showed that the situation was deeply rooted. Paying tribute to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives in World War II at the September 1, 2009 mourning assembly of European leaders in Gdansk, President Kaczyński mentioned “a war against German Nazism and Bolshevist totalitarianism”. When Russian Prime Minister V. Putin who attended the ceremony called for overcoming the legacy of mistrust in bilateral relations and rising above the past grievances without imposing visions on each other and for moving on together, his words were simply ignored.
What do we have now? It will be sad if the Polish administration choses to replay the allegations against Russia on January 27. In this case, the inescapable conclusion will be that Warsaw can only see in history what it wants to see at the moment. Fortunately, it is not up to Poland to define the perception of World War II globally. It is not forgotten who and under what circumstances set free the survivors of Auschwitz and dealt the final blow to fascism in Berlin several months afterwards.
Auschwitz-Birkenau (built 70 km away from Krakow) was the largest mass extermination camp in World War II. It received the first trains carrying prisoners in 1940. The complex comprised three camps with the total of over 100,000 prisoners by 1944.
The concentration camp was a site of mass extermination of people, mostly Jews, from Poland, the USSR, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Greece, Holland, Yugoslavia, Norway, Romania, Italy, and Hungary, where the death toll reached at least 1.1 mln. Four crematoriums with gas chambers and two provisional gas chambers were operated at the site. The first experiments with the Zyklon B gas were carried out with Soviet POWs and prisoners unfit for forced labor in the spring of 1942. Initially corpses were buried, and later – burned in crematoriums and special trenches. Prisoners were also subjected to medical experiments.
The Soviet leadership was aware of the existence of the death factory. A September, 1944 letter from Deputy People's Commissar for the Interior S. Kruglov to Deputy Foreign Minister A. Vyshinsky read: “We have been identified and interrogated the captives who knew about the German concentration camp in Auschwitz and the mass extermination of prisoners in it. According to the testimony, the concentration camp in Auschwitz was organized by Germany in 1940 in former military barracks. Initially, the camp was used to concentrate Jews. In 1941-1943 large numbers of Russians, Poles, Frenchmen, and Hollanders were brought to the camp. The testimony revealing mass extermination of prisoners by the Germans, tortures, beatings, etc. characterizes the camp as being similar to Majdanek. Until 1943, Germans burned the corpses of victims in two special furnaces. There were 8 such furnaces in 1943. Thus, the people were exterminated in the camp on a mass scale… Captives say Germans have killed several hundred thousand prisoners at the camp”.
Based on the information, the Red Army Headquarters ordered the forces of the 1st Ukrainian front to liberate Auschwitz as a part of the Vistula-Oder offensive. The 10th Infantry Division led by Gen. F.M. Krasavin liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 and set free the 7,000 camp survivors.
In 1947 the Polish parliament converted the Auschwitz territory into a memorial of the martyrdom of the Polish and other peoples and opened the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum. National expositions set up in various barracks feature documents and personal belongings of prisoners from over 30 countries. In 1979 the museum was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is attended by over 1 mln visitors annually.
A sacrilegious episode attracted the media attention to Auschwitz last December. The sign „Arbeit macht frei“ over the gate of Auschwitz was stolen and cut into three parts. Luckily, the police promptly found the perpetrators and the item was recovered, but the very act demonstrated that for some people the memory of the victims of fascism is no longer sacred. This must be perceived as a signal to peoples and governments to confront historical nihilism. Attempts to distort the past or to erase it from the memory carry the risk that inhumane Nazi experiments on nations such as concentration camps would again become possible. The view was expressed in Moscow last year by the members of The International Auschwitz Committee where historical revisionism was the key theme of discussions. These days, not only individual politicians but also governments and international organizations like the PACE are willing to rewrite the past in accord with their current interests. The truth about millions of victims of Nazism is being concealed, the verdicts of the Nuremberg Trial are called into question, and the Soviet Union is denied credit for the role it played in defeating the fascist Germany and liberating Europe.
Leader of the Israeli center of Holocaust survivors Noah Flug said Jews remember that 65 years ago Majdanek and Auschwitz were liberated by Soviet soldiers and the Red Army. In ghettos and concentration camps, the Red Army was the people's last hope, it saved them, defeated Hitler, and saved Europe. Recently, there has been a tendency to liken the Soviet and the Nazi regimes and to call the epoch of World War II the time of dictatorships – in Flug's words, “this is unacceptable”.
Polish Ambassador to Russia Jerzy Bar pinpointed a paradox which should have attracted broader attention. He said: “Top priority should be given to passing the memories of survivors to the coming generations. The work is being done in Auschwitz, but there is a paradox – greater opportunities are opening to learn the truth, historical studies are published and are available in bookstores, but younger people don't seem to read them. Hopefully, the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz will stimulate interest in the theme among the young generation”.
Absolutely! Now that tribute is paid in Auschwitz to the prisoners who died at the camp and to the Soviet soldiers who were killed taking it, the victims of Nazism are calling: there must be no political games around the memory of the the historical past.
