Posted on 05/08/2005 8:27:18 AM PDT by lizol
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 Poland’s 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 Wroc³aw yesterday, president Kwaœniewski 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 Katyñ Forest among a long list of Stalinist crimes and called it ‘an unhealed wound’ in Polish Russian relations.
Sad that the leaders of Hungary and the Czech Republic don't have the same guts as the Poles right now.
Well, Vaclav Havel has the guts, but he's in retirement now. Another day there was a posting about some open letter on the subject, signed by Havel and others. I have been looking for the link, and could not find it.
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