Posted on 04/28/2007 1:13:14 PM PDT by lizol
Poland should also remove Soviet monuments - Katyn Committee
21:35 | 28/ 04/ 2007
WARSAW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - The time has come to remove Soviet-era monuments in Poland, a Polish public organization said Saturday echoing the Estonian government's decision to remove the Bronze Soldier statue in central Tallinn.
The Katyn Committee which is made up of relatives of Polish officers, who were executed on the orders of the Soviet authorities in the village of Katyn near Smolensk in western Russia in 1940, said just like Estonia Poland "suffered from the Soviet occupation, while Soviet monuments have always been the symbol of slavery and lies, as well as Russian chauvinism."
"The Katyn Committee expresses solidarity with the sovereign government of Estonia and approves its decision to remove the Soviet monuments, sites of the 'Red' empire," the committee said in a statement Saturday. "We are indignant at Russian official statements threatening to cut off diplomatic ties with Estonia."
The committee said that Soviet monuments were used to popularize the idea of the Soviet Army as a liberator of nations. The organization said it was a shame that millions [of Polish zlotys] of taxpayers' money was still spent annually on the conservation and maintenance in Poland of 2,000 Soviet monuments.
In 1940, a few thousand Polish officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland were executed by NKVD officers, the forerunner for the KGB. The Soviet Union admitted the massacre in 1990.
I say keep the monuments as a reminder: “Never Again.”
Amazing the Soviets keep bitching about this.
East Germany wasn’t dead but a day or two and Lenin and his ilk came tumbling down.
I can’t imagine what it would be like for Poles, Estonians, etc., to wake-up and drive to work everyday seeing monuments to your ex-slavemasters everywhere.
No one is bitching about the statues of Lenin, etc.
There are still monuments to fallen Soviet soldiers in Germany and no talk of removing them.
If Poland decides to dig up the remains of the dead Russian soldiers, Russia should ask them to be returned and then in turn dig up and return all of the Katyn graves.
I doubt that there is any Lenin’s monument standing in a public place in Poland, monuments of “liberators” are usually forgotten, sometimes moved to shitty locations, but there’s still plenty of them.
There is a big difference between Soviet monuments, located in important sites of Polish cities, and military cemeteries.
Is anyone talking about digging up the remains of the dead Russian soldiers?
"Is anyone talking about digging up the remains of the dead Russian soldiers?"Thanks for qualifying. I do not know if everyone makes that same distinction.
Every one of these monuments should be removed, unless they’re in a military cemetery. It’s disgraceful that they are still standing in Poland, of all places. They should also be torn down in Germany and everywhere else in Europe.
Like in the middle of Berlin.
In theaters this coming September. Great! I hope they have English subtitles and make it available on cd. Isn’t there also one coming on the 1944 uprising?
The trailer of the movie looks great.
Hi Par35!
I would think the freeper above trying to compare Russia vs Poland to Russia vs Germany would be a little off.
Russia and Germany had a long history of killing each other and then making dirty deals on the side, specifically against Poland. Russia and Germany sided to divide Poland between them. Of course then there is the deal made by the Allies giving Poland to Russia at war’s end. Poland suffered some pretty raw deals and she is still our best ally.
I would be in favor of Poland ridding itself of anything related to the Soviets.
FYI- the Thomasville Rose festival is this weekend and the Bluegrass festival in Ochlocknee is next week. Don’t you miss it here? :-)
The Estonians will support Poland in this! The Soviet regime was criminal.
We may get over that way sometime this summer. We made a quick trip to the coast over spring break (over through Tallahassee, back through Columbus), but we didn’t have time to make the swing along US 84. (Given the condition of I-10, it probably wouldn’t have slowed us down much.)
I was more of a Mule Day fan myself. Do they still have that in the fall?
Wajda already did one on the Uprising years ago, “Kanal.”
I've been to that one - twice. One time there I asked a group of about six school kids, maybe 7 or 8yo, to stand next to me and have my picture taken. Regs had us in Class A uniform.
Next thing I know their teacher is flying toward us, screaming at the kids and hurrying them off.
I asked my buddy, a German linguist, what she said and basically it was something akin to, "How dare you have your picture taken with a capitalist pig!".
Eight years old ....
This is exactly what those idiots in Tallinn started to do. I saw it on TV yesterday. Just imagine the "party" here in FR, if the French would dig out the remains of fallen US-soldiers to remove them "with dignity" into a "shitty" location near the garbage dump of the town. In France the contemporary US policy isn't really respected either but nobody would ever think about that.
It is a matter of civilization and culture to handle the remains of fallen soldiers with respect. No matter if they are from Russia or not. The Russians were those who fought down the nazi beast. Period. It was not England or America that were really decisive. Hitler lost his fu**ing war in the Russian space (and winter) and because of the resistance of those countries that he had occupied. It is indeed true that Stalin was as worse as Hitler. Nevertheless this fact does not give anybody the right to handle with the remains of Russian soldiers inappropriate. Most of those Russian boys died a heroic death to defend their country (and many other nations). I am sure that they did not think about comrade Stalin when they were shot.
Therefore it is pure idiocy to remove Russian bones/tombs. I also understand that the Ests hate everything that is Russian. A large part of them fought side by side with the SS and Wehrmacht against the Red Army until 1945 after they made their first experience with the Red Army in 1939/40 (that invaded the country at that time). They adopted national socialism as good as they could and after 1945 the Russians made them pay a really high price for that. It is good that they are free today, but their freedom should not make them drunk. They have to deal with the realities of a strong Russian minority and a strong Russian neighbour. Therefore they have to arrange themselves with the realities.
The realities are:
1. We need the Russians for energy.
2. Membership in the civilisation (i.e. EU) should make members behave civilized.
3. They have to solve their problem with the Russian minority.
4. Nobody in western Europe want to invest time into graves in Estonia.
Last but not least: We Germans also where able to arrange ourselves with the Russian monument in Berlin. Why can't the Ests arrange themselves?
“Membership in the civilisation (i.e. EU)”
You should get into your arrogant mind that “homo marriages” and other such “goodies” are not the essence of civilization.
Polish interpretation of history is no doubt different then the one in Estonia, but If we had been them, we would have blown up that thing long time ago.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.