Poles mark anniversary of Soviet invasion

The main commemoration is to be held in the afternoon hours in Warsaw at the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East. It depicts a huge rail car bristling with crosses, to honour an estimated 1.5 million Poles deported or killed by wartime Soviet invaders.

The ceremony is to be attended by the Polish defence minister, Tomasz Siemoniak and the mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz.

On the occasion of the anniversary, historian Andrzej Paczkowski told Polish Radio that the Soviet invasion, which was a consequence of the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, made it impossible for Poland to put up an effective defence against the Germans. Poland, he said, became “virtually defenceless.”

In the wake of the attack, the Soviets captured Polish territories of over 200,000 square kilometres, with a population of 13 million. Some 22,000 Polish officers were taken prisoner and in the spring of 1940 shot on Stalin’s orders in what is known as the Katyn massacre.

Meanwhile, protests continue in Warsaw against plans to bring back to its former location the monument of the Polish-Soviet brotherhood-in-arms, popularly known as the ‘four sleeping soldiers’, which was removed last year due to the construction of the second line of the city’s underground.

A group of Varsovians who claim that as the symbol of the Soviet oppression the monument should be removed from the city today presented a petition to the City Council, with some 10,000 signatures in support of the initiative.

Warsaw councillors representing the opposition Law and Justice say that the monument of the Polish-Soviet brotherhood-in-arms should be replaced by a monument to Captain Witold Pilecki, the ‘volunteer of Auschwitz’, who was murdered by the communists during the Stalinist period. (mk/jb)