Poland Marks Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes
Poland marked the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, on Sunday, August 23, the anniversary of the signing of the infamous 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.
"Eighty-one years ago, in Moscow, a diabolic and barbarian alliance of the two most anti-human systems was forged. It was a pact of a totalitarian anti-civilisation against human dignity and freedom. Against the lives of millions of innocent people," Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
"The Germans and Soviets, the Nazis and the Communists, the brown and red totalitarianisms, decided to divide between them Poland, Central and Eastern Europe and South-Eastern Europe," Morawiecki wrote.
"Our Homeland was to be the first victim of the now straightforward alliance. The nations and countries of the whole of Europe, and in time the rest of the world, were to become the next victims," the Polish PM went on to say.
Deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Glinski said on Twitter that this anniversary was marked by a 'Remember: August 23' social campaign organised by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity.
The anniversary is also called the Black Ribbon Day as people are encouraged to pin a black ribbon to honour victims of totalitarianism.
"The action 'Remember: August 23' aims to shed more light on the history of people who were wronged by totalitarian regimes, Communism or Nazism. This year its heroes are Milada Horakova and Kazimierz Moczarski," the Ministry of Culture wrote on its website.
The ministry recalled that on August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a treaty that "opened the gate to the Second World War and all its consequences, including concentration camps, crematoria and gulags, and then the long years of the Cold War, which for many societies of Central and Eastern Europe meant further enslavement."
The ministry noted that the ENRS every year gets involved in ceremonies marking the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, trying to present the lives of individuals that suffered violence and persecution in the name of criminal ideologies.
This year's campaign hero Milada Horakova was a Czech politician and member of the underground during WWII. After a show trial, she was sentenced to death on June 8, 1950, along with three of her co-defendants.
Kazimierz Moczarski was a journalist, writer and member of the Polish underground during WWII. He was the author of the famous book Conversations with an Executioner, based upon his conversations with German SS commander Jürgen Stroop, the person responsible for the liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, with whom he was imprisoned to break his will.
Moczarski was sentenced by the communists first to 10 years in prison and then to death. After Stalin's death, his sentence was changed to life imprisonment, but he was not told about the fact for two and a half years. He was released from prison in 1956 and rehabilitated.
Signed on August 23, 1939, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, also known as the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact or Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, defined Soviet and German interests in Europe and formed the basis of Poland's invasion by Germany on September 1, 1939, and by the Soviets on the 17th of the same month. (PAP)
