The European Parliament has adopted a resolution which says that the end of World War Two did not bring freedom and liberation to all countries.
Polish MEPs were among the initiators of the debate on the outcome of World War Two. The Moscow ceremonies earlier this week proved to be a big propaganda exercise extolling Soviet power and projecting the Soviet interpretation of the events of fifty years ago, in which there is no mention of course of the post-war Soviet domination in Poland and other satellite countries. In view of this the debate in the European Parliament in which German MEPs spoke of the Katyn massacre of Polish officers as the symbol of the Soviet annihilation of Polish intelligentsia was of great importance. The wording of the resolution itself is, naturally, a compromise but, according to Polish deputy Janusz Onyszkiewicz, it is a compromise which Poland may be happy about.
The resolution fails to mention the 1939 Ribbentrop Molotov Pact, which was, in effect, the fourth partition of Poland, paving the way for the attacks on Poland by both Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia.
There may be considerable differences in the perception of history by various European countries but according to Janusz Lewandowski the notion of historical policy, stressed by Poland so much, should be promoted for the sake of truth.
In a week when President Putin of Russia trumpeted the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany, the voice of the European Parliament which stresses that the victory in 1945 led to divisions that were overcome only with the fall of communism is of great importance.
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