wrote:
A day of commemorations is taking place in Poland to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II The
first ceremony took place at dawn on Westerplatte peninsula near
Gdansk, where a German battleship fired the first shots on a Polish
fort in 1939. Poland's president and prime minister led a sombre ceremony at the fort. President
Lech Kaczynski added to a row with Russia over responsibility for the
war, saying his country had received a "stab in the back". Foreign
leaders from 20 countries, including Germany, took part in a
wreath-laying ceremony in Gdansk where they each placed a candle at a
memorial. In a news conference with his Polish counterpart,
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin acknowledged there were
"problems" in the two countries' history which needed to be analysed.
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ANALYSIS
Jonny Dymond BBC News, Gdansk
There
was, of course, talk of heroism in the speeches of the Mayor of Gdansk,
President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
But for Poland, perhaps more than any other nation on earth, World War II was nothing but a catastrophe. By the war's end, 5m-6m Poles had been killed - a greater proportion of its population than any other country.
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Relations between Poland and Russia are currently thorny, partly
because of differing historical interpretations of events at the start
of the war. Mr Putin added that the pair should "rise above the problems of the past... and solve the problems of the future". He went on to talk about trade and energy co-operation between the two. Earlier,
Mr Kaczynski and his prime minister Donald Tusk joined war veterans
beside a monument to the heroes of Westerplatte at 0445 (0245 GMT). The
ceremony marked the exact time on 1 September 1939 when the German
battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire at point-blank range on the
fort. At the same time, the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland
from east, west and south. The attacks triggered Britain and France's
declaration of war against Germany two days later. Important symbol Poles,
though, have long seen the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty, signed a
week before war started, as the starting gun for the German invasion,
says the BBC's Jonny Dymond in Gdansk.
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Putin strikes conciliatory note with Poland
Just two weeks later, in mid-September 1939, the Soviet armies occupied eastern Poland. Speaking
at the ceremony, Mr Kaczynski said: "On 17 September... Poland received
a stab in the back... This blow came from Bolshevik Russia." He
added: "Glory to the heroes of Westerplatte, glory to all of the
soldiers who fought in World War II against German Nazism, and against
Bolshevik totalitarianism." In his address, Mr Tusk said the lessons of history should not be forgotten. "We
remember because we know well that he who forgets, or he who falsifies
history, and has power or will assume power will bring unhappiness
again like 70 years ago," he said.
At the time of the attack by the Schleswig-Holstein - which was
moored in the Polish harbour on a friendship visit - Gdansk was known
as the free city of Danzig. The 182 Polish troops defending the
Polish fort were expected to resist for about 12 hours. Despite coming
under fire from the air, sea and land, they held out against a force of
more than 3,000 Germans for seven days. According to a survey
published on Monday, Westerplatte is the most important symbol of
Polish resistance in the whole of the war. A wreath-laying
ceremony will take place later in the day and, of the speeches expected
throughout the ceremonies, it is Mr Putin's which is the most keenly
anticipated in Poland. According to the historian Professor Pawel Machcewicz, the Poles are expecting some sort of gesture from Mr Putin. Thorny relations Two
weeks after the German invasion, the Red Army invaded and annexed
eastern Poland under terms agreed in the secret protocol of a
Nazi-Soviet pact. In early 1940, the Soviet secret services
murdered more than 20,000 Polish officers in the forests around Katyn.
For 50 years Moscow blamed the Nazis and only admitted responsibility
for the crime in 1990. Russian courts have ruled that Katyn
cannot be considered a war crime and Moscow is still refusing to
declassify documents about the massacre. The temperature was
raised further this week with accusations broadcast on Russian state TV
which implied the USSR was justified in its invasion of Poland because
Warsaw had been conspiring with Hitler against Moscow.
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