Delegates from 31 nations, including PM Putin, Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, gathered yesterday in Westerplatte, northern Poland where war began 70 years today. All the leading participants gave speeches commemorating where the first shells fell of a war that would take 60 million lives.
It was, however, the speech by Russia's Vladimir Putin that attracted most attention, and not without reason. Russian secret services, media and state officials, have been working hard for the past weeks creating an atmosphere of tension around Polish-Russian relations, mainly by making outrageous suggestions about Poland's complicity in World War Two outbreak. No wonder, then, that Vladimir Putin's sheer presence at the ceremony caused controversy and public protests.
Commentators have also applauded German Chancellor Angela Merkel for apologizing for the German aggression on Poland in 1939, as well as for the German crimes on Jews and Poles. What was especially important, Angela Merkel said the discussion around post-war resettlements of Germans would not obscure the historic truth about who was responsible for the outbreak and the crimes of World War Two.
Click on the audio icon to listen to the report by Joanna Najfeld.