A day of remembrance took place in Poland yesterday (1 September) to mark 70 years since the outbreak of World War II.

A day of remembrance took place in Poland yesterday (1 September) to mark 70 years since the outbreak of World War II. An international ceremony was held at Westerplatte in Gdansk to mark the place where a German battleship opened fire on Polish fort, opening the conflict. Speaking at the ceremony, Parliament's President Jerzy Buzek, himself a Pole, said “the attack on Poland which took place on 1 September 1939 marked the beginning of the nightmare which engulfed Europe and the world”.

He went on to state in the strongest terms: “Our memories of history cannot be filed away in some dusty museum...Let the suffering that has been endured and the graveyards scattered across the globe serve as a shared community of memory for us and stand as a warning to all leaders and to future generations.”
 
Persecutions of nations “did not end” in 1945
 
Describing the different fates of Western and Eastern Europe in 1945 when the latter fell behind the Iron Curtain he said that “the great persecutions of the nations of Europe did not end here. Only one half of the continent could breathe freely”.
 
Mr Buzek also drew attention to the resolution adopted last year by MEPs when they called for a day of remembrance for the victims of Nazism and Communism on 23 August, the anniversary of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. “Last year, the Members of the European Parliament recognised that ”the mass deportations, murders and enslavements committed in the context of the acts of aggression by Stalinism and Nazism fall into the category of war crimes and crimes against humanity“ he said.
 
He went on to pay tribute to the founders of the post war European Community by saying ”when proposing the founding of the Community, Robert Schuman declared that: “The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war (...) becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”.
 
Finishing his speech he said “I salute those who fought for freedom. We Europeans will remember. We will build a Europe worthy of your sacrifice”.
 
Tense build up between Moscow and Poland
 
In the build up to the anniversary relations between Warsaw and Moscow have been strained over historical interpretations over events at the start of the war.
 
Many Poles see a Nazi-Soviet part signed a week before the Germany invasion as effectively the starting gun to the invasion of Poland. The pact carved up the Baltic States and Poland between Hitler and Stalin's armies. Two weeks after the Germany invasion of Poland the Soviet army invaded Poland from the east.
 
Russian Prime Minister Putin, who attended the ceremony, recently condemned the pact but said that the Munich agreement by Britain, France and fascist Italy with Nazi Germany in September 1938 had led to war by preventing an effective anti-Nazi front.
 
In Russia, the war and defeat of the Nazi invaders is seen as one of the proudest moments in both Soviet and Russian history. However, in Central and Eastern Europe the end of Nazism meant the arrival of the Red Army and satellite Communist regimes for half a century. 
 
Nazism and Communism: Common crimes?
 
A resolution passed by MEPs on April this year on European conscience and totalitarianism drew parallels between Nazism and Communism and another one in September 2008 called for 23 August to be a day of remembrance for all victims of totalitarian regimes.
 
In particular the resolution states: “Europe will not be united unless it is able to form a common view of its history, recognises Nazism, Stalinism and fascist and Communist regimes as a common legacy and brings about an honest and thorough debate on their crimes in the past century”.
 
However, for both the Russian leadership and many ordinary Russians, any attempt to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is deeply resented.