Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday called a consultation with the government regarding the situation in the Middle East, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and relations with Russia, after Russian President Vladimir Putin's remarks on World War II history
WARSAW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th January, 2020) Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday called a consultation with the government regarding the situation in the middle East, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and relations with Russia, after Russian President Vladimir Putin's remarks on World War II history.
On December 24, Putin recalled that Adolf Hitler had proposed Warsaw to expel Jews to Africa in 1938, a proposal then-Polish Ambassador to Germany Jozef Lipski welcomed and even deemed worthy of a monument. The Russian president's statement provoked outrage in Poland, resulting in the Russian ambassador to Poland being summoned to discuss Putin's remarks.
"Three topics, specified by me, are of special significance. The first one is Poland's policy regarding the situation in the Middle East, the second one is the activities for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Germany concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The third one is the goals of the politics of memory in the context of Poland-Russia relations," Duda said opening the meeting.
Putin's remarks came in the wake of a European Parliament resolution on the remembrance and history of World War II that claimed that the 1939 non-aggression treaty signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, had caused the war. In fact, Polish ambassador Lipski met with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on October 24, 1938, a year before the war began, and with Hitler a few days later to discuss Germany's plan to expel Jews to Africa.
