A symbol. Monday, June 16, a memorial dedicated to the Polish victims of Nazism, the first of its kind, was inaugurated in Berlin, in the presence of German and Polish political figures, and of the Christian-democratic mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner (CDU). It is for the time being a 30 -ton stone block – to be replaced in the long term by a more successful monument – with a plate evoking the “Polish victims of National Socialism and German tyranny in Poland from 1939 to 1945”. The place, located between the Bundestag and the Chancellery, was not chosen at random: this is where the old Kroll opera was located, where the elected officials of the Reichstag met after the fire of February 1933, and where Hitler announced the invasion of Poland, 1er September 1939.
It has been years since Warsaw demanded the construction of a place in Berlin to commemorate the Polish victims of Nazism, largely forgotten by the memory policy of Germany. “We have long waited for this dayadmitted the social democrat Heiko Maas, former Minister of Foreign Affairs (2018-2021) of Angela Merkel and president of the German Institute of Poland, present on Monday. We, the Germans, are still far too ignorant of the suffering inflicted on Poland. »»
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Source: Lemonde