Friday, May 8, marks 75 years since VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day, when the Allies celebrated Nazi Germany’s surrender of its armed forces and the end of World War II in 1945.
To honour Polish soldiers and commemorate a “shared struggle against tyranny,” the British embassy in Warsaw on Friday displayed the Polish flag next to the Union Jack as a “symbol of that special shared history, that special relationship.”
The British ambassador to Poland, Jonathan Knott, said in a tweet, amid the coronavirus pandemic, that British embassies worldwide do not normally fly the flag of their host countries.
But, to mark the 75th anniversary of the war's end, "I was determined that we should do something extraordinary to commemorate the friendship, forged in our shared struggle against tyranny,” he added.
The Polish flag will flutter over the British embassy throughout the weekend, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, honoured “Poland’s valiant heroes” of World War II in a Twitter message.
“On the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, we remember Poland’s valiant heroes who fought on multiple fronts and who died for their homeland,” Mosbacher said.
“America shall remain forever grateful to them, and their sacrifice for freedom,” she added.
Poland's top diplomat Jacek Czaputowicz has paid tribute to the victims of World War II and "all soldiers who fought to defeat Nazi Germany and put an end to the Holocaust," in a joint statement with a number of other European foreign ministers as well as the US secretary of state.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR