The monument in the southern town of Głubczyce was taken down on Friday morning, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
As workers removed the memorial, dating back to 1945 and described by Polish authorities as “an object of Soviet propaganda,” an official said it “symbolised the tragedy of Poland and the Polish people.”
'Object of Soviet propaganda'
Karol Nawrocki, who heads the state-run Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), told reporters: “The year 1945 in Poland, here in the Opole region and in other parts of the country, wasn’t a year when the captors clashed with the liberators. It was a year when evil clashed with evil, captors with captors, German National Socialists with Soviet communists, who had sought to destroy Poland since 1939.”
Nawrocki said: “And that is why such objects of propaganda must not feature in the public space of a free and democratic Poland.”
He added that the “memorial of gratitude to the Red Army” in Głubczyce “didn’t deserve to be called a historic monument” as it “referred to events that didn’t happen.”
Nawrocki told the media: “There was no liberation by the Red Army and no Red Army heroes in 1945. This memorial wasn’t based on scientific facts.”
‘No place in Poland’ for Red Army memorials: presidential aide
Meanwhile, Marcin Przydacz, a top foreign policy aide to Polish President Andrzej Duda, said there was “no place in Poland” for any objects that glorify the Soviet Red Army.
Commenting on the removal of the monument in Głubczyce, Przydacz told public broadcaster Polish Radio that the Red Army “never helped Poland” and “wasn’t fighting for the freedom of Poland, but for the subjugation of Poland.”
He stressed: “And so there is no place for any monuments that glorify the Red Army.”
The presidential aide said that “historical facts shouldn’t be ignored because they largely determine the present.”
Przydacz told Polish Radio: “The most painful example of this is the war in Ukraine. It is fuelled by Russia’s various historical resentments.”
The monument in Głubczyce was unveiled in 1945 to commemorate 676 Red Army soldiers who fell in the battle for the town in March of that year, Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Some 30 memorials glorifying the Red Army remain standing in Poland, according to IPN estimates.
Friday is day 436 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, IPN