Poland dismantles Red Army memorials amid Russia's war in Ukraine

Authorities in Poland renewed their drive to “decommunise” public space as further monuments to the Soviet Red Army were dismantled in the country on Wednesday.

Photo:

PAP/Jakub Kaczmarczyk

Three such memorials were removed from villages in the country's west.

The head of the state-run Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Karol Nawrocki, attended a demolition event in the village of Siedlec.

"Those who want to see a Soviet soldier with a submachine gun as a liberator should imagine the small town of Radomyśl, Poland on Christmas Eve of 1945, where Soviet soldiers raped a 56-year-old woman and a 23-year-old woman seven months pregnant," said Karol Nawrocki. pic.twitter.com/wKOGARywbO

— Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) April 20, 2022

“The Institute of National Remembrance does not aim to remove cemeteries or graves because these are places of eternal rest," he said.

"However, we are determined to enforce a law passed in 2016 … that calls for steps to decommunise public space and ban the promotion of totalitarian symbols,” Nawrocki added.

Karol Nawrocki (left), the head of Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), speaks as a monument honouring the Soviet Red Army is removed from the village of Siedlec in western Poland on Wednesday. Photo: PAP/Jakub Kaczmarczyk

Michał Owczarek has the story.

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