We are custodians of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memory says Polish official
"We remember the past and draw on historical experience to build a better future," the Polish deputy prime minister and culture minister has stated, referring to the forthcoming 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
"But we do not forget those who died or were murdered," Piotr Gliński wrote on Monday in an article published in The Jerusalem Post as part of the 'Telling Poland to the World' publicity campaign.
"In April 1943, on the eve of Passover, the Germans occupying the Polish capital surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto – the Jewish quarter they had created – in preparation for its final liquidation. On April 19, the German police and SS auxiliary forces entered the ghetto to complete the extermination," Gliński recalled.
"The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the first metropolitan insurrection and the largest Jewish revolt during the German occupation," the deputy prime minister wrote.
Gliński said that "the doomed Jews fought until the beginning of May, while the Germans’ demolition of the Great Synagogue on Tlomackie Street in Warsaw was a symbolic final act to mark the fall of the uprising."
The deputy prime minister recalled that Warsaw was the city of two uprisings during World War II. "Jews and Poles clashed with German criminals in two uprisings in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. The city was eventually left in ruins, destroyed and burned down. This proves the strength of the Polish imperative for freedom."
"Today, Warsaw is a city of the living. Poland is a country of the living," Gliński wrote and added that "the memory passed down through the generations must last forever. And today, we are its custodians."
The worldwide media project called 'Telling Poland to the World' was launched eight years ago, as a joint initiative by Poland's Institute for New Media, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), the National Bank of Poland (NBP), the Foreign Ministry and the Polish Press Agency.
