Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, has said he is “convinced” Germany will pay Poland reparations for the destruction the country suffered at German hands during WWII.
Dr. Karol Nawrocki from the Institute of National Remembrance said: “Unfortunately, most Poles do not know the story of Blind Antek. We want to show him in a broader context… he is a figure that should be ingrained in Poland’s conscience and who should be remembered by history.”
The memorial, in the western village of Mikuliszki, consisted of the remains of the wartime headquarters of a Polish Home Army unit whose members died in combat in the area in 1944.
Organized by the National Institute of Remembrance (IPN), the project, titled ‘Trails of Hope; the Odyssey of Freedom’, was originally undertaken to mark the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the operation that saw both civilians and soldiers evacuated from the USSR as part of the so-called Anders Army.
VIDEO: Using previously unheard witness testimony and Bundesarchiv documents, the documentary entitled North of Hell (with English subtitles) reveals many of the atrocities were carried out by a German field gendarmerie unit under the command of Karl Liebscher, a sadistic captain who was responsible for as many as several thousand murders of Poles and Jews in Białołęka.
The Spitfire BM597 served with the 315 (City of Dęblin) squadron and the 317 (City of Wilno) squadron, part of the Polish Air Force under the command of the Royal Air Force from RAF Woodvale in Southport, the plane’s home of operations, but served mainly in the North-West from a base in Blackpool, the home of the Polish Airforce during WWII.
Principally comprised of aerial images taken by Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes throughout the duration of the occupation, the digital undertaking has been described as the largest collection of aerial photographs ever amassed of wartime Warsaw.
The find, which was made by staff from the Mamerki museum in northeast Poland and a group of volunteer historical searchers, is described as the biggest discovery ever made at the 200-hectare forest headquarters.
Filomena Leszczyńska, the 80-year-old niece of wartime village mayor Edward Malinowski who historians said was complicit in a massacre of Jews during WWII, said: “If these researchers are well-educated and intelligent people, why is their research biased? Research should be impartial.”
Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, the body charged with investigating wartime and communist era crimes, has announced it will not appoint a man with past ties to a far-right group as head of its Wroclaw branch, PAP has learnt unofficially.
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