Six million Polish citizens died in the Second world war, due to the German policy of extermination. 80 years after the beginning of the war, a memorial for the victims is to be created. Berlin is ripe for a Poland-monument?
Reburial of Polish war victims of the Second world war, in the autumn of 2015
In the centre of Berlin there is no shortage of places of Commemoration, remembering the victims of the Nazi dictatorship and the third Reich unleashed the Second world war. Next to the monument for the murdered Jews of Europe, among other things, memorials to the Sinti and Roma, persecuted homosexuals, and a Soviet memorial near the Reichstag.
Polish politicians complain again and again that the Nation, the first victim of the German Invasion on 1. September 1939, and for its resistance to an enormous price in blood had to pay, not a suitable place to move to historic memorial days, to lay a floral wreath.
Civil society Initiative makes breakthrough
After long and vain efforts of an Initiative from the center of the German society brought a half years ago movement in the debate. Florian Mausbach, former President of the Federal office for building and regional planning, has appealed to the 15. To build November 2017, “to the German Bundestag and the German Public”, in the middle of Berlin, a Poland-monument to commemorate the Polish victims of the German occupation. And he suggested a concrete place: the askanischer Platz, before the war, the ruins of the Anhalter train station.
Supported mouse Bach of well-known personalities from politics, science, culture, and churches, including the Ex-Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth and its successor, Wolfgang Thierse. “With a worthy Poland, a monument on the askanischer Platz, a German would put Polish characters, the war, destruction, flight, expulsion and reconciliation in the inseparable connection of cause and effect provides,” it said in the call.
Discussion begins
The appeal sparked a lively discussion in Germany. With the Poland monument, we recognize “that the German Aggression and destruction policy 1. September 1939 in Poland began – and not only with the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941,” – argues Dieter Bingen, Director, German Poland Institute in Darmstadt. Thus, the 1000-year history of Poland should be prepared “irrevocable end”, underlines Bingen, a passionate supporter of the project.
The Holocaust memorial in Berlin
But it not only gave consent. Critics point to the danger of a “nationalization” of remembrance. Markus Meckel finds it problematic, to commemorate the Victims of national socialism “after the Nations are separated”. Once they start, they must then also build monuments for the millions of victims of other Nations – Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, and many others, says for decades in the German-Polish dialogue, a committed social Democrat.
Meckel’d rather a documentation centre for the war of extermination in the East, in the history of Eastern Europe since the “Hitler-Stalin-Pact” of 23. August 1939 is to be displayed.
Museum instead of a memorial?
Also the young Holocaust researchers Stephan Lehnstaedt from the Touro College Berlin holds a monument “only for ethnic poles” for a false Signal. Instead, a German-Polish Museum should arise, the best in Berlin and in Warsaw.
In Poland, the German Initiative was received very positively. “Germans want a monument for Poland,” wrote the left-liberal daily “Gazeta Wyborcza”. Also, the national-conservative government of the PiS to be available for the project favorably. In this sense, Minister Jacek Czaputowicz expressed already several times the outside. One of the left circles forced the idea to build a collective memorial for all of the Eastern European victims of Nazi policies, thrusts, however, in Warsaw, to resolute rejection.
“Not a big bag for all the Slavs,” warned in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, the Polish historian Pawel Ukielski, and recalled the invasion of the Soviet army in Poland, then as an ally of Hitler, on 17 September 1939.
Federal government Commissioner for Poland, a monument to
The Federal government was recently clearly on the side of the monument-advocate. After a request from the Deutsche Welle, the Federal Foreign office referred to the Passage in the coalition agreement, in the recognition of “less-publicized groups of victims of national socialism” is mentioned. “In this sense, the Federal government supported for a long time, a civil society Initiative for the establishment of a Poland-monument in the center of Berlin to commemorate the Polish victims of the German occupation 1939-1945”, said the AA.
The fate of Poland, the monument will be decided in the Bundestag. The first discussion in Parliament, brought the beginning of the year, no concrete results. In Poland, politicians were now at the first signs of impatience.
The Bundestag debated
In order to bring the debate back swing, deputies from five political groups released in early may, an appeal in the “daily mirror”. “It is our task to keep the memory and the commemoration of the German war of extermination against Poland and the Nazi occupation come alive and to give the space of memory,” wrote Alexander Müller (FDP), Dietmar Nietan (SPD), Thomas North (The Left), Manuel Sarrazin (Greens) and Paul Ziemiak (CDU).
German soldiers in 1939, at the Westerplatte near Gdansk, after the surrender of Polish soldiers
Not to make the preliminary decision on the design of the place, wrote the parliamentarians, generally, of a “space for memory”, a “suitable place that is dedicated to the Victims of the war and the occupation in Poland”. He is supposed to serve “of memory, awareness, understanding and removal of prejudices”.
Less time
Sarrazin, Chairman of the German-Polish parliamentary group, and the other signatories are now trying to attract as many members for the monument idea. The belief work more, so Uwe Feiler (CDU), a member of the parliamentary group. On the Polish side would like to have a German gesture, at least one Signal want to see the Bundestag supports the Poland-monument – at the latest until 1. September. The time is running out. Thus, the risk that an opportunity is missed to improve the relationship is connected.