Ewa Ziółkowska
Last year in Russia, one by one, Polish memorial signs disappeared in unexplained circumstances. Crosses, plaques and – as in Levashovo on the outskirts of St Petersburg or in Yakutsk – entire multi-ton stone monuments were removed. This is the Russian response to Poland’s involvement, along with other countries of the so-called collective West, in helping Ukraine attacked by Russia in February 2022. According to Moscow, Poland, by supporting the ‘criminal neo-Nazi regime’ in Kyiv, is pursuing a policy hostile to Russia, which cannot remain without consequences. It should be noted that the Polish-Russian battle over the monuments has been going on for much longer. To go no deeper, the most notorious case in recent years was the disappearance in 2020 of two memorial plaques from the former NKVD headquarters in Tver, including one dedicated to the memory of the Polish prisoners of war from the Ostashkov camp who were executed in this building.
About the Russian fight against Polish monuments exclusively for the portal https://www.swiatsybiru.pl writes Ewa Ziółkowska, author of many publications on the fate of Poles and Polish traces in the countries of the former USSR: ‘St. Petersburg in Polish’ (Petersburg po polsku, Warsaw 2011), from 1996 to 2003 substantive editor of the bulletin of the Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom “Past and Remembrance” (Przeszłość i Pamięć), from 2012 to 2018 vice-president of the board of the Foundation “Aid to Poles in the East” (Pomoc Polakom na Wschodzie), from 2018 to 2022 director of the Polish Institute in St. Petersburg.
Full article in Polish is HERE
English version is coming soon.