The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum calls the reference to Nazism in Ukraine as a justification for the Russian invasion “a disgusting abuse”, in a war that Kiev must win without any concessions to Moscow.
In a written interview with Lusa, Piotr Cywinski contextualizes the argument of the Nazi threat in Ukraine as propaganda for Moscow, emphasizing that he wants to avoid this discussion as he refers to “fundamental notions for the history of Europe and the world as ‘ Nazis'”, and in that sense he stated only that “it is a disgusting abuse”.
However, Piotr Cywinski said he was curious to know “whether the use of this term in reference to innocent Ukraine [cujo Presidente, Volodymyr Zelensky, é judeu] must – according to the devices of the Kremlin – to strengthen Russian opinion and was intended for internal use”, or that in democratic societies, beyond the borders of Russia, “this primitive lie would be believed”.
The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a former Nazi concentration and extermination camp in Poland during World War II, argued that “Ukraine must win so we don’t all lose,” describing the Russian invasion, which began in February 24 last year, as the “era of war declared by Russia”, but ignoring the course of history, following the “madness of this aggression, its absurdity and brutality”, showing that in theory all scenarios should be taken into account taken into account.
However, with a doctorate in humanities and medieval history, director of the Memorial since 2006 and with an enormous body of work on Auschwitz-Birkenau, Piotr Cywinski, born in Warsaw 50 years ago, warned that he would become more involved with the world and his order in the future, “if there were symptoms, even small signs from the West, that someone is afraid” of Russia.
“In the face of international terror, even the smallest concessions out of fear or calculation cannot be accepted. Even if the price must be paid for courage and truth. Otherwise, that price will be paid immediately later, although it is immeasurably higher.” “, continued, emphasizing: “It is the basic experience of the past 250 years of each of the nations living near Russia”.
Kyiv must win
That was one of the reasons why Russia, whose troops occupied the concentration camp in 1945, was first excluded from the event marking the anniversary of its liberation last month.
For the person responsible for the Memorial, the criteria for excluding Russia are very simple. First, the Polish institutions refrain “from all contacts with the Russian Federation, except the necessary ones”, as a result of Russia’s “unprovoked and unjustified aggression against independent and democratic Ukraine”.
Subsequently, the war in Ukraine “makes it difficult to imagine that representatives of a murderous state, which rapes and robs Ukrainian citizens, can speak in a place that represents for the entire adult world the greatest genocidal wound inflicted on various groups of citizens in history. from Europe”.
Pyotr Cywinski has no advice for the belligerents, he only insists that Kiev should emerge victorious, but he has left a message for the Russian people: “In every week of war, in every destroyed and slaughtered village , disassociate yourself from this world that you so longed for many years ago. You must understand that the Kremlin’s megalomania is killing the Ukrainians, but it is also killing you and probably many other future generations”.
Moscow’s troops were in the alliance that liberated Europe from the Nazi regime, but when it comes to respecting the victims of World War II, it “ended in Russia on February 24, 2022.”
In the West, “this respect is reflected in the assistance provided to Ukraine so that it can defend itself courageously,” Cywinski said, concluding: “Otherwise, the International Court of Justice in The Hague will have a great deal of work to do”.
“Little has changed about Russian soldiers” since World War II
The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum says that “little has changed in the mentality of Russian soldiers” since World War II and that crimes since the invasion of Ukraine evoke images of 80 years ago.
Piotr Cywinski recalled that the Red Army, of the then Soviet Union, which moved to Berlin in 1944 and 1945, “committed numerous crimes against civilians, mainly of German descent, but also Polish and others”, which are comparable to what has been has been happening in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24 last year.
“It is hard not to feel that little has changed in the mentality and training of Russian soldiers. The reality we all perceive undoubtedly reveals an unimaginable civilization gap between democratic Europe and contemporary Russia,” he stated.
Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau and other Nazi concentration camps in January 1945 as part of an alliance against Adolf Hitler’s German regime.
Piotr Cywinski noted that today Russia is an invading state and that Germany is part of the coalition supporting Ukraine, a sovereign and democratic country. the future and still of the symbols used “in this unfair and unworthy struggle for immediate benefits and gains”.
The Russian actions, he continued, constitute “a violation of all rules of war in conflict zones, as well as numerous international laws regarding respect for borders, war or the treatment of civilians”.
Agreements with concentration camps
The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum also recalled that in the current Russian aggression against Ukraine, “reliable sources describe the torture and ill-treatment” of prisoners of war, which “inevitably evokes images of eighty years ago”, while roughly comparing it to of the regimes of the then Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, and the current President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who was recently accused by the Polish Prime Minister of “building new fields in the East”.
Mateusz Morawiecki spoke on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, whose ceremonies were not invited for the first time by Moscow representatives.
The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum believed that “each crime should be treated individually and each victim has its own face and name”, although “of course crimes that fall under the same legal framework have some similarities”.
After the concentration camps found in World War II, Piotr Cywinski believes that several camps have existed since then, such as the gulags in the Soviet system, the Pol Pot re-education camps in Cambodia and others that still exist in North Korea or the special prisons for the Uighurs in China.
In the specific case of Russia, he pointed out that looking at current penal structures, “one can immediately see that they are organized on the same models as the gulag Soviet buildings”, not because of their architectural or structural character, but because of “the respect for human rights in these places, as well as the autonomy of judicial decisions on the detention of potential convicts”.
At the end of the Cold War, the Western world hoped for a new era of peace, but 30 years later Russia returned to armed conflict and war returned to Europe.
According to Piotr Cywinski, “It is a great testament to the extent to which Europe was fueled by Russian propaganda, trying to convince decision-makers and society that after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was transforming itself into a democratic state under the rule of law.”.
In today’s eyes, according to the person in charge of the Memorial, it is possible “clearly to see that all this is just a bluff superficially aimed at the Western community”, referring to an era when the truth finally “comes out very clearly”.
In this sense, he rejected experiencing a historical or civilizational regression, emphasizing that “the progress of the 1990s and 2000s, which many believed, constituted a ‘bluff’ of pure propaganda”.
Source: DN
