Polish Prime Minister "attacks" German media giant writing a letter

Polish Prime Minister published on Facebook a letter he addressed to CEO of  Ringier Axel Springer Media AG, media call it an attack on the German media giant.

The letter is word reading. Usually, you don't see what is going on behind the curtains of World politics. 

(I did not ask for permission to publish this copy. I used OCR software to recreate it based on images published on Facebook by Mr. Morawiecki.)

Mr. Mark Dekan CEO Ringier Axel Springer Media AG 

Ringier Axel Springer Polska 

Dear Mr. Dekan, 

It was exactly one hundred years ago, in 1920, that the Red Army flocked west to effectuate a communist revolution in countries all across the continent. Today, we know that Warsaw was not their only target. Other European capitals were supposed to become the next destinations of their destructive march. The wave of red terror would most surely not have missed your motherland - Austria, along with Germany, where communist organizations were gaining steam. Allow me to recall the words of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a Red Army general responsible for further bloodshed in 1920: 'Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to world-wide conflagration.'

My homeland, Poland, was the one that prevented the communists from setting Europe on fire at that time. Our unwavering resistance against the brutal, barbaric expansion of communism towards Western Europe led to one of the most important clashes in the history of our civilization - the Battle of Warsaw. The Bolshevik army was driven by fury, a lack of boundaries, savagery and thirst for destruction. Meanwhile, two years before, in 1918, Poland had regained independence it had lost as far back as in the 18th century, and stood firm and steadfast with its European heritage. 

My fellow countrymen, who defended not only Poland, but the entire European civilization against the Bolsheviks, experienced first-hand what the communist revolution was; many of them had made their way to Poland from the newly-emerging Soviet empire. Thousands of testimonies and tens of thousands of escapees from territories occupied by the Bolsheviks confirmed the cruelty, tortures, bestiality and widespread terror of Leninist and Stalinist communism. It was a terror aimed not only at soldiers, but civilians above all - it targeted the Polish people living east of Warsaw. 

My fellow citizens had watched their parents die in inhumane torture. They had witnessed the Bolsheviks abusing women and children, murdering them with cruelty, burning villages and towns. Polish civilians would also be exposed to a similar type of cruelty 20 years later, when soldiers of the Third Reich and 'Hitler's willing executioners' (I recommend you to read the book by Daniel Goldhagen) murdered children, women, the elderly and civilians in cold blood. It had all been witnessed by the grandchildren of the January Uprising insurgents, fighters for Polish independence who had been sent deep into Siberia by the Russian Tzar to meet certain death. Finally, they were the descendants of the Kościuszko Uprising insurgents, who had seen the Russians enter the Praga district in Warsaw and slaughter the local residents, all to break their spirit and make them give up their weapons without resistance. In cold blood, they murdered men, women, children and the elderly, not by the hundreds, not by the thousands, but by the tens of thousands. 

The sacrifice and heroism of consecutive generations of Poles provide the right and rudimentary context of the holiday we have just celebrated - the Battle of Warsaw centennial. This is why, as the Prime Minister of Poland, I was surprised that, at the time of such an important anniversary, celebrating the deliverance of Europe from a bloodthirsty communist terror (have you heard of the Great Hunger of 1932-1933?), editorial offices belonging to the publishing house managed by you had decided to publish and promote articles whose content obfuscates and twists the truth about those incredible days and their intrepid heroes. The texts in question are „Tego, co wyprawiają Polacy, nie da się opowiedzieć Lekarz Armii Czerwonej pisze z frontu poruszające listy do zony (No words can the describe what the Poles are doing' - A Red Army Military Physician writes touching letters from the front line to his wife), published on the onet.pl portal on 15 August 2020, and "Prawda o losach jeńców sowieckich wojny 1920 roku. Pieklo za drutami" (The real fate of Soviet POWs from the 1920 war. A hell behind barbed wire), recalled on the Newsweek Polska internet portal on 13 August 2020. The message of the above-mentioned articles carries a risk that the roles played by the sides to the conflict, the stake of which was the protection of Europe against communist terror, could be reevaluated. Mentions of the alleged willful extermination that the Second Polish Republic authorities had supposedly brought upon the Bolshevik POWs can only be deemed disgraceful and slanderous. 

I cannot imagine that on September 1st, on the 81st anniversary of the beginning of World War II, any of the editorial offices that you are in charge of would publish a sentimental memoir of a German soldier in Hitler's army, writing about monsters from the Home Army (Polish: Annia Krajowa). Unless those offices of your publishing house are capable of doing so, too? Likewise, would any of your journalists use the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to write about the Jewish Combat Organisation's (Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa) conspiracy against the peaceful Nazis? 

In case you were to prepare future content concerning World War II, I would suggest that you consult the witnesses of those inhumane crimes, such as Wacława Szlacheta, who recounts the crimes of Dirlewanger's battalion thusly: 'Lying there, I saw and heard the German soldiers walking among the people they had laid down, kicking them to check who was still alive. They killed those who were with single shots from their revolvers... I saw a soldier approach a baby buggy occupied by my neighbour Mrs Jakubczyk's a-few-month-old twins. He shot them. I kept hearing the groans of the dying people. I didn't see the corpses of my husband and son when I left the site of murder, but I saw the bodies of both my daughters.' I know this sounds like hell, but this was exactly the type of hell on earth brought about by German Nazis and Russian Soviet communists. This is what war does to this world; it turns it into a horrifying abyss. However, it is our duty to stare into that abyss and stand for the truth in spite of fear; to stand for the victims - those who were attacked, raped and murdered. These are the European values. And this should be an internal imperative for all of us. 

In light of this, Poland is open to conducting numerous scientific and historical research projects that could facilitate the understanding of the legion aspects of the Polish-Soviet War. However, as the victim of Soviet aggression, we must not allow the real image of that horrible war to be distorted. Nobody is permitted to relativise history. The oppressor is the oppressor, the victim is the victim, and the hero is the hero. This is the fundamental truth that we must protect out of respect for the victims, all witnesses of these breakthrough events, and their families. And it is in this truth that the interests of us all lie. It is not particular, but fully universal. We should all keep it safe, both in Poland and in Europe. 

Yours sincerely, 

M Morawiecki