Today is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Prime Minister of Poland has marked it by writing this post on Facebook:
Today we commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the United Nations in 2005, so mankind will never forget and learn a lesson from this terrible crime.
A crime committed not by nameless Nazis who "only obeyed orders," but by officers of the Nazi German state, who with methodical, planned effectiveness implemented their diabolical plan, established, and confirmed at the conference in Wannsee, by the most notable members of the NSDAP and the government of the Third Reich.
The number of victims of the Holocaust is estimated at nearly six million, a third of that number being children. According to various sources, there are between 2.6 million to 3.3 million Jews among the victims of the Holocaust. Polish citizens account for a large part of the murdered.
When Poland regained independence in 1918 after 123 years, no one thought that on its territory, the German Nazis would build the most terrible death machine in the history of the world - KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. Therefore, the memory of the victims is an essential part of our national identity. Thanks to the courage of Poles, the cry from Auschwitz was also heard all over the world.
Jan Karski took an incredibly detailed report on what the Holocaust was to the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. He was not heard.
One of the greatest heroes of the 20th century, Captain Witold Pilecki, volunteered to go to Auschwitz as a prisoner to be able to describe the hell of the people confined there. He prepared a very thorough report, which the Polish Underground State sent to the West.
The Polish State guards the truth, which cannot be relativized in any way. As a warning, we must call this truth by its name. We do not have our consent to relativize evil. We will remember and loudly show the sources of this evil, so that future generation will never know it!
Today, when the specter of a new war hangs over Europe, only the truth, cooperation, solidarity, and drawing the correct conclusions from a tragic history can guarantee that it will not happen again.
