About 30 years ago, in 1993, after I became the first person to be elected to the Polish presidency in a democratic election since World War II, I saw Russia's soldiers leave my country.
However, unlike many of our friends in the West, this was not the end of history for us.
We knew our success remained fragile and incomplete, so we sought to be members of international institutions to anchor our progress in something greater than ourselves — a community of nations organized according to the principle of liberty, unjustly taken from us.
History has proved our righteousness earlier than I had hoped: While in our part of liberated Europe we have experienced prosperity, democracy and culture, Russia has established the evil embodied in a single government, corruption and imperialism, which was soon directed against the West.
The Jewish people are familiar with the type of struggle that is currently taking place in Ukraine.
The Jews were deprived of their own state and questioned their national rights.
In these difficult moments for Ukraine, I hope the Israelis see themselves as part of the Ukrainian people, among whom they have lived so long.
The struggle for freedom and human dignity is currently taking place in areas where Jews have lived for thousands of years, in Eastern and Central Europe.
A lot can be done
David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Golda Meir and other founders of the state were born on land shared by Poles, Ukrainians and Jews for a long time.
In the "solidarity" movement I founded, which overthrew communist rule in Eastern Europe, some of my best advisers were from a Jewish background.
Our dear and beloved land became the place where the most heinous crimes and atrocities in human history took place, and in fact ceased to be the area where the Jews and the Slavs lived together.
In the following decades, however, the Poles, together with our neighbors, restored hope to Eastern Europe by overthrowing dictators, resisting foreign oppression, and forming a strong government based on personal and economic freedom.
The Jewish people achieved similar success earlier, and although we no longer share the same land, our peoples share the shared experience of taking their destiny into their own hands after centuries in which this right was denied them.
Today the Ukrainian people, who are so close to the Jews and Poles, are waging their own struggle for self-determination, and it is our duty - both on the moral and political level - to provide support.
Even those who feel sympathy for Russia because they lived in Russian-speaking areas should stand by Ukraine.
A victory for Ukraine could bring about the collapse of Vladimir Putin's corrupt regime and give the Russian nation an example of democracy, and then perhaps economic prosperity as well.
The Jewish people are among the only peoples in the world who know how terrible the concentration camps and mass deportations were, as the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe also know.
My father was also sent to one of these camps by the Nazis.
The Russian government's attempt to portray the invasion of an independent state and the massacre of its citizens as a struggle against the Nazis is sacrilege when it comes to human dignity, and is a spit in the face of all those who lost their loved ones to Nazi war crimes, like many others who read this article. - The current justice.
Luckily, a lot can be done.
As citizens, we can influence our governments, and as individuals, we can humbly help big moves.
The combination of millions of small votes gave me the greatest power I had as a leader of "solidarity", years before I became president.
It is the power that fundamentally changed the world 30 years ago.
In the 1980s, Poles shouted "there is no freedom without solidarity."
Today I call on all the peoples of the world who see value elections, to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainians.
As the Jews and Poles know very well - freedom, security and prosperity are not taken for granted.
In order for them to survive, one must act out of commitment and sacrifice, and show responsibility and not indifference.
Let's do for the Ukrainians what no one did for us 80 years ago, so that the principles that gave us security and prosperity will not disappear.
We must do this for them and for us.
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