Opinion As in 1939, so today: Moscow still threatens Eastern Europe Israel today

World War II, which began on September 1, 1939 with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, is one of the events that is commemorated every year throughout Europe.

However, September 17, 1939, the date of the USSR's invasion of Poland, is a date unknown to many in the West.

Therefore, I believe that this event deserves to be remembered not only because it decided the fate of my homeland and the fate of other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, but because it also determined their fate for half a century.

If today we, the Poles, and other peoples in our region, come back and say that we know who Russia is and understand its imperial ambitions better than the West - we say this because our historical experience is symbolized by September 17.

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The invasion of the Red Army into the territory of Poland, two and a half weeks after the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe attack, was an implementation of the secret annex to the Nazi-Soviet agreement signed on August 23, 1939 between Ribbentrop and Molotov.

Two totalitarian empires made an alliance and planned to divide the independent states of central Europe between them.

The German sphere of influence was to include western Poland, Lithuania and Romania, while the Soviets were to control eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

For my nation, the most important result of the agreement was the joint elimination of an independent Polish state and the division of our territory between the two occupying powers - Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.

Other sections of the agreement were partially modified in the following years;

Finland managed to defend its sovereignty in the Winter War in 1940, and Lithuania, despite an episode of relative independence, was absorbed into the USSR. However, the various detailed amendments did not affect the decisive principle of the agreement: Hitler's imperialism, and that of Stalin, appointed themselves from that moment on. To carve out destinies of peoples and countries in our part of Europe.

Huge losses

Under the German occupation, Poland suffered huge human and material losses.

The Nazis murdered 6 million Polish citizens, including almost 3 million Polish Jews.

They destroyed and burned thousands of Polish cities and villages, and most of all - the capital, Warsaw.

They stole countless property and cultural assets, both public and private, and these were never returned to my country.

Only when a few of the German perpetrators of genocide, extermination, war crimes, mass terrorism and looting were prosecuted after the war in Nuremberg and Warsaw, and received the punishment they deserved.

The crimes of Nazi Germany were at least morally condemned by the whole world.

Unfortunately, this is not the case with the crimes of Communist Russia, which have never been punished and are often forgotten.

Soviet soldiers during the occupation of Poland, photo: GettyImages

What did the Soviet occupation of more than half of pre-war Poland include?

It included the Katyn Forest Massacre, in which 22,000 Polish prisoners of war were executed: Polish army officers, policemen, soldiers, public officials and other political prisoners.

They were shot in complete violation of all international conventions, because Stalin considered them patriots loyal to their homeland and sworn enemies of communism.

It included the deportation of half a million of my countrymen to gulags and forced settlement in Siberia or the Asian parts of the USSR, from where they never returned. It included brutal terrorism by the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB; translator's note) and ideological indoctrination, in an attempt to crush Polish identity nationalism and its tradition, to plant communist principles in children by force and to reject the faith.

The agreement collapsed

We, the Poles, are not the only ones who suffered from all this.

The Baltic nations—Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians—were equally affected, as were other nations that fell within the Soviet sphere of influence after the Soviet victory over the Third Reich.

The Nazi-Soviet agreement collapsed within less than two years of its signing, when Germany attacked Stalinist Russia on June 22, 1941. But the principle, according to which the fate of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe should be decided not by their free peoples, but by the leaders of the imperial powers - this principle remains in his eyes

The signing of the Ribbentrop-Mazlotov agreement, photo: E.P

The Soviets defeated the Nazis, and in 1945 occupied the entire territory of Poland and other countries.

Some of them were directly annexed to the USSR as federated states - this was the fate of the Baltic nations, Belarusians and Ukrainians. In other cases, Russia established a puppet government made up of local communists, completely loyal to Moscow - and this happened in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany For our nations, the fall of the Third Reich did not bring the long-awaited freedom. Enslavement to the Russian Empire continued until the fall of communism - half a century! Only after the Polish "Solidarity" movement ignited the democratic changes in 1989, did the Poles and other peoples of Europe free themselves and regain their sovereignty in their countries, most of which gradually became members of the European Union and NATO.

thorn in the butt

However, the independence of any country in our region has always been a thorn in the side of the Russian imperialists.

And so, as soon as Moscow recovered from the shock of the loss of its Stalinist sphere of influence, it began to work for the re-establishment of the empire.

We remember the military attack on Georgia in 2008.

We also remember the violent suppression of the movements for freedom in Belarus and Ukraine.

And finally, we remember the hostile Russian policy towards Ukraine, the military annexation of Crimea and the Donbass in 2014, and above all, the war that began on February 24 of this year against a sovereign Ukrainian state - a genocidal war, an all-out war.

The massacre in the Katyn forest, photo: AFP

For the nations in our region, who remember the historical events symbolized by yesterday's date - September 17th - there is no doubt that Imperial Russia is looking to enslave more countries again.

It wants the same thing it desired in 1939 and 1940, when it acted in alliance with Hitler's Germany, and in 1991-1945, when it ruled our countries itself.

Russia has always wanted to dominate Eastern and Central Europe.

But free Poland, free Ukraine and all the other free countries in our region will never agree to this.

For our people, it is a matter of life and death, maintaining identity and survival.

It's a matter of future, security and prosperity.

Translated and brought to print: David Baron

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