"The destroyed villages and towns have the right to know the truth about what protecting Europe and European values looked like in 1939. Today, we are reminding the Chancellor of Germany, the President of the French Republic and anyone else wishing to erase the Polish drama from the European historical memory about this right" said the Minister of National Defence, Antoni Macierewicz, during his speech at the ceremony commemorating the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Sulejów by Luftwaffe.
"No words can express the drama accompanying destruction of 80% of the city's buildings and slaughter of 80% of residents who were either executed, murdered or hunted like prey. These were no Nazis that did that. These were Germans. They were, as someone accurately said, the elite army, as the German pilots considered themselves to be the men of honor in the elite army. And this is what their honor looked like," stressed the Minister.
He added that today the memory of these past events "has got lost in history"
"It seems that after many years, the suffering of your parents, grandparents has somehow got lost in history" – these were the words with which Antoni Macierewicz addressed the residents of the town.
"Six million slaughtered Poles have been overlooked"
"Somewhere in the history of Europe, Germany, in the history of other countries, they do not exist, they have been erased. Six million slaughtered Poles have been eliminated from their own experience and life and obliterated from the memory of the European nations. They do not exist," he stressed.
The Minister stated that this is the drama of the past as well as the future.
"Who was the one to protect and the one to destroy"
The Minister also stated that the destroyed villages and towns as well as the Polish nation "have the right to know the truth about what protecting Europe and European values looked like in 1939; who was the one to protect them and who destroyed them.
"Standing here in Sulejów we are calling for this right and we are reminding others about the same. We are reminding the European Union, the Chancellor of Germany, the President of the French Republic and all those who want to erase from the historical memory of Europe the drama of Poland and Poles, the drama of six million Polish citizens," the Minister enumerated.
"A horrific march of barbarism"
"Hundreds of cities like Sulejów, thousands of villages like this, because we want to live in truth and build Europe together; because we want Europe to be capable of protecting the values on which it is based. And Europe was established and built on Christian values as they were the sole guarantee of cooperation, peace and friendship between nations," Minister Macierewicz pointed out. "When they were questioned, when Germany and Russia decided to reject and destroy them, the horrific advance of barbarism began that sometimes still casts a shadow over the present. And its shadow is again cast over Europe," he stressed.
"A change has come. The good will be awarded and the bad named. A change has come. The nation has regained the power over its everyday life. We will implement all the indispensable changes in keeping with the needs of the Polish nation. The changes like the family support program under the name "500 plus program" or the plans to reintroduce the retirement age will, slowly but surely, be implemented," Macierewicz announced during the ceremony in Sulejów.
As he added, the Law and Justice government will keep on implementing its program "despite the unfair allocation of the EU funds by the party that is justly already a former ruling party as it was unable to manage them; as it was wasting its nation’s good."
"But the party still has a decisive voice when it comes to allocation of the EU funds, local government funds, and it makes unfair decisions in that regard," the Minister for National Defence assessed.
Macierewicz stressed that he knows "what it looks like at the bottom, not in the declarations made in the Sejm; who really supports local community and who only pretends to be doing so."
"Only a strong army will give us external protection"
"The Poles deserve global justice, but first and foremost they deserve their country to be rebuilt on justice, they deserve a just social order within country borders," the Minister stated. "As the strong army shall give us external protection, secure our borders, the just social order shall guarantee that we will be a united nation, that we will work and build our country together," he stressed.
Źródło: tvn24.pl/tłumaczenie Intertext.com.pl