A call that a memorial to Polish World War II victims of Nazi Germany be erected in Berlin has been renewed by former Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth. The initiative has the backing of some 100 prominent Germans.
Berlin's Askan Square has been suggested as a location for the memorialImage: DW/W. Szymański
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The "unimaginable suffering" begun during Hitler Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland must be remembered, Süssmuth told the KNA Catholic News Agency on Friday.
Where exactly and which type of monument should be erected in Berlin was still open to discussion, said the 80-year-old historian, who described German actions in Poland during World War II as a campaign of "total extermination."
By 1945, six million Poles had died as a result of the warfare, half of them Jews – many in death camps run by occupying Nazis until these were liberated by Soviet troops towards the close of World War II.
Berlin site for Polish victims needed, insists SüssmuthImage: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Arnold
"First we should design the [Berlin] monument and then determine its location," Süssmuth said, admitting that questions remained about "how the other Central and Eastern European victims of the Nazis should be remembered" in the German capital.
Problematic proximity
One suggested site for the Polish memorial – on Askan Square in Berlin-Kreuzberg – was problematic, said Süssmuth, because it would "provoke the next discussion" on proximity to a documentation center being built for ethnic Germans expelled at war's end from a redrawn Poland and their descendants.
Polish victims as well as Germans expellees both had a "right to admonitory remembrance," said Süssmuth, 80, who is now president of the Darmstadt-based German Poland Institute. and a veteran of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic (CDU) party.
Call for German-Polish reconciliation
Last November's call to erect the monument on the square – directed at Germany's then newly elected parliament – came from 100 prominent figures, including former Social Democrat (SPD) party chairman Kurt Beck and another former Bundestag president, Wolfgang Thierse.
Berlin's Catholic Archbishop Heiner Koch and the German capital's Protestant bishop, Markus Dröge, were also among those appealing for a Berlin site to remember Nazi atrocities inflicted on Poles.
"A memorial to the Polish victims of the German occupation of 1939-1945 has long been a common concern of many Germans and Poles striving for understanding and reconciliation," wrote the signatories.
Every sixth Pole died
The Die Welt newspaper at the time remarked that "no country of Europe suffered more under National Socialist dictatorship than Poland."
"Every sixth Pole died" as a result, said Die Welt, noting that a Communist era memorial to "Polish soldiers and German Antifascists," located in Friedrichshain in former East Berlin was not favored by present-day Polish leaders.
Poland's current President Andrzej Duda still lacked "a place in Berlin where he can lay a wreath for the Polish victims of the Second World War," noted Die Welt's leading historical and cultural author Sven Felix Kellerhoff.
Other memorials in Berlin
Already located in central Berlin is the large memorial to Europe's six million murdered Jews as well as monuments to Nazi persecution victims among homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, and individuals - often Germans - murdered in so-called euthanasia schemes.
Visiting Warsaw last June, German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier recalled former German Chancellor Willy Brandt's 1970 gesture of kneeling to ghetto victims and admitted that historical dissension still remained.
We cannot talk it down," said Steinmeier, referring to lingering debate among Poles and Germans about how wartime history was understood.
Warsaw: Then and now
Some 80 percent of the Warsaw was destroyed between the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the end of the war. But now the city has blossomed into a major European metropolis.
Image: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP/Getty Images
The old city today
Sigismund's Column stands in the middle of Castle Square in Warsaw. King Wladyslaw IV Vasa commanded it be constructed in honor of his father. Sigismund moved the royal court from Krakow to Warsaw in the 16th century and made the city the seat of the Polish king. The city was founded in the 13th century. Sigismunds' Column now symbolizes the reconstruction of Poland after World War II.
Image: Getty Images
Oil paintings for reconstruction
The Venetian master Bernardo Belotto, known in the city under his nom-de-plum Canaletto, immortalized Warsaw in his 18th-century oil paintings. In 1945, when the Polish capital was in ruins - and with it most of the maps of the city - the paintings were used as plans for reconstructing the city. Today, Warsaw's historic city center is listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site.
Image: picture alliance/akg
Warsaw's famous son
Like no other, composer Frederic Chopin represent Poland's contribution to European culture. He was born in Warsaw to a French father and Polish mother. The city named its largest airport after him, while several memorials honor him, and museums are dedicated to his life and work. Chopin's body was buried in Paris - his heart, however, was sent to Warsaw upon his request.
Paris of the East
Poland did not exist on European maps for more than 100 years: Russia, Austria and Germany divided the country amongst themselves. In 1918, Poland regained its independence and the capital bloomed. In the 1930s, Warsaw boasted 20 theaters, 70 cinemas and tens of thousands of university students.
Image: Getty Images
Europe's largest ghetto
The Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, started World War II. A year later, German soldiers built a ghetto in Warsaw where as many as 400,000 Jews were forced to live. Most of them would later be transported to the Treblinka extermination camp. An uprising broke out in 1943 when Nazi SS troops attempted to remove the last prisoners from the ghetto.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
A Polish tragedy
On August 1, 1944, the Red Army reached the banks of the Vistula River and German troops were retreating. That was when the Armia Krajowa, Poland's so-called Home Army resistance movement, took up arms against the Germans in the famed Warsaw Uprising. But the resistance waited in vain for support from the Soviets. The Armia Krajowa held out for 63 days before having to surrender to the Germans.
The Germans destroyed large swaths of the city after crushing the Warsaw Uprising. In October 1944, ash and rubble covered the bombed-out city and all the bridges had been blown up. Of the 720,000 residents who lived in Warsaw before the uprising, only about 900 remained in the ruins. The Warsaw Uprising was seen as the largest Polish resistance operation against Nazi occupation.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Images
'Stalin's revenge'
A gift from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1955, the Palace of Culture and Science is a relic of Warsaw's communist era. For the people of Warsaw, the building became a symbol of totalitarian repression. Yet the Palace has also become a symbol of the city of Warsaw, and of the age of so-called Socialist realism in Poland. It currently houses cinemas, theaters, museums and offices.
Image: picture alliance/Arco Images GmbH
Warsaw today
Poland's capital has blossomed since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The city has seen a rennaissance, attracting more people and international companies than other city in the country. Warsaw is now home to nearly 2 million people - new buildings have been sprouting up as well, with some offices more than 200 meters tall.
