Remembering 17 September 1939: Andrzej Duda warns about Russian imperialism in Central and Eastern Europe.

• Author: Duda, Andrzej

The outbreak of the Second World War on 1 September 1939, which began with the invasion of Poland by the Nazi Third Reich, is one of the events annually commemorated throughout Europe. However, 17 September 1939, the date of the Soviet Union's aggression against Poland, is not as widely known in the West. Therefore, I believe this event needs to be remembered, as it decided the fate of my homeland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and did so for the whole of the next half-century. If today we Poles, and other peoples of our region, repeat that we know Russia and understand its imperial ambitions better than the West, we do so because of our historical experience symbolised by 17 September.

The Red Army's incursion into Polish territory two and a half weeks after the Wehrmacht's and Luftwaffe's attack was the implementation of the secret part of the Nazi-Soviet Pact signed on 23 August 1939 by the heads of the two foreign ministries, Ribbentrop and Molotov. Two totalitarian empires entered into an alliance, planning to divide the independent countries of Central Europe amongst themselves. The German sphere of influence was to include western Poland, Lithuania and Romania, while Soviet control was to extend over eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

For my nation, the most important consequence of the pact was the joint liquidation of the independent Polish state and the division of our territory between two occupying powers, Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union, dominated by Russia. Other provisions of the treaty were partially modified in the following two years. Finland managed to protect its sovereignty in the Winter War of 1940. Lithuania, though, after an episode of relative independence, was absorbed by the Soviet Union. But various detailed amendments did not affect the critical principle of the pact--Hitler's and Stalin's imperialisms were from then on to decide the fate of the peoples and states of our part of Europe.

Under German occupation, Poland suffered enormous human and material losses. The Nazis killed 6 million citizens of the Republic of Poland, including nearly 3 million Polish Jews. They destroyed and burned thousands of Polish towns and villages, most of all the country's capital, Warsaw. They stole countless material possessions and cultural assets, both private and public, which were never returned to my country. Only a few of the perpetrators of German genocide, extermination, war...