Poland Can’t Credibly Complain After Belarus Reportedly Demolished An Unofficial Memorial
The indisputable fact is that Poland has been systematically destroying legally protected monuments to the same army that stopped Nazi Germany’s genocide of 6 million Poles while Belarus only reportedly demolished an unofficial memorial to a group that it regards as terrorists.
Polish diplomats are incredibly upset after Belarus reportedly demolished an unofficial memorial that supposedly contained the remains of their anti-communist compatriots who fought against the Soviet Union after the end of World War II. Also known as the “Cursed Soldiers”, they’re regarded by Warsaw as heroes but considered by Minsk and Moscow to have been nothing but terrorists. The background context is that they fought the UN-recognized government in Poland proper as well as the equally recognized Soviet one in areas that were previously part of the interwar Second Polish Republic before they were transferred to Belarus and Ukraine per consensual agreement among the World War II Allies.
Some of the indigenous Polish population was also transferred around that time, though so too was the indigenous German one from parts of that second-mentioned eponymous state that Warsaw later came to control per the same aforementioned consensual agreement. Germans were also transferred from elsewhere in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) too. These “Cursed Soldiers” carried out what can objectively be described as terrorist attacks against the locals and the UN-recognized governments that represented them. Their cause was an ethno-separatist one that aimed to revise the results of World War II, but the Polish People’s Republic and the Soviet Union fought back to uphold international law.
Both sides therefore have mutually exclusive and irreconcilable interpretations of the role that was played by these “Cursed Soldiers”, which is part of their larger differences over the political outcome of World War II with respect to the spread of communism over most of CEE. Poland and its regional peers perceive that period to be a so-called “occupation” despite the USSR having saved their people from Nazi Germany’s fascist genocide that killed six million Poles (half of whom were Jewish) in less than six years. Belarus, Russia, and some (but importantly not all) other former Soviet Republics, by contrast, are fiercely proud of their former superpower’s victory and celebrate that glorious moment every 9 May.
Having explained the polar opposite views that each side has towards the subject of the “Cursed Soldiers” and the grander issues connected with them, the reader now has the relevant information required to better understand the latest scandal. Up until recently, Belarus turned a blind eye towards the unofficial memorials to those individuals on its territory, which took the form of not recognizing them but also not demolishing those sites either. Poland, however, began to betray this goodwill upon systematically destroying communist-era monuments as part of the policy that it promulgated in the past decade. In fact, it just destroyed a major one the day prior to the Belarusian incident.
It's appropriate at this point to clarify a crucial legal fact: a 1994 bilateral treaty exists between Poland and Russia concerning the preservation of each other’s official memorials. Warsaw unilaterally violated it though by systematically destroying communist-era World War II monuments on its territory, which in turn prompted local officials in Smolensk to remove the Polish flag from the nearby Katyn Memorial earlier this summer out of national self-respect. The memorial that Polish officials are so upset about Belarus reportedly demolishing the day after they themselves just destroyed a major one isn’t covered by that treaty, however, nor is it even officially recognized by Minsk as was previously explained.
Nevertheless, Poland decided to provoke a major scandal, though it quite clearly doesn’t realize how hypocritical its reaction is. Warsaw can’t whine about Minsk reportedly demolishing a single unofficial memorial to a group that its neighbor’s government considers to be terrorists when its own officials have been unilaterally violating their country’s 1994 bilateral treaty with Russia to systematically destroy monuments to the same military force that put a stop to Nazi Germany’s genocide of the Polish people. Poland either should have abided by international law in order to preserve related goodwill with Belarus and Russia or expected that those two would react in their own way as has since been seen.
By artificially manufacturing the latest scandal upon provoking Belarus into the response that it reportedly employed and then subsequently spinning everything to the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM), Poland hopes to amplify its people’s historical “victim complex” for politically self-serving purposes at home but might counterproductively raise greater awareness of its leadership’s hypocrisy. On the one hand, its faux “nationalist” ruling party can play the “patriotism” card to boost popular support, but on the other, objective observers who learn about the true origins of this artificially manufactured scandal will realize how shameless this entire stunt actually is.
Pointing this out isn’t meant to change the reader’s views about the “Cursed Soldiers”, the political outcome of World War II for CEE with respect to its Soviet-backed communist governments, nor the Ukrainian Conflict, but just to draw attention to the Polish government’s hypocrisy in complaining about Belarus doing something much comparatively less offensive than what Warsaw itself has already been doing for years already. The indisputable fact is that Poland has been systematically destroying legally protected monuments to the same army that stopped Nazi Germany’s genocide of 6 million Poles while Belarus only reportedly demolished an unofficial memorial to a group that it regards as terrorists.