Polish foreign minister's Auschwitz remark aimed at distorting history - Kremlin chief of staff
Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna's remark that the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by Ukrainians in 1945 is aimed at distorting history, says Russian presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov.
"This is one of the numerous statements aimed at distorting history," Ivanov said at a press conference in Oswiecim, Poland, on Tuesday.
Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna claimed in a program aired by Polish Radio earlier that the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim was actually freed by Ukrainians, as that operation was carried out by the First Ukrainian Front. The statement caused indignation.
"According to the logic of Mr. Minister, we must have had only Karelians fighting on the Karelian Front, only Baltic peoples fighting on the Baltic Front, and, pardon me, only Pechenegs fighting on the Steppe Front. This is what the absurd logic can lead to," Ivanov concluded.
He noted that First Ukrainian Front servicemen who liberated inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp were Soviet citizens of various nationalities.
Speaking of similar odious statements by certain leaders about facts and events of World War Two, among them Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk's claim that the Soviet Union allegedly attacked Ukraine and Germany, Ivanov said, "This is a wish to revise WWII results. Partially, this is a wish to diminish the enormous role of Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, although we have invariably emphasized that the war was not won by Russia but by the Soviet Union and its multinational population."