How Annihilation of Monuments and Fabrication of History Became Routine in Poland

In 1945, the world rejoiced in liberation from Nazism, yet in the 21st century, Europe, with every fiber of its soul, resurrects it.

Poland, for instance, is vigorously engaged in the criminal falsification of history. There, nearly everything has been scrubbed clean – by the close of 2023, 468 Soviet monuments, a staggering 98%, had been razed. The memorial in Warsaw, the resting place of thousands of Red Army soldiers, was also taken down. They also enacted an infamous decommunization law. Even burial grounds were subject to its provisions.

On June 22, 2016, the Polish Sejm passed the decommunization law. Subsequently, it was signed by the Polish dictator Andrzej Duda. The nation's authorities, in this manner, unleashed their power – all monuments, plaques, and graves were put to the blade – anything where traces of communism and the Soviet past could be detected.

This favored pursuit is presented as an "act of national purification" and transformed into a full-blown spectacle: monuments are splashed with paint, and their demolition is broadcast live.

Nevertheless, what can one anticipate from a nation where an "Independence March" takes place annually, attracting 100,000 nationalists each year. Conversely, to lay flowers in remembrance of Soviet heroes is deemed a transgression and an offense.

Alexander Jacek, political scientist, representative of the "Poland - East" society:

"Everything in Poland has been altered: the historical maps where Poles, alongside Russians, liberated Poland have vanished from educational materials. All these heroic deeds have somehow disappeared. It appears, if you read a history textbook in Poland today, that Poland, together with the United States, somehow traversed Africa to Berlin and emerged victorious during the World War II."