A Polish soldier waves the national flag in Warsaw, after it was liberated by the Soviet Union and its Polish allies on January 14-17, 1945.
Official Warsaw had no plans to celebrate this date — but it is not the first time that Poland has ignored the liberation of its state capital. Since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990s, politicians across Eastern European have pushed the notion that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were equally responsible for instigating World War II — and the idea that Red Army soldiers led a brutal occupation, instead of liberating Poland, has firmly found its place in the nation's history books.
That view continues to prevail in some other European states, too — but a trove of recently-declassified wartime documents, published by the Russian Defense Ministry, tells a different story.
Myth 1: 'Only the Home Army were true heroes'
With Poland under Nazi occupation, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa/AK), which supported the country's London-based government-in-exile, became a dominant resistance movement. Decades on, the AK are lionized by many in modern Poland as the true heroes and patriots of history, while Poles who helped Soviet forces are often demonized as traitors.
The AK are hailed in annual ceremonies around a white obelisk erected in the 90s in downtown Warsaw to honor their efforts. In 2019, President Andrzej Duda honored surviving AK members as role models and a "precious treasure of history."
Comment: Poland is so far gone into delusion that it isn't even commemorating this event. 200,000 Soviet soldiers died to liberate Warsaw... for what?
Even Poland's 'democratic revolutionary leader' in the 1980s, Lech Walesa, thinks Putin should have been invited to attend something.