UNITED NATIONS, January 21. /TASS/. Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, on Wednesday gave a lesson in history to his Polish counterpart, Boguslaw Winid by explaining to him who liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Churkin had to do it after a bizarre claim by Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna, who told Polish radio that the camp had been liberated by the First Ukrainian Front and the Ukrainians.
“It was the First Ukrainian Front and the Ukrainians who liberated the camp,” he claimed when answering a question about why the Polish authorities had failed to invite President Vladimir Putin to the official events at the end of January, which will accompany the celebrations of the date.
“Since the Ukrainian soldiers were there on that January day, it was they who opened the camp’s gates,” Schetyna said.
“It was called the First Ukrainian Front because it had liberated Ukraine from the Nazis before reaching the territory of Poland after severe combat operations,” Ambassador Churkin said.
“Like all other branches of the Soviet Red Army, this front was had the servicemen of numerous Soviet nationalities - the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, people of Central Asian nationalities, and many many others - more than a hundred ethnic groups all in all,” he said.
“Dear Ambassador Winid, please bring this fact to the attention of your Foreign Minister, who made a rather weird statement on the issue,” Churkin said at a conference at the UN headquarters that had been convened to mark the 70’s anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation in January 1945.
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