Poles outraged over demand for Nazi memorial at UK soldiers’ gravesite
April 20th, 2011 - 6:20 pm ICT by ANIMoscow, Apr 19 (ANI): Polish veterans have been outraged by the demands of German survivors of Second World War that a memorial be built for their fallen comrades on the same site of the graves of 50 British soldiers murdered after the mass Prisoner of War breakout, which inspired the film The Great Escape.
Fifty unarmed RAF prisoners were executed by German troops when they were recaptured after escaping from Stalag Luft III camp, located in what is now Poznan in Poland, in 1944, the Daily Mail reports.
They were buried along with Polish and Soviet allies at the Old Garrison Cemetery in Citadela park in Poznan.
Germany’s Veterans’ Association have now asked Polish authorities to put a plaque at the same graveyard to ‘honour the memory’ of the Nazi troops who died being driven out by Soviet forces in 1945.
The demand, however, has offended Polish veterans.
“There is very little honour in shooting unarmed prisoners in the back. The Germans were not welcome here in the war and they are not welcome here now,” one veteran said.
“They were invaders, they attacked us. I remember one German officer telling me: ‘We will come back here. I don’t know when but we will,”‘ he added. (ANI)
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