A Final Tribute? Poland Establishes Outdoor Museum of Soviet WWII Monuments

An open-air museum featuring monuments honoring the Red Army forces which freed the country from Nazi rule in 1944 and 1945 will be established in Poland, in a move that was initiated by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, according to Polskie Radio's Russian website.

The Polish Institute of National Remembrance has initiated the creation of an open-air museum of Soviet monuments in Poland, Polskie Radio's Russian-language website reported.

The goal is to explain why these monuments were installed and why they were finally dismantled amid the decommunization of Polish society, according to Andrzej Zawistowski of the Institute of National Remembrance.

A war memorial in Poland, dedicated to the Soviet and Soviet-allied Polish troops who fought to free Poland from Nazi occupation between 1944 and 1945. The vast majority of Poland's war monuments were created by famous local sculptors.

© Flickr / Alf Melin

The Institute's Deputy Director Pawel Ukielski, for his part, went as far as to claim that "the museum will help young people learn about the history and understand that these Soviet memorials, called 'monuments of the Red Army's gratitude', were symbols of the enslavement of Poland by the Soviet Union."

The exact location of the museum has not yet been determined as it will depend on the number of monuments. Earlier, it was reported that the museum may be built in the city of Borne Sulinowo in Poland's West Pomerania.

On March 31, the Institute of National Remembrance announced that the Polish authorities were planning to demolish about 500 monuments to the Red Army soldiers.

Russia has expressed its discontent regarding the removal of Soviet monuments in Poland many times. In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Poland had become the European leader in terms of the desecration of Soviet monuments.

According to the 1992 Russian-Polish Agreement on Friendly and Neighborly Cooperation, Poland must protect and preserve Soviet and Russian cemeteries, graves, monuments and other memorial sites located in the country.