MOSCOW, July 20. /TASS/. Russia’s State Duma has issued an appeal of members of European countries’ parliaments and inter-parliamentary associations on Wednesday in the wake of legislative amendments in Poland that envision the pulling down of monuments to Soviet soldiers.
The Duma called on the European parliaments, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the European parliament to condemns the amended Polish law and to voice objections to the destruction and desecration of monuments to fighters with Nazism.
The draft statement in connection with the outrage on the memory of soldiers fallen during the liberation of Europe from Nazism, victims of Holocaust and victims of other crimes against humanity, which the Nazis and their accomplices committed during World War II, was considered simultaneously with the Israeli Knesset that also said it would publish a statement on the issue.
"The State Duma has chosen a format of this type for the first time," said Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the foreign policy committee. "This offers a bright instance of efficacious cooperation with a foreign parliament and a coordinated passage of decisions on a crucial item on the international agenda."
"Duma deputies call on the parliaments of Europe and the European parliamentary institutions to condemn resolutely the increasingly frequent cases of destruction and desecration of monuments and memorials erected to commemorate the soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition to lost their lives for the delivery of Europe from Nazism," the Duma said in its appeal.
"Those who outrage on the memory of soldiers and officers of the Red Army, guerillas, resistance fighters, the victims of Holocaust, and the victims of other crimes against humanity committed by Nazis and their accomplices during World War cannot be forgiven."
"Hitler’s butchers, whose arms were steeped in the blood of innocent people up to the elbow, are the sources of ideological inspiration for those who are once again trying to gain political capital and therefore are fanning the dangerous tendencies towards revenge, in particular in the countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine," the appeal said.
"Right in front of our eyes, the unscrupulous politicians are developing a zeal to rewrite history and to revise the results of World War II," the document said. "One cannot give an otherwise assessment the law on de-communization that the Polish Sejm endorsed on April 1, 2016, and the recent amendments to it that were adopted by the Sejm and the Senate and signed into law by the Polish President."
"They presuppose a possibility of destruction or dismantling of almost 500 monuments and memorials erected in honor of the Red Army soldiers who liberated Poland," the appeal said, recalling that, in terms of the ethnic background, those soldiers were Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Jews, Azerbaijanis, Kazakhstanis, Armenians, Kyrgyzstanis and members of other ethnic groups made up the collective Soviet people.
The decisions like the cynical act of the Polish authorities pursue the goal of diminishing the decisive role the Red Army played in the liberation of Europe and the whole world from the Nazi aggressors. They connive at the criminal logic of Nazism glorification and, as a consequences, lubricate the rise of a generation of young people who do not know the truth about most horrible war of the 20th century, the Duma said.
"An environment supporting the growth of terrorism, inter-ethnic and inter-religious strife emerges in the places where the promotion of the Banderites or the Baltic ‘forest brothers’ as models to follow begins," the appeal said.