WARSAW, February 15. /TASS/. The city council in the southeastern Polish city of Zamosc ruled against demolishing a monument to some 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war, who died at the Karolowka death camp during the WWII, the local Kronika Tygodnia newspaper said.
The discussion about demolishing the monument continued for several years. Some city residents urged it to be removed because it bears hammer and sickle, a symbol of the Soviet Union. Others argue that the monument is a part of the country’s history and must be preserved.
"It should all be accepted as a part of history," city council member Marta Pfeifer said during the discussion. "The monument is here not to remember anything, but to think over the suffering of people regardless of their nationality."
"It is a tribute to the memory of dozens of thousands of people who perished," another council member, Ireneusz Godzisz, was quoted as saying.
In its final statement, the city council said it was "against demolishing the monument, built in remembrance of cruel treatment and execution of prisoners of war by Germany’s Wehrmacht."
The monument was installed in 1969 on the site of the Karolowka death camp, where thousands of captured Red Army soldiers were kept before they died of malnutrition and diseases. The Polish government included the monument into its list of about 500 commemorative sites that must be destroyed for ‘propaganda of totalitarianism.