Leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday will be in Poland to mark 80 years since the start of World War Two, with the conflict still a live political issue in the country.
Few places suffered the level of death and destruction seen in Poland. It lost about a fifth of its population, including the vast majority of its three million Jewish citizens. After the war, shattered Warsaw had to rise again from ruins and Poland remained under Soviet domination until 1989.
Ceremonies begin shortly after 4 a.m. in the small town of Wielun, site of one of the first bombings of the war on Sept. 1, 1939, with speeches by Polish President Andrzej Duda and his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Merkel, and Pence who is arriving after President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled a planned trip due to a hurricane, will take part in events later in the day in Warsaw.
For Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party, the memory of World War Two is a central plank of its “historical politics”, aiming to counteract what it says is a lack of appreciation in the West of the extent of the nation’s suffering and bravery under Nazi German occupation.
Wartime remembrance has also become a campaign theme in Poland ahead of a national election due on Oct. 13, with PiS accusing the opposition of failing to protect Poland’s image.
