The monuments were removed at once, and in a speech broadcast on state television, Karol Nawrocki, director of the Polish Institute of Historical Memory (IPN), said the move was aimed at “removing all monuments that glorify the communist system.” will disappear in Poland”. and stressed that “these monuments should not have been in Polish public space for so long”.
Describing the legends inscribed on the monuments as “historical lies,” Nawrocki said they all “symbolize the evil of the communist system” and should be destroyed “not for their aesthetics, but for their meaning.”
After the removal of these four statues, 30 more monuments will have to be destroyed, according to the director of IPN, who stressed that more than 20 of these monuments have already been removed this year. Many years after the fall of the communist regime, good result”.
One of the statues removed today was restored in 2017 at a cost of 7,000 euros and had the inscription “Thank you to the Red Army”, but since the beginning of the war it had been painted in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
Some local governments have expressed their desire to preserve communist-era monuments, such as a statue of two soldiers inscribed as “Heroes of the Red Banner” in Dabrów Kornyza (southern Poland) included in the IPN’s “de-Russification” list. .
However, the city’s mayor and some local residents opposed the demolition of the monument because, in their opinion, it represented the Russian Revolution, “the events that took place between 1905 and 1918, unrelated to the communist era in Poland. It started after World War II.”
After the case went to court in Warsaw, the monument remained.
A law regulating the removal of communist-era symbols from streets and buildings in Poland dates back to 2016 and authorizes the removal of plaques, street names and monuments associated with the former Soviet Union from any public space.
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