Poland in Lebanon

The Saturday issue of the Italian daily La Repubblica published an article by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland Mr. Mateusz Morawiecki regarding the Easter hope for a better tomorrow, Polish-Italian friendship, Polish gestures of sympathy for Italy, important anniversaries in 2020 and the need for European solidarity.

On 10 April 2010, a special TU-154M plane with the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and the First Lady Maria Kaczyńska on board took off from Warsaw to Smolensk. That day, in the Katyn War Cemetery the official delegation was to participate in an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the genocide committed on site. The aircraft carried 96 people, including members of supreme state authorities, representatives of social circles and Churches, high-ranking military commanders and the plane’s crew. All the flight passengers died in the air disaster which took place during landing at the airport near Smolensk.

Olga Tokarczuk, Polish writer and activist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”

Participation in the European Investment Bank conference, bilateral talks, opening of the Polish-German school reconstruction project and monitoring of humanitarian and development projects financed under Polish Aid were the most important points of the Undersecretary of State's visit to Lebanon.

Eighty years ago, German aggression on Poland started the Second World War. In the early hours of 1 September 1939, troops of the German Reich crossed the Polish-German border. Polish Army put up military resistance and expected the Allies’ reaction. On 3 September 1939, France and the UK declared war on the German Reich but did not take any real military action. Poland’s tragic fate was sealed on 17 September 1939 when the Soviet Union launched the invasion of Poland from the East. The attack of the German Reich and the Soviet Union resulted from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed by the two totalitarian regimes, a secret protocol to which effectively divided Central Europe into the so-called spheres of influence.

The Battle of Monte Cassino was one of the toughest and bloodiest battles that determined the outcome of World War II.