Don't mention the war, bishops urge

Published on 17 June 2009 at 11:57

Polish and German bishops are putting mitres together to draft a joint declaration to be issued on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII this September. The document, reports Polska, will call for reconciliation and that these "painful moments in our recent history be left to historians." Politicians, the bishops note, should devote their time to building a common future rather than using historical facts for political manoeuvring. This is a clear allusion to a recent CDU/CSU resolution in which the conservative German party demanded international condemnation of Poland's post-war expulsions of Germans. Commemorating German deportations from what is now Poland has been a thorny issue in Polish-German relations for some time now.

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