‘Polish resistance army killed Jews in WWII’

MOSCOW: Russia’s defence ministry on Friday accused the Polish resistance movement that staged the Warsaw uprising of 1944 of "destroying Jews", the latest in Moscow’s feud with Poland over WWII history.

The accusations were posted with a trove of declassified documents called "Warsaw Under Fire" on the 75’th anniversary of Soviet forces’ taking the city after more than five years of occupation by Nazi Germany. The Russian defence ministry published a multimedia website on Friday to mark the anniversary with scans of documents about Nazi concentration camps, photos and lengthy reports by Soviet officers.

"The documents show that parts of Armia Krayova destroyed the remaining Ukrainians and Jews in the city, while holding as hostages the Soviet officers that escaped German prison," the ministry said of the Polish resistance force during occupation, which answered to a London-based government in exile.

Poland’s foreign ministry on Friday launched a "liberation without freedom" campaign on Twitter to mark the anniversary, saying that the coming of the Red Army "didn’t mean liberty for Poland."

Anti-semitism in the Polish resistance is a hugely sensitive issue in today’s Poland, where the fighters of Armia Krayova are regarded as heroes. In 2018, a Polish court ruled that German ZDF television channel must apologise and pay damages after a documentary on the subject.