Today we remember the victims who died at the hands of the Nazis and all totalitarian regimes.

The holocaust remains the most vile of acts ever perpetrated on man by man. There was, however, considerable upset that the Polish President refused to attend last week’s commemoration in Israel on the basis that Putin was allowed to speak and he was not.

As a commentary on that I share this family portrait from 1929 as many of those present were killed by the Germans, including my cousin at Auschwitz. But my family were also murdered by the Russians who had invaded Poland with the Nazis. Another cousin, was shot in the back of the head in the cellars of the NKVD jail in Lvov. Another, along with over 20,000 other Polish Officers, shot by the Russians in the woods of Katyn in an act of genocide. My father (in yellow) was in Paris when the war broke out and his unit, after helping the British Army escape at Dunkirk, was ordered to somehow escape individually to reform in England. He commandeered a truck and was responsible for saving a number of Jewish soldiers who were petrified of falling into German hands.

After 9 years in the Army, fighting in the battles to free France, Belgium and Holland, he could not return home given what had happened to his family at the hands of the new Russian occupiers. Fortunately for me, he survived.

So, we who now live must remember all the victims and not allow Putin to push his revisionist narrative on the role of Communist Russia at the start of WW2. The lesson is clear: all totalitarian regimes must be resisted and the lessons remembered.

Michael Moszynski