First Remembrance Ceremony at Lidzbark Warminski

Friday 14th November was the first Remembrance ceremony for the 39 British soldiers buried there.

The cemetery is party of the multi-national POW cemetery of the former WW1 Heilsberg prison camp.

The ceremony was attended by the British and Canadian Defence Attaches as part of the annual tour of Commonwealth cemeteries in Poland.

There were also members of local Scout groups, Polish Veterans and AK veterans. The local Polish Army provided guards of Remembrance and a bugler to sound the Last Post.

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I have noticed a sign near a fire station. I'm curious how long it stays there.

WW1/WW2 ... ad nauseam ...
Will Poland and the UK ever look forward instead of living in the past?

You do realise it's the centenary this year.


I suppose different nations look back from different points - Germany for example only from shame.


There's also a small Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Poznan, at the Citadel.

In Malbork there is also one.

To be honest, I forgot about that. But it still doesn't make sense to me to celebrate a war that has started 100 years ago. Do the Italians still celebrate the successful invasion of Britannia in 43AD? You know what I mean. From the outside it looks as if Brits, French and Poles (and many others) are obsessed with the violent past. That's mostly the fault of their politicians and the media which seem to have an interest that the world wars are relived over and over and over again. The regular folks would have probably lost interest long time ago if not for the puppet masters that run every country on the planet.


From my experience, nobody in Germany really cares about WW1. There are statues and memorials all over the place commemorating the dead or some general who fought in the colonies. When it comes to WW2, the shame is mostly about the Holocaust. Understandable in my eyes, although it seems that the younger Germans are slowly getting back to normal and don't believe in the guilt anymore that has been instilled by their politicians over the past 70 years. It's more pragmatic these days: remember, don't let it happen again, but don't blame me. The war dead are remembered in the 'Volkstrauertag', by the way, but that has nothing to do with shame, as you've said.


From the 1910's and 1920's, of course...

People aren't so much 'celebrating a war', they're remembering the fallen.


Not really. More determined never allow an aggressor to appear in Europe again nor for one country to attempt to dominate.

Those that lived through that era and/or have lost relatives have every right to do so, of course, but what business does a politician who was born 30/40 years after the war have in remembering the fallen? The UK was involved in so many wars that they wouldn't be able to find a single day in the year on which they could remember something else than their dead.

Map 36:

World map of countries Britain hasn't invaded:

matadornetwork.com/life/57-worlds-interesting-maps/


Is that why one of the British tabloids once planned to send an old Spitfire to Berlin and to drive a tank to the German Embassy when the English played the German soccer team? :)

nytimes.com/1996/06/26/news/26iht-england.t_0.html

Every business, really. We all do.We made a promise that we will remember them. Incidentally, we also remember the German and Italian war dead (the Japs are a stretch too far for many) as well as civilians killed in war. For many people who were robbed of their youth through the actions of a foreign nation, it really was their finest hour. In Poland the horrors of war were at their worst and they do have a right to remember something seared into their national consciousness.


Only two where so many were killed, the last one resisting a terrible aggressor.


Excellent!

At least we managed to stop their leader from being driven down The Mall in a stolen Rolls. Or along Nowy Swiat with the residents kept away from their windows under threat of execution.

Well, we put each year at the 1st of November chrysanthemums and a candle on the monument for the First Polish Armored Division - Maczek's boys - on Plac Inwalidów here in Warsaw. Their dust-ridden Sherman tanks liberated my Flemish village in September 1944, so for me this is emotionally very important.

We owe a lot to those people whose youth was taken from them. And none of them wanted to be there.

When and where? Are you sure YOU made that promise, or was it someone who wants you to remember two specific wars but forget about all the others that came before or after? Look, I agree with you that we shouldn't forget what happened during WW2, but I am opposed to the endless repetition of empty patriotic gestures that we see day in day out around the globe.


... but in 1996 you lost the match ... :)


Honest question: may I ask you why? You were most likely born many decades after the war.

I'm surprised you need to ask that one.


I don't see that in Europe. Maybe in China or North Korea. In PL and the UK it's very poignant and a time for reflection.


We were just warming up. Remember Agincourt!

That's where we disagree.


Never really cared about ANZAC Day for example. Why would I? There are more pressing problems in our world than glorifying armed conflicts. We aren't remembering the victims, we are remembering military victories. Politically motivated, IMHO.


LOL!

There a a few along the road. I think they'll be looked after because this is now an annual event. During Remembrance Week, the Commonwealth defence attaches do a tour of the 4 or 5 Commonwealth cemeteries, such as Poznan, Krakow and Malbork. I suppose for a town like LW, it's quite good to be recognised.

As for some of the other comments about obsessions with the past, the cemetery has been overgrown for decades and many of the graves destroyed. There are over 2000 people of different nationalities buried there. Perhaps doing up a few of these places isn't such a bad idea. In this case the fact they are not "Polish" graves (there may be Poles buried there but they will be buried as Russians) shows it more as an international thing than a Polish one (the "new" cemetery was done by a Belgian team under the auspices of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission).

I have been surprised by the lack of interest about WW1 in Poland. OK, as a single nation, it wasn't involved but as Poles were members of three of the active protagonists (Russia, Austria and Germany), there were a lot of Poles involved. Interesting that of the few surviving WW1 monuments around Warmia and Mazury are usually ones with Polish surnames on them. WW1 was the event which brought about the restoration of Poland in 1918 but the 4 years prior to 11/11/18 don't seem to be that significant to a lot of folk. Considering the first month of WW1 saw the Russians encircle Krolewiec, only to be pushed back across Warmia and Mazury (arguably diverting important German manpower from the Western Front), it seems to have only been commemorated at a few local events, such as the battle recreation at Szkotowo in August.


Except it was more of a Turkish victory...

1968 was the only year a British serviceman/woman was not killed on active duty in 20thC. But at least they weren't in Vietnam.

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If we are talking about the original ANZAC Day.

When they had the rededication ceremony earlier this year, they managed to find some of the family of one of the soldiers and they attended the ceremony. Nobody from the family had been able to lay a wreath in decades. It was pretty moving, whatever one's thoughts about the WW1 commemorations.