One shouldn't side with the aggressor in a war – Polish ambassador outraged by Hungarian Chief of General Staff's "pro-peace" falsification of history

The Polish ambassador in Budapest was shocked by the statement of Gábor Böröndi, Chief of the Hungarian Army General Staff, on 9 May, the anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the European Day of Peace.

Sebastian Kęciek wrote an open letter to Böröndi, in which he said that with his words,

the Hungarian Chief of the General Staff accused his country – which was a victim of Nazi Germany's aggression in September 1939 – of complicity and responsibility for the escalation of a global conflict.

For Poland

"this is an unacceptable distortion of history that should not be made, especially by a representative of a close ally."

– the Polish ambassador in Budapest writes in a letter which can be read in Hungarian here.

On Tuesday, Böröndi, who was recently appointed head of the Hungarian Defence Forces, distorted historical facts when he spoke on public television and said that Nazi Germany's September 1939 aggression against Poland was only a "local war" and would not have escalated into World War II if it had been stopped in time by a peace process.

Kęciek also reacted to the Hungarian government's preference for peace: "the outbreak of the Second World War was not caused by the lack of peace negotiations with the aggressor". On the contrary, it was among others, the result of the concessions made to the demands of the Third Reich.

The letter also points out that Hitler and Stalin had planned the partition of Poland on the basis of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, so that after the Nazi army "launched an armed, unprovoked attack on Poland" on 1 September 1939, the Red Army attacked Poland from the east on 17 September, "beginning an exodus of Poles that lasted for nearly six years and claimed the lives of six million Polish citizens", writes Kęciek.

The ambassador says "the offensive interchange of victim and perpetrator must not be allowed" and applies the historical analogy to Russia's current aggression against Ukraine:

"Today, in the face of Russia's full-scale, unprovoked and unlawful aggression against Ukraine, Europe should learn the lessons of the Second World War and stand in solidarity on the right side of history, on the side of the victim, not the aggressor."

At the end of his letter, he also recalls that although Hungary was officially an ally of Germany in 1939, it did not provide help for the Nazi attack on Poland. He also quotes the words of then Prime Minister Pál Teleki, who later committed suicide because of the Yugoslav invasion: "I would sooner blow up our railways than take part in the invasion of Poland."

We have previously reported on how the relationship between Poland and Hungary has changed on account of the war in Ukraine, and a more detailed report on how Ambassador Kęciek sees the relationship can be found here.