Polish-German reconciliation remembered

A service to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Polish-German Reconciliation has been held in the city where anti-Nazi sympathisers met to plot Hitler’s demise.

Archbishop Alfons Nossol led the Mass to mark a similar ceremony held 20 years ago saying: “St Hedwig, the mother of our country Silesia and the patroness of reconciliation, teaches us how we have to accept reconciliation.”

At the Reconciliation Mass on November 12, 1989, the then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl famously hugged Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, laying to rest years of post-war bitterness between the two nations.

Krzyzowa, formerly Kreisau, is the place where a civil resistance movement met to develop plans for the future of Germany and Europe in the event of the Nazi regime’s fall.

The so-called Kreisau Circle was eventually broken up by the Gestapo and many of its members were arrested and executed towards the end of the Second World War.

Copyright © 2009 euronews

tags: Anniversary, Germany, Poland