VE Day reminds us of the tragically high costs of not resisting aggression and violations of international norms
Comment: Two years ago, I wrote a piece from Poland for Newsroom reflecting on the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day through the experiences of my parents. Both came as displaced persons to New Zealand from different parts of Europe after World War II turned their lives upside down. They died on the 50th and 70th anniversaries of VE Day respectively, bookending the life-changing impact of Europe’s deadliest war on them, and millions of others.
I am once again a visiting professor at the University of Warsaw. But this 77th anniversary of VE Day on May 8 holds more poignant significance, as the unthinkable has happened. A major interstate war is raging in Europe for the first time since 1945. That war borders Poland, which has become the key frontline state for international support of Ukraine.
This year, instead of imagining what an earlier generation must have endured, I am witnessing daily the indirect impact of war. While life in Warsaw continues as normal, it is impossible not to notice today’s Ukrainians experiencing the same horrors that were inflicted on my parents’ generation.
Almost 300,000 of the three million displaced Ukrainians who have crossed Poland’s border are now in Warsaw, expanding its population by 17% over the past two months. When I walk to my classes, I pass a line of Ukrainian women and children outside one of the facilities provided to support them. On campus, I meet with female Ukrainian scholars offered sanctuary through temporary employment by the University of Warsaw. They are passionate about why their country must prevail against Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression. They thank Poles for their solidarity, joking they see more Ukrainian flags in Warsaw than in their own country.
I hear my Polish colleagues ask, after Bucha and so many other atrocities against civilians, how can the whole world not see that Putin is Hitler’s 21st century avatar? I see my friends here giving housing and shelter to displaced Ukrainians, while my students volunteer to assist the thousands of distraught families arriving at the central railway station.
Poland is a politically polarised country and an imperfect democracy, like many others. Ukraine is too. But just as Ukrainians have come together under President Volodymyr Zelensky’s courageous wartime leadership, so too Polish citizens and politicians understand that this is a time for unity in a more pressing cause.
I have a Russian-born colleague who despairs that he has never been so ashamed to carry a Russian passport and who now displays Ukraine’s flag on his Facebook page. In contrast, I have never been so proud to hold a Polish passport in addition to my New Zealand one.
History hangs heavily over the spontaneous outpouring of solidarity by Polish civil society. In Warsaw of all cities, razed to the ground by Hitler’s murderous forces after the uprising of 1944, the sight of Mariupol’s ruins in 2022 evokes tears, empathy and outrage. As someone whose father fought in the uprising, I share those sentiments.
Just as tyranny was defeated 77 years ago, so must it be today, as stressed by my new Ukrainian colleagues. If, at Russia’s annual 9 May Victory Day celebrations, Putin is able to claim any sort of triumph in Ukraine, the world will be poorer for it. A “victory” characterised by blatant violation of sovereign borders, credible evidence of war crimes and destruction of cities will have dire implications for international order around the globe, including in New Zealand’s own region.
In 1945, VE Day ended a nightmare for the European nations that had suffered grievously from German aggression. But it also marked the beginning of redemption for the German people and their own liberation from the thrall of Nazism. So too could failure for Putin in Ukraine potentially usher in a new beginning for Russians, led by those among them who have braved imprisonment, violent repression or exile to oppose the war.
In this context, VE Day reminds us of the tragically high costs of not resisting aggression and violations of international norms. While European history since 1945 demonstrates the possibility of redemption and reconciliation, it also highlights how prolonged and painful those processes can be. Victory against one form of tyranny does not automatically mean the triumph of democracy.
In this part of Europe, freedom had to be fought for over more than four decades after 1945. One of my Polish colleagues, who was a foot soldier in Poland’s homegrown Solidarity movement of the 1980s, often notes that VE Day’s promise was delayed here, but he adds, “in the end, we won!”
For Poles and their neighbours, the lessons of history evoked by remembrance of VE Day each year have been hard won. At this time of renewed war in Europe, it matters more than ever for the whole world to remember those lessons and to act on them.
