Maas in Poland: In a rare show of unanimity

In the final stages of a fiercely led the Polish election campaign, there was a small Surprise: Federal foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) and his Polish colleague Jacek Czaputowicz languages for the future and unanimously rarely about how both countries, with their history and strained relations in the future, want to deal with it. The former civil rights activist Czaputowicz welcomed Maas on Tuesday as the first foreign Minister, who had come in the time of the pandemic to a visit to Warsaw. The document "the importance we attach to our relations". 28. June will be elected in Poland, a new President, three days later, Germany takes over the EU presidency.

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, based in Warsaw.

With the head of the Auschwitz memorial and Museum, Piotr Cywiński, under Maas signed an agreement, according to which Germany, half of the Federal government and the Länder, a total of approximately 60 million Euro to the capital stock of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation to contribute. The funds are to be used for the preservation of the long-range facilities of the once German in occupied Poland, built extermination camp. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had announced the Endowment in the previous year. After the signing of Cywiński surprised the audience with an idea: The neighbourhood of the two countries today is such that you "could look for common heroes, not German or Polish, but common heroes and honor". Even in the darkest time, there have given you. Cywiński suggested the first of these heroes: the German prisoner Otto Küsel, came as a convicted thief 1940 the first Transport to Auschwitz, and there, the prisoner number 2 received. As a later "function detainee," he shares the work, weakened the prisoners spared, and escape helped willing. "Without it, the development of the resistance movement in Auschwitz would not have been possible," said Cywiński. Polish political prisoners had referred to him as their "Savior"; the Survivors had proposed in 1946, in Poland to give Küsel, the honorary citizen.

Maas was impressed: "I like to go in search of the German-Polish heroes." The question, "how I would conduct myself in the time of national socialism", have him engaged "all my life", and he was later "left for Auschwitz in the policy". Who is not open today, the mouth "against racism, extremism, anti-Semitism," that is, if he had lived to become well more of a follower than a hero.