German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul intends to send a “signal of friendship and solidarity” in Poland with a visit to an international youth centre on Monday.
“I am convinced that this German-Polish solidarity, this resolute commitment to peace and freedom, is more important today than at any time since the end of World War II,” said Wadephul ahead of his departure.
He is due to visit the International Youth Meeting Centre in Krzyżowa – known in German as Kreisau – alongside his Polish counterpart Radosław Sikorski.
The facility was erected in 1994 at the site of a famous meeting in November 1989, just days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, between West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the first non-Communist Polish prime minister after World War II.
The reconciliation mass, as the meeting became known, and the embrace between the two politicians during the service are regarded as the beginning of a new chapter in German-Polish relations following the democratic uprisings of 1989.
Wadephul said he wished to send a message of solidarity at a time “when German-Polish relations are facing renewed hostility.”
“It is in Ukraine that it will be decided whether the European peace order can endure, or whether we will fall back into the darkest times of our continent,” said Wadephul.
The fact that Germany and Poland are among Ukraine’s most resolute supporters in its defence against Russia “is therefore indispensable in terms of security policy – and at the same time the imperative lesson from our history,” the foreign minister added.