The Polish President and First Lady have sent their good wishes to Polish children at the start of the school year yesterday. Around 4.6 million students were heading back to school after the summer break.

Starting the new 2022/2023 academic year were children in some 20,000 schools nationwide, among them thousands of Ukrainian children who have fled the war in their country. In a special message for the first day of classes, President Andrzej Duda and First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda said the new school year was bringing new opportunities as well as challenges for students, teachers and parents amid the war in neighbouring Ukraine.

Source – Reuters

Dignitaries, including the Polish President, gathered at the Westerplatte monument in Gdańsk yesterday to mark the 83rd anniversary of the start of World War II.

Westerplatte was the site of a legendary battle as Polish forces fought their Nazi German invaders in what is regarded as the first battle of World War II. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited the central city of Wieluń, which was battered by Nazi German bombers on September 1, 1939. Morawiecki said that more than 5 million Poles were killed in the carnage of World War II.

Source – Ukrainian News

The head of Poland’s conservative party, Jarosław Kaczyński has said that Germany owes Poland EUR 1.3 trillion in damages inflicted on the country by Nazi Germany in World War II.

A new report stating the figure was unveiled at a ceremony in Warsaw exactly 83 years after Nazi Germany invaded Poland to start the war. Kaczyński told the gathering at Warsaw’s Royal Castle that „a decision has been made to demand reparations” from Germany. He said: „It’s about securing compensation, maybe through a long and arduous process, for everything that Germany, the German state, the German nation, did to Poland between 1939 and 1945.”

Source – Polskie Radio

Victims of murders and executions carried out by Nazi Germany in Pomerania were commemorated in interfaith prayer at the Cemetery of Victims of Hitler’s Terror in Gdańsk Zaspa.

From September 1939 to March 1945, the cemetery was a place of burial for the victims of the Nazi regime. During this period, about 17,000 prisoners and victims of murders and executions were buried in Zaspa, as the first prisoners from the Nowy Port camp, and later mainly prisoners from the German Nazi concentration camp Stutthof, some 35 kilometres from Gdańsk.

Source – Radio Gdańsk

Weather

Today will be a cloudy day with sunny intervals in a gentle breeze and temperatures of 17 degrees centigrade (63 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day and 9 degrees overnight. Tomorrow will continue cloudy with sunny intervals in a light breeze with temperatures of 17 degrees again during the day and 9 degrees overnight.

Martin Caren/MarWer