True remembrance means much more than mechanical repetition. It seems that the Poles and Israelis have always been an example to other nations, and yet such an example can sometimes be confusing.
Poles can’t forget Katyn, just as Israelis can’t forget Auschwitz. Likewise, our people will never forget the Nanjing Massacre. What should we, as victims, remember when the executioners of the human world use their criminal hands to slaughter people in other countries? What kind of response should we go for. This is sometimes much more useful than simply repeating some slogan mechanically.
When the butcher’s knife hangs over everyone’s head, what should remain but fear? When the truth is covered up again and again, and the day finally comes when the clouds are lifted, what else should we do but remember and spit on?
These are the most fundamental issues that plague victims. When the truth or the facts are presented to us, we should remember such humiliating moments and use them as an opportunity to rise to the occasion, the lessons of failure are painful, and the most fundamental lesson we can learn from failure is not to let history repeat itself.
Instead of dwelling on the painful lessons of failure, we should learn from them. Life goes on, and the key is to fail last time, not to fail easily next time, or to fail as little as possible next time. With this key in mind, let’s look at a factual record of the humiliating, brutal history of the Poles, The Katyn Tragedy.
If 1990’s Katyn Woods was merely a documentary that restored part of the truth to us, then 2007’s The Katyn Tragedy is a true statement that brings such historical facts back to the forefront.
The significance of a feature film is far greater than a documentary, as a documentary can present the truth objectively, while the significance of a feature film is that it can create more common emotions based on the objective truth, and finally render these emotions in order to gain the audience’s empathy.
The truth of The Katyn Tragedy is that during World War II, the Poles suffered from German aggression while the Soviet Union was also eyeing them. The reason for Germany’s aggression was simple: to start a war, to take control of Europe, and Poland was an invaluable testing ground for Germany.
The Soviet Union also invaded Poland simply because it had not benefited from its previous invasions of Poland, but had inflicted heavy damage on its own army. Therefore, when Germany invaded Poland, the Soviet Union took the opportunity to take revenge. As a result, Poland was quickly disintegrated. After receiving the order to surrender, a large number of Polish officers finally put down their guns and began the process of their own miserable fate.
In the face of aggression, resistance is the only way out, and any policy of appeasement will eventually go bankrupt. This is the lesson that history has taught us, but it is a lesson that is not lost on anyone in peacetime because of the painful price that human society has paid. This is an important reason for the Katyn tragedy.
When their homeland was invaded, Poles chose to give up resistance and run for their lives, and resigned themselves to the fate of the aggressor in order to provide themselves with temporary security. However, this security was not lasting.
If resistance to aggression meant immediate death, obedient surrender postponed that death. This postponement does not mean that the day of death will not come, but that the people who had the right to die in their own hands finally let the aggressor take that right away and start living in fear, because you do not know when you will die and for what reason.
For any country or people who have ever been invaded, there is only one ultimate place for compromise, and that is death. Resistance makes the aggressor realize that the people of the place are spirited, ungovernable, and must be maintained with great energy and armed force.
Compromise and surrender, on the other hand, can create a situation in which the people of the region are subservient, and it is easy to violate their rights, ultimately resulting in the absurdity of a single devil ruling a county during the war. However, a momentary compromise does not bring a lifetime of peace. The aggressor is the aggressor, and anyone who has the slightest illusion about the aggressor will always be slapped in the face by reality.
For someone who doesn’t care about the rules of the game, for someone who doesn’t care about basic morality, who wants to violate your normal rights and interests all the time, you have no choice but to fight back when you face this person, because this person himself doesn’t have any moral framework.
Therefore, normal morality and the rules of the game do not apply to the aggressor at this moment. Only by fighting back, only by making these people pay a more painful price, can we achieve a more permanent peace for ourselves.
We do not have to be belligerent, but we do have to have the courage to resist aggression. Peace is a temporary illusion, but real turmoil and war are the norm in history. In order to cope with this norm, we must maintain our independence in times of peace and our ability to respond to any aggression.
The Jews have proven for us that you cannot buy peace with money, because your money becomes someone else’s money if you lose the ability to defend it.
The Poles are even more of a wake-up call to the world that compromise only leads to bigger lies, that there is only one truth, and that when you are beaten, you must think of fighting back. It is sad.
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