Russia-Poland feud over history clouds Auschwitz anniversary

The Polish authorities only did what provoked the Russians. And the Russians answered them shortly. The Poles have been responding to the short phrase about their ambassador for a month now.

25M dead isn't whitewashing, but all of Europe was involved in some way.

The Polish resistance was the largest in occupied Europe for all of WW2 and is credited for saving more Jewish lives than any other organization OR govt.

Poland had about 6M deaths in WW2 as well, though 1.9M were ethnic Poles. No small number.

Both deserve recognition for their efforts and sacrifices.

The US lost just 407K military in WW2.

So whitewashing history is not limited to Abe and Japan. Go figure!

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to shift wartime blame to Poland

Serious revisionism. Victors write history, and the Soviet Union was a victor in WW2, but a stretch like that can only be believed by Putin's Russian ultranationalist followers and perhaps some in the global alt right movement who see Putin as a political messiah.

Putin understands 'his' people, knows they adore Stalin, who they see as their greatest leader. Curious how Stalin's 'communism' (in name at least), which represents a far left pole on the political spectrum, squares with Putin's far right politics and his stated aversion to 'liberals' and 'the left'.

Or maybe with Putin's Russian followers it's not about left or right, instead it's about going back to the totalitarianism Russians are accustomed to. For some reason some people fear the freedoms democracies can offer, and instead want big brother watching over them.