WWII Remembered In Gdansk

The eyes of the world turned to Gdansk on September 1st when leaders gathered to commemorate the outbreak of the Second World War.

The first shots of WWII were fired at the Polish military outpost of Westerplatte, which then bordered what was the Free City of Danzig.

Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi and Yulia Tymoshenko were amongst the speakers at the event, but it was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who drew the most interest. Poles were on tenterhooks to know whether the Russian strongman would acknowledge the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17th, 1939, a pre-planned deal with the Nazis that was cemented by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August '39. In the end, Putin did refer to the pact, which he described as "immoral".

About 6 million Polish citizens died during World War II, 3 million of them of Jewish descent. Most perished at the hands of the Nazis, but it was not until 1990 that Russia admitted guilt for crimes such as the Katyn massacre.