An interesting detail picked up by the Financial Times:
It’s hard to get a straight answer in Moscow about exactly whose idea it was.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, attended a meeting of world leaders in Poland last week, commemorating the start of the second world war in 1939. So far, so good. But where did he get a hotel room? In the resort town of Sopot, in the Charles De Gaulle suite, with sea view, of the beachfront Sofitel Grand hotel. Seventy years ago, this was known as room 226, the very same room in which Adolf Hitler stayed to oversee the invasion of Poland.
The strange symbolism – gleefully highlighted in the Polish blogosphere – was all the more jarring as a war of memory erupted amongst the ceremony’s participants.
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3 Comments
Great article of the Financial Times !When i was working on the Vianden hydroelectric project , i watched TV and took a cup of coffee in the ” Salon Lafontaine ” of the hotel ” Zur Orianenburg ” , the very same room from where the German general staff was conducting the Bulge offensive .I guess that i am now a Waffen SS officer according to this ” Reductio ad Hitlerum ” !
DANIEL:You’re not in the SS, but if you chose to stay in that room on purpose, you’re savagely insensitive to the plight of the millions wiped out by the SS, inclding women and children. Hope you enjoyed your tasty coffee!And if you had been the leader of a large nation with pretensions to join the family of civilized world leaders, then your actions would certainly you had not yet become civilized enough to do so. Indeed, they’d show a callous disregard for your own nation’s role in causing so much horror, including the Katyn massacre — that is unless you made statements from your room indicating otherwise, which in this case Putin certainly did not. In fact, to the contrary, he defended his nation’s actions and blamed the West.
I once had cheesecake at the “Eagle’s Nest” at Berchtesgaden. I observed many tourists there, including vacationing members of the US military.Dosen’t make us all Nazis, Phoby.