Svetlana Alexievich has found herself in the center of an international scandal. During her speech in New York, the writer gave her own assessment of the events of the Second World War.
“I’ll tell you more. In Belarus, for example, punishers who worked in the territory of Belarus, they were all from Ukraine. Moreover, in Lithuania, Latvia, Jews were being killed even before the Germans came. But it also happened in Ukraine. And you know what Poland did with the Jews… There are different times, and today people living in Latvia, are they responsible for what their parents did? In the highest sense they are! One of my journalist friends in Poland wrote what the Poles did with the Jews. Poles had the worst attitude towards the Jews. The priests said in their sermons, “Kill the Jew!” said Svetlana Alexievich.
Official Warsaw reacted to these words. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland issued a statement emphasizing that the statements of Alexievich were “unfair” and not supported by facts.
“Such statements are not supported by the facts and are highly unfair and detrimental to the Polish people. Recall that during the Second World War, the punishment assigned by the German occupation authorities for the thousands of Poles, including many heroic representatives of the Polish clergy, who saved Jews was the death penalty,” said the statement of the Polish Foreign Ministry.
Last year Svetlana Alexievich became the Nobel Prize laureate in Literature. The writer has repeatedly found herself in the center of public scandals, including in our country, in connection with the acquisition of real estate in a so-called Minsk Chyzh house. Also Alexievich was criticized representatives of the Russian literary community.
