Why did the Polish delegation have to clean up the garbage in Kutaisi

According to the Mayor’s Office of Kutaisi, instead of the place previously specified in the protocol, the Polish delegation visited a private territory instead of the territory where the concentration camp of the NKVD was located in the past.

This is how the Kutaisi City Hall reacted to the information disseminated on November 7 in various media that members of the Polish delegation arrived in Kutaisi, among whom were the vice-speaker of the Seimas Malgorzata Goszewska and the Ambassador of Poland to Georgia Mariusz Mashkevich.

During the visit, they visited the territory of the former concentration camp. The territory was polluted, and they themselves cleaned it up in order to light commemorative candles here later.

The Kutaisi City Hall also stated that the camp, where Polish prisoners were kept together with prisoners in 1945-1947, was located in several buildings, including on the territory adjacent to the Kutaisi airport.

“The territory of the former concentration camp was visited at different times by many foreign guests, including more than once there were guests from the Republic of Poland – both the ambassador and the vice-speaker. We do not know why the program of the delegation’s visit was changed and the delegation was taken to a private area instead of the previously agreed one,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.

The Embassy of Poland in Georgia told Netgazeti that they know that the place where the ceremony participants lit the candles is probably not the site of the NKVD camp, this is due to the fact that the camp itself and the graves of the dead were vandalized and it is currently difficult say exactly where the victims were buried.

“We only wanted to pay a symbolic tribute to the Polish victims of the camp in a place accessible to the participants and in full view of the local population. We knew the state of this place. To improve the situation a little, we collected the rubbish thrown there. We didn’t want to put candles next to plastic bottles. It’s all. We believe that the reaction of some media to this event is exaggerated and damages the good name of the authorities of the city of Kutaisi and Imereti, which gave us the opportunity to organize events on November 6, 2022,” the Polish Embassy said in a statement.

On November 6, Kutaisi hosted a series of events organized by the Embassy of Poland. The program included a visit to the territory of the NKVD concentration camp. As part of the program, the Polish-Georgian Interdisciplinary Research Center named after Professor Krukovsky was opened and a memorial plaque dedicated to the Poles held in Kutaisi camp No. 0331 was unveiled. The Poles were stationed in Kutaisi by the Soviet NKVD in March 1945.