OSWIECIM, Poland, Jan  27, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Polish Prime Minister Mateusz

Morawiecki on Friday used the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day to accuse
Russian President Vladimir Putin of building "new camps" while waging war
against Ukraine.

"On the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp
Auschwitz-Birkenau, let us remember that to the east Putin is building new
camps," Morawiecki said on Facebook.

"Solidarity and consistent support for Ukraine are effective ways to ensure
that history does not come full circle," he added.

Morawiecki did not elaborate on his accusation against Russia, though it
echoed a claim made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last year.
In an address in October, Zelensky spoke of Olenivka, "a concentration camp
where our prisoners are kept".

UN investigators also said last year they had documented more than 400
arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Poland on Friday marked the 78th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz-Birkenau at the site of the former camp in the southern Polish city
of Oswiecim.

Attendees included religious leaders, Holocaust survivors and Douglas
Emhoff, the Jewish husband of US Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Auschwitz museum had earlier said that Russia had not been invited to
this year's commemoration given its "aggression against a free and independent
Ukraine".

The museum denounced the Russian offensive as a "barbaric act" on the day
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 last year.

Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of six
million European Jews, one million of whom died at the camp between 1940 and
1945 along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.