Eurotopics.net

The Red Army reached the German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz 75 years ago. Major commemorative ceremonies were held on Monday on location in Poland and in Israel last week. Europe's media discuss how the memory of the Shoah can be kept alive - also in view of current developments.

Poland and Russia have long been at odds over historical interpretations of the Second World War. Warsaw stresses that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on the division of Poland was a major cause of the war. Putin recently said that in reality Poland was an accomplice of Hitler's Germany, especially in the Holocaust. It was also because of this dispute that Duda didn't attend the commemorative ceremony in Yad Vashem and Putin didn't go to Auschwitz.

Marjan Šarec, Prime Minister of Slovenia since 2018, announced his resignation on Monday and at the same time called for early elections. The move was prompted by the minority government's inability to implement important legislative proposals, Šarec said. Slovenia's media are not happy.

In a "hackathon" on the weekend Czech programmers set up an online sales system for motorway vignettes free of charge. The IT experts' action was aimed at demonstrating how pointless and superfluous a government contract for the shop that was to cost 16 million euros was. The transport minister was promptly dismissed over the incident. Czech media are enthusiastic about this creative form of protest.

The eastern Turkish province of Elazığ was hit by a heavy earthquake on Friday night. At least 41 people were killed. Commentators discuss the authorities' reaction to the disaster and accusations that the government failed to use the revenues from a special earthquake tax to put the appropriate protective measures in place.