A dozen or so people from the Ruch Obrony Granic (Border Defence Movement), including Robert Bąkiewicz, were heading yesterday toward the temporary monument to the Polish victims of the years 1939-1945 in Berlin. The Poles wanted to lay flowers in silence and to pray on the anniversary of the first transport of Polish prisoners to the Auschwitz extermination camp. The way to their destination, however, was suddenly and brutally blocked.

- They were surrounded by German police officers. This encirclement consisted of many rings. I have the impression that it was three rings of officers that surrounded them - recounts Aleksandra Fedorska.

The German officers did not provide a clear legal basis for their actions. They merely explained that this form of gathering and patriotic expression was “inadvisable” in this area. The Poles were forbidden to continue marching as a group.

Faced with the absence of any legal arguments from the police, the assembled Poles declared a so-called spontaneous assembly, which German law guarantees them. The officers, however, did not want to hear of it. When the Poles began to sing, a scuffle broke out.

- They also sang the Rota. In the police statement this is called loud shouting - the journalist adds.

For the German services, the problem turned out to be not only the procession itself, but above all the presence of religious and national symbols. The police demanded that the Poles hide the cross, roll up the flags and walk one by one.

The entire incident was filmed by the cameras of Telewizja Republika (TV Republika). The brutality of the German officers caused enormous consternation among passers-by who happened to be present. Among the witnesses to the police aggression was, among others, a young American woman living in Berlin.

- She saw elderly people being finished off to the ground with a knee and fists, because that is what it looked like. She was horrified and was running to the site of this event, because she could not believe that it was happening - Fedorska relates.

When the horrified woman tried to draw the attention of the onlookers and of the police officers themselves to the fact that they were beating elderly, defenceless people carrying flowers, she herself fell victim to aggression. The police officers brutally grabbed her, dragged her into the patrol car and forced her to apologize, threatening her with detention.

Why did the German services decide on such a radical and violent solution against a handful of peaceful people? In the opinion of Aleksandra Fedorska, this action had a purely political and demonstrative dimension.

- The Border Defence Movement has been a problem for the Germans for two years. And the Germans hoped that the Poles would simply deal with this movement on their own, because this movement simply gets in the way of German policy on this border - explains the editor-in-chief of Radio Debata.

The Poles were stopped just 150 metres short of the destination monument. The intervention of the German police provoked outrage and will certainly be met with official questions from the Polish diplomats.