Europe Solemnly Marks War’s 1939 Onset : Poles Look ‘Into Past and Future’ as Germans Relive Shame of Invasion

Belgian radio listeners awoke to the chilling sound of Adolf Hitler declaring war on Poland, and Germans mourned their grim legacy to the world as Europeans today marked the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II.

Jews, Poles, Russians, Germans and others gathered for memorials across the continent to remember the great conflict that began with the Nazi invasion of Poland. The events conjured somber memories of bomb shelters and concentration camps, of scrambled boundaries and splintered families.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in a speech to Parliament, expressed sorrow and regret for the “unspeakable suffering” wrought by the Nazis. He also tried to assuage lingering German guilt.

“It is true that too many people in Germany and some abroad were blinded and deceived by that tyrant,” Kohl said of Hitler.

“Who among us can say with a good conscience that, confronted with such evil, they would have summoned the strength to be martyrs? And who among us can judge what it meant at that time to risk not only one’s own life but the lives of one’s family as well?” he asked.

In Communist East Berlin, ailing leader Erich Honecker missed the memorial ceremony in the 500-member People’s Chamber, where Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer delivered the main address.

Fischer called for a day of “recollection and sorrow” and said the East German leaders pledge “to do everything in our power to ensure that war and fascism never again threaten our lives and the lives of our children.”

Poland’s leaders marked the occasion with a symbolic show of unity by the Communists and the Solidarity labor movement they once crushed.

Communist President Wojciech Jaruzelski, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and former Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki, now the prime minister, appeared together at a small Polish garrison in Gdansk that bore the first Nazi onslaught on Sept. 1, 1939.

“On this day of great national memories we look not only into the past but also into the future,” said Jaruzelski, flanked by two men he once jailed.

“Let this be an oath in this sacred place,” Jaruzelski said, his voice trembling. “Poland stood the toughest trial of war with honor. On this exceptional day we have the moral right to address all nations and governments of Europe. We want to have friends close to us, and far away”--an obvious reference to the Warsaw Pact nation’s efforts to reach out to the West.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, eager to keep Poland in the Soviet sphere as that nation flirts with reform, said in a message to Jaruzelski: “The Polish people and their army were the first to bear the brunt of Germany’s powerful military machine.

“These tragic events were actually prompted by the inability of the states threatened by fascism and militarism to rally together and set up a collective security system.”

In Belgium, BRT state radio woke up listeners with a spine-tingling flash from the past: a tape of Hitler declaring war on Poland on the same day he had launched the first attacks. The frenzied fuehrer’s incitements were followed by the cheers of adoring Germans.

In London, about 200 people gathered at the St. Pancras railway station to remember their evacuation to the countryside to escape Hitler’s “blitzkrieg” bombings.