THE LEADING ROLE OF THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES IN THE ECUMENICAL PROCESS OF POLISH-GERMAN/ RUSSIAN/UKRAINIAN RECONCILIATION

The experience of genocides of the II World War deeply traumatized Polish society.This trauma caused long lasting tensions and untruthfulness between Poles on one side and Germans, Russians and Ukrainians on the other side.Common memory of the Polish society safeguarded the harms done even in past generations.While the civil societies and state authorities turned to be unable to fruitfully launch the process of reconciliation, the religious communities and their leaders step forward with the initiatives starting the process of reconciliation from the spiritual side and thus opened the path to success.The first example is the letter of Polish Catholic episcopate to German bishops 1 in 1965 which launched the Polish-German healing of memories process.The second and third examples are respectively the common message of Polish Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church to the nations of Poland and Russia 2 in 2012 and the