WARSAW: Poland’s culture minister on Wednesday rejected speculation that a rare book given to Pope Francis earlier this week by French President Emmanuel Macron might have been looted from Poland during World War II.
The minister, Piotr Glinski, said the book “is not a Polish war loss,” and that “contrary to the claims of some media ... this work was not stolen from Poland.”
Concerns had risen in Poland after a photo was published of a stamp in the old book from a library in Lviv, a city that is now part of Ukraine but was the Polish city of Lwow until WWII.
The volume is the first French edition of German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s work “On Eternal Peace,” dating from 1796.
Poland saw much of its cultural patrimony destroyed or looted during the country’s wartime occupation by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and about 500,000 artifacts remain missing.
The country has been making efforts to recover as much as possible. The Culture Ministry has a Division for Looted Art that keeps a database of missing objects and scours foreign collections and auctions.
When they locate a looted Polish painting, book or other object, they inform law enforcement officials of the country it’s found in.
Poland says book given to pope by Macron wasn’t WWII plunder
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Poland says book given to pope by Macron wasn’t WWII plunder
- The minister, Piotr Glinski, said the book “is not a Polish war loss,”
- “Contrary to the claims of some media ... this work was not stolen from Poland”
German railway Deutsche Bahn hit by cyberattack
- The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack caused problems with the railway’s website
- “Our defensive measures were effective in minimizing the impact on our customers,” DB said
BERLIN: A cyberattack against Germany’s state-owned railway Deutsche Bahn briefly disrupted ticketing systems and timetable information services this week, the company disclosed Wednesday.
The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack caused problems with the railway’s website and its widely used DB Navigator app on Tuesday afternoon.
The website and app issues were mostly resolved by Tuesday evening, but resurfaced again on Wednesday morning.
Deutsche Bahn is Germany’s dominant rail service, operating both passenger and cargo trains as well as suburban commuter railways in many cities.
“Our defensive measures were effective in minimizing the impact on our customers,” Deutsche Bahn said.
The company has been in contact with Germany’s BSI cybersecurity authorities, an interior ministry spokeswoman said Wednesday, adding that she could provide few additional details about the attack.
