Polish ambassador underlines significance of 50th National Reunification anniversary

The Ambassador was impressed by the recent article of General Secretary To Lam, written on this occasion, entitled "The country of Viet Nam is one, the Vietnamese nation is one." In her opinion, his words: "We cannot rewrite history, but we can shape our future. The past is to remember, to be grateful for, and to learn lessons from. The future is for building, creating, and developing together" are a forward looking vision statement that has universal meaning. The Ambassador looked forward to seeing the further developments of Viet Nam and its journey to achieve the ambitious goals it settles for itself.

"I am deeply impressed by the preparation for the anniversary. We can observe official preparations and the ambitious program of the commemoration that I am honored to join along country's leaders and my fellow diplomats in Ho Chi Minh City," Ambassador Joanna Skoczek said.

She was also amazed the most by the enthusiasm of the Vietnamese, especially the young generation. Polish Embassy is located near Ba Dinh square, in the proximity of President Ho Chi Minh Memorial Hall. For many days she has been seeing crowds of people, young couples, parents with children, friends, soldiers, whole families, wearing festive clothes, white or red ao dai, red T-shirts with yellow star, taking pictures and videos and celebrating the upcoming anniversary. The Ambassador wished that other nations, including her own, could show similar enthusiasm and demonstrate patriotic, positive, optimistic feelings about an important historical commemoration.

In 2025, Viet Nam and Poland are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the diplomatic relations. Looking back the past 50 years, increased cooperation can be seen following the reunification, measured in thousands of Vietnamese students who studied in Poland in order to bring back to their homeland new knowledge and skills on engineering, shipbuilding, mining, economics, and others which were indispensable to rebuilt the country.

Over the half past century, the cultural cooperative relations have been on the rise especially the expertise of Polish architect and conservationist, Kazimierz (Kazik) Kwiatkowski, whose work was instrumental to research and preserve the heritage of temples in My Son, imperial palace in Hue and, and the ancient town of Hoi An.

"Today we continue to develop scientific cooperation with Viet Nam, and I see a growing number of universities joining hands in cooperation in IT, AI and knowledge-based economy. But we also support the humanities, especially language studies," Joanna Skoczek said.

So far, over 120 Polish books have been translated into Vietnamese by the graduates of Polish universities, but we lack the linguists and translators of younger generation. We also want to see more Polish students studying Vietnamese. Bilateral relations are mostly about people-to-people contact. 

"Viet Nam has always had a good, trusted friend in Poland and Polish people; we stand ready to assist you in your developing endeavors and share our experience where needed," the Ambassador finalized./.