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Ghosts of Europe's past: Why Russia's invasion of Ukraine is so painful for WWII survivors in Poland

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For those living in Poland, the attack on neighbouring Ukraine feels all too familiar.

In 1939, it took just 27 days for Poland to run out of ammunition and fall to the Nazis, triggering the Second World War, in an attack that looked all too similar to the one unfolding in Ukraine today.

"We would like to know that people are learning from history but it’s not true," Bartosz Heksel, curator at the Oskar Schindler’s Factory, told CTV National News Chief Anchor and Senior Editor Lisa LaFlamme. "Poland was in the same condition as Ukraine.”

But in Krakow, Poland's second-largest city, home to the Oskar Schindler factory where thousands of Jews were saved from Hitler's army, history offers a reminder that it is possible to pivot the power of one to save many lives.

LaFlamme reflects on her visit to the Oskar Schindler factory, made famous by the 1993 film Schindler's List, in the video above as thousands of Ukrainian refugees find themselves in the city where good happened amongst evil.

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