Auschwitz Museum

The dispute revolves around the fact that the display refers to half of the Holocaust's six million Jewish victims as Soviet citizens.

The museum has said this is not acceptable because almost one million Jews came from parts of eastern Poland, the Baltic countries and Romania, annexed under the 1939 pact between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

Museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfeld said the Russians had failed to respond to a compromise solution. "This is about the suggestion of the museum that there should be at least one reference to Poland's territorial status before and after the September 17, 1939," he said.

Credibility question

"As is well known, a large part of the population of the eastern regions came under Soviet rule. That has to be taken into account if you want to remain credible to visitors to Auschwitz," Mensfeld added.

The Russian part of the museum was closed three years ago for renovation and was originally meant to reopen in 2005.

Several other countries have their own exhibition spaces in the former barracks of Auschwitz that reflect the fate of their citizens at the hands of the Nazis. The Belgian, Czech, Dutch, French, Hungarian and Slovak spaces have all been revamped in recent years.

The decision to delay the opening of the Russian block has sparked a political row that is stirring up deep-seated resentments between Moscow and Warsaw.

Technically correct

While technically the description of victims from the annexed countries as Soviet citizens is correct, the museum says they cannot be regarded as such because they did not voluntarily renounce their original nationalities and freely assume Soviet citizenship.

Russia stands accused of continuing to propagate a version of history that portrays the Soviet Union as a liberator and papers over its role as an aggressor.

International Auschwitz-Birkenau Council President Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said he ruled out the existence in Poland of an exhibition that misrepresented history based on the criteria of the Stalinist era.

Hitler-Stalin pact

The Council president, who was himself a prisoner at the camp, is a famous resistance leader who took part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis and later went on to serve as a Polish foreign minister after the end of communist rule.

"If they want to desecrate their own graves then so be it. But we Poles will not allow us to be misused in the framework of the Hitler-Stalin doctrine for the annexation of half of Poland in 1939 or allow the Jews and Poles who died there to be declared Soviet citizens," said Bartoszewski.

"We protested against displays like that in the final inspection. They wanted to talk to us straightaway about the matter back in 2005, but they have still failed to do so," he added.

Outrageous provocation

Moscow has responded angrily. The Russian daily Kommersant this week quoted Russian officials as saying Poland was deliberately blocking the opening for political reasons.

Konstantin Kossatchov, the chairman of the foreign committee of the Russian parliament, has accused Poland of rewriting history.

"An extraordinarily outrageous provocation is taking place right before our very eyes. They are trying to describe history from today's standpoint and in accordance with the interests of Poland today," he said.

"I am not interested in commenting upon these interests, but it's clear that they have nothing to do with the truth," added Kossatchov.