Tadeusz Sadowski - Tomo was a Polish soldier who escaped a German prison camp and joined the Yugoslav partisans in April 1943. He took part in various guerilla operations. On 23 April he led the operation to burn German fuel storage in the Postojna cave, which was used to safeguard Nazi gasoline for the entire northern Adriatic from air raids.

The partisans used a disused tunnel that was not on German maps to enter the heavily guarded cave and burn the fuel. The fire burnt for an entire week and destroyed that part of the world-famous tourist cave. The walls in that part of the cave are still black today.

Sadowski did not see the end of the war, having died in an attempt to destroy a bridge in Praprotno, NW Slovenia, on 23 October 1944.

Speaking at the unveiling of the memorial to the Polish soldier, President Borut Pahor invited participants in his name and in the name of his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda to "not only take a look back and thank Slovenian and Polish freedom fighters for their suffering and sacrifice...but to take a vow that we will do everything in our power that such a brutish time does not repeat itself".

The day the Nazi Germany was defeated in Europe is also Europe Day celebrating a project that tried to build a better world on the ruins of WWII and succeeded in many of its goals, Pahor said as he laid a wreath at the memorial.

The project "ensured peace and freedom and focused on the things that connected the once fighting European nations... It was built on values which Slovenian partisans and Polish patriots gave their lives for," Pahor stressed.

According to him, it is an individual's moral and political responsibility not to miss the omens of time and try to make historical shifts for the better.