The presidents of Germany and Poland on Wednesday marked the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Poland which sparked World War II, with a moving ceremony on their joint border.

Hundreds of Polish army veterans gathered with Poland's Aleksander Kwasniewski and Germany's Johannes Rau in a Gdansk suburb where on September 1, 1939 the German warship the Schleswig-Holstein first fired on Poland. In an address Kwasniewski expressed his country's "bitter disappointment" that Poland "was the first to say no to Nazi Germany, and was abandoned by their allies."But he underlined the reconciliation between Poland and Germany cemented in recent years by Germany's support for the reintegration of ex-communist states into mainstream Europe.Earlier the two heads of state met at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, on the border between their two states for a symbolic handshake 60 years to the day after the Nazi invasion of Poland. The handshake took place on the Peace Bridge, linking Frankfurt-on-the-Oder with its Polish neighbor, Slubice. Rau walked to the center of the bridge from the German side while Kwasniewski came from the Polish side.