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We attended commemorations of the 85th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre
On the occasion of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Katyn Massacre, events in commemoration of the victims of this greatest crime of World War II committed against Polish prisoners-of-war were held across the country.
Dr. Renata Kobylarz-Buła, Deputy Director of the Museum, represented our institution both at the commemorative event organised on 13 April in Warsaw, and in Opole, where the anniversary commemoration was scheduled for 14 April this year. Both events marking the 85th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre were commenced with a holy mass. In Warsaw, it was celebrated in the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army, while in Opole at the Church of Blessed Czesław, next to which the Monument to the Victims of the Katyn Massacre was erected in 2021. It was just there where the other part of the commemoration took place, filled, among others, with speeches by representatives of the government, regional self-government and Urszula Gawor, president of the Association of “Katyn Family” in Opole. The ceremonial duty was provided by the 10th Opole Logistics Brigade named after Colonel Piotr Wysocki.
This year’s main commemorations, held in the capital, were organised with a flourish by the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Repression, the Federation of Katyn Families and the Katyn Museum, a martyrdom branch of the Museum of the Polish Army. The event was attended by descendants of the POWs who were murdered by the NKVD in 1940, representatives of Katyn Families and Families of the Police as well as the state authority headed by the Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Of the speeches made there, the one given by Izabella Sariusz-Skąpska, head of the Federation of Katyn Families, was particularly moving. After a joint prayer and a roll call of remembrance, the attendees of the ceremony laid wreaths at the Katyn Epitaph. Those wishing to do so were also offered the opportunity to visit, with a curator of the Katyn Museum, a new temporary exhibition, “Testimonies of the Crime. Documents excavated from the mass graves in Mednoye, Kharkiv and Katyn”, and see the film “Portrait of the Father”.
