Virtual commemoration of mass murder victims. President Andrzej Duda: "We Poles will always remember Katyń"

This commemoration was supposed to look different, but the original plan could not be implemented due to the coronavirus epidemic. This unusual situation forced us to look for other solutions to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Katyń crime

— Wojciech Kolarski, Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, tells wPolityce.pl.

THE WEBSITE DEDICATED TO THE COMMEMORATION OF THIS NATIONAL TRAGEDY IS ==> HERE.

We have decided to create a virtual exhibition in which we recall by name Polish Army officers, Border Protection Corps soldiers, State Police and Prison Guard officers, officials and all other representatives of the Polish intelligentsia, murdered by the Soviet regime and buried in cemeteries in Bykownia, Kharkiv, Katyń and Miednoye, as well as pay tribute to the thousands of those murdered whose burial places have not been found to this day

— he explains.

In a special message the president wrote:

We Poles will always remember Katyń. We remember it now, on the 80th anniversary of the crime, differently than we had planned - in the form of a virtual exhibition. Because also in this exceptional time Katyń remains a symbol without which it is impossible to understand Polish history. Let us honour the heroes of the free Republic. And let us pass on to the young generation of Poles their ethos and heritage

— appealed Andrzej Duda.

In April 1940 the NKVD began the liquidation of camps for Polish officers in Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov. Within six weeks, 14 587 prisoners of war were shot. About 7,300 Poles detained in prisons in the pre-war eastern provinces of the Republic of Poland were also murdered. They were all killed with shots in the back of their heads and the whole truth about the crime was suppressed during the communist period.

Tłum. K.J.