The National Accursed Soldiers Remembrance Day „is a tribute to the soldiers of the second underground resistance for their bravery, deep love for Poland, fond regard for patriotic traditions, and the blood they shed for their country,” reads the explanation for establishing the commemoration.
This year, we are celebrating the Day, established by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland at the request of President Lech Kaczyński, for the eleventh time. The initiative was continued by the next president, Bronisław Komorowski, and also Janusz Kurtyka, the second head of the IPN was its great proponent.
The issue of „Accursed Soldiers” gained wider recognition only in the early 1990s, as a result of the dedicated exhibit prepared by the Republican League at the Warsaw University in 1993. It was its title, „Accursed Soldiers – the Anti-Communist Underground after 1944”, that popularized the collective term for people denounced by the communist regime that took power in post-war Poland. However, the nickname also reflected the fact that the soldiers who offered armed resistance to Soviet and communist enslavement were equally branded and doomed to oblivion by the political establishment of the 3rd Polish Republic.
The National Accursed Soldiers Remembrance Day is observed on 1 March, the anniversary of the 1951 murder of the last, 4th Board of the Freedom and Independence organization (WiN), the post-war follower of the Home Army’s struggle for independence. It is, however, not just WiN members who are commemorated on that day, but all people who fought for our freedom after World War II. Among many organizations who brought them together special mention is owed to the National Military Union, but also tens of thousands of civilians who supported the anti-communist underground any way they could deserve recognition today.
On 1 March 1951, following a rigged trial that brought a harsh verdict, the Mokotów prison in Warsaw saw a brutal, Katyn-style murder of seven members of the 4th Main Board of the „Freedom and Independence” Association: Lt. Col. Łukasz Ciepliński, Maj. Adam Lazarowicz, Maj. Mieczysław Kawalec, Cpt. Józef Rzepka, Cpt. Franciszek Błażej, Cpt. Józef Batory and Cpt. Karol Chmiel. The communists buried their bodies in a nameless pit, which is still waiting to be found.
Source: IPN
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