„You know, I can’t stop thinking, would all this have happened if two years ago these people hadn’t started all this hate campaign against our soldiers on the border?”

This is the opinion of Mr Michal, whom I met today at the funeral of Mateusz Sitek, a Polish soldier killed by an illegal immigrant on the Polish-Belarusian border. We know very well who „they” are. Mr Michal used another, much stronger word to describe „them”, but I will not repeat it here.

I did not know what to answer to him. After all, this question was on the minds of everyone who came to northern Mazovia on that June day to pay tribute to the young soldier.

I stood in front of St Anne’s Church in Nowy Lubiel, surrounded by a crowd of people and Polish flags.

Mateusz’s family, friends and neighbours had gathered in the church, where the funeral service was taking place. Men and women stood in front of the entrance, many of whom had first heard of the young soldier from the village of Plevitsa, on 28 May, the day he was attacked in the morning on the section of the border near Dubicze Cerkiewne.

I waited for the final farewell to Mateusz to begin. The sound of the „Hail Mary” mingled at one point with the footsteps of Polish soldiers entering the wooden floor of the church. Many of them remained outside. I recognised various military units, from territorial defence soldiers, police officers, to firefighters, high school students from the CN-B Polish Paratroopers’ First High School in Wyszków… They had all come to pay tribute to the fallen soldier, the defender of Poland.

Can an illegal immigrant receive better protection than a Polish soldier?

— asked at the beginning of the funeral, the parish priest who had given Mateusz the sacrament of baptism and first communion. This is another question that needs to be answered.

The president’s message

The funeral took place with dignity and in silence, just as the family had requested. The emotional highlight, however, were two speeches: President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda and the mother of the fallen soldier Emilia Sitek.

Here rests a Polish soldier by vocation and upbringing. When he chose this service, he knew that it involved risk. He undertook the task and did not desert

— Duda said.

He referred to St John Paul II’s famous sermon at Westerplatte in 1987, when the Pope called out to young people that each of them has „his Westerplatte”, some task from which he must not desert.

And this is what such tasks are all about

— said the President.

For there have always been and will always be many such tasks on Polish territory. There are also many today, and we must embrace them.

With great silence, I listened to the words of Mrs Emilia Sitek, mother of the late Mateusz, who asked:

Dear friends, let us pray for our homeland. May the rulers of our country always make wise and responsible decisions, so that no mother has to cry over the coffin of her child, and sons and daughters can return safely to their families.

President Duda was right. This was no ordinary farewell, no ordinary funeral. It was the burial of a Polish soldier killed on the Polish border. The first one after almost 80 years.

Sadness at Mateusz’s premature death, pride that there are still sons like him in Poland, ready to give their lives for the fatherland, anxiety at the thought of the years to come when the monster of Russian imperialism emerges in the East… There are many sentiments accompanying the funeral of soldier Mateusz Sitek.

He was a very, very good boy

— tells me his friend from the football field, where they played football together, a sport which, next to the army, was Mateusz’s another great passion.

Things like this should not happen

— he adds quietly.

Indeed, they should not.

Tłum. K.J.