On 28 February, an event in memory of Polish soldiers fighting for independence in the times of communist terror was held in the Belvedere Palace, the residence of the Polish President. The celebration was organised in cooperation with the Institute of National Remembrance, the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom and the Pomeranian Medical University.
NIK President Krzysztof Kwiatkowski played a special role at the event. Back in the years 2009-2011, as the Minister of Justice, Kwiatkowski was a signatory of the Letter of Intent which was also signed by the President of the Institute of National Remembrance, Łukasz Kamiński and Secretary of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom, Andrzej Kunert. In the memorandum its signatories expressed their will to cooperate and take join efforts to find places of burial (unknown until then) of the communist terror victims from the years 1944-1956.
As a result of cooperation exhumation works began and procedures were undertaken to annul decisions of the Stalin courts which sentenced Polish soldiers from the post-war anti-communist resistance organisations to death or long-time imprisonment. Until today, 2500 petitions concerning such sentences have been reviewed. During the celebration in the Belvedere Palace, the names of 12 persons identified in the course of exhumation works were announced.
”This is just the beginning of developments commemorating the heroes of that dramatic post-war period” - President Bronisław Komorowski said during the meeting. He also said to the families of the Polish underground soldiers that the burial of people identified during exhumations in the Powązki Military Cemetery should be celebrated as a state holiday.
From 1944 to 1956, about fifty thousand people died following the communist terror in Poland. They got killed under court sentences, were murdered in the seats of Security and Military Intelligence Offices, prisons and camps, lost their lives in the fight or in the course of pacification activities. A large group of victims were members of the anti-communist resistance who continued armed fight until the early fifties.
The bodies of the murdered were buried in secret places most of which have been unknown until today - in mass graves in cemeteries or in their surroundings, in the vicinity of the security agencies’ seats, in forests and on military ranges. Some of them were also transported to anatomy departments. Nearly all quarters with the remains of prisoners from the Stalin times were liquidated until the eighties.
The project ”Searching for unknown places of burial of the communist terror victims 1944-1956” is an outcome of cooperation of several public institutions, first of all of the Institute of National Remembrance, the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom, the Ministry of Justice and the Pomeranian Medical University. The project aims at finding the graves of people lost and murdered in the Stalin times as well as at carrying out the exhumation and identification of the remains found.
