A Polish government delegation led by Lech Parell, head of Poland’s Office for War Veterans and Victims of Repression, attended alongside Ukraine’s National Memory Institute chief Olexandr Alfiorov.
“Once again we stand at the Polish Military Cemetery in Bykivnia, a special place marked by pain, but also by memory,” Parell said, calling it “shocking testimony” to the path of Soviet communism.
Parell said Bykivnia was “the only currently accessible cemetery” where Katyn victims are buried.
“The only relatively accessible one, because in Ukraine, as we know, there is a war, but this place can be visited,” he said. “That is why it matters so much to us to be here on March 5.”
Parell said the cemetery also linked Poles and Ukrainians because, alongside Polish officers and prisoners, it held “more than 120,000 people of various nationalities” killed by the Soviet system.
Poland’s ambassador to Kyiv, Piotr Łukasiewicz, said that while visitors often repeat “never again war,” it was worth telling Russians: “You will not repeat this.”
“You will not repeat what you have repeated throughout your history of building and expanding your empire,” he said.
After the ceremony, Pro Patria medals were presented at Poland’s embassy in Kyiv, including to Lukasiewicz, consuls Paweł Owad and Jan Zdanowski, and Bohdan Netreba, director of the Bykivnia graves memorial complex.
On March 5, 1940, the Soviet Communist Party’s Politburo decided to execute Polish prisoners held in camps at Kozelsk, Starobilsk and Ostashkov, and Polish prisoners held by the NKVD in areas including Kyiv, a decision that led to the Katyn massacre.
Bykivnia is one of two Katyn cemeteries in Ukraine, alongside Piatykhatky in Kharkiv. About 150,000 victims of communism of various nationalities were buried there in mass graves, including about 3,500 Poles killed by the Soviets in 1940.
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Source: PAP