The memorial day was established by the country’s parliament in 2007 to commemorate Polish prisoners of war, killed in the spring of 1940 on orders from top Soviet authorities.

Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, thousands of Polish officers were deported to camps in the Soviet Union.

POWs from camps in Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov as well as Poles held in prisons run by the Soviet Union's NKVD secret police were among those murdered in April 1940.

❗2⃣2⃣,0⃣0⃣0⃣ army and police officers, intelectual elites, all of them Polish patriots – were killed in a matter of just two months. Here’s how the 🇵🇱 #NKVD planned and executed this genocidal decapitation of the Polish nation. #KatynMassacre #SovietCrimes #WWII #Katyn #Katyn80. pic.twitter.com/kHAkKwqP5w — Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) April 11, 2020

To find out more about the Katyń massacre, please visit Poland's Institute of National Remembrance's website.

(tf)

Source: IAR, PAP, ipn.gov.pl