Poland commemorates its so-called Cursed Soldiers on Thursday with exhibitions, concerts, demonstrations, film screening and other events planned across the country.

The main events are planned in Warsaw, where Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Thursday morning laid a wreath under a plaque in his chancellery building commemorating Witold Pilecki, also known as the Auschwitz volunteer.

A special exhibition has been set up at Warsaw's Museum of Cursed Soldiers.

Marking the 7th Cursed Soldiers' Day in Poland, public radio Polskie Radio launched an educational website, zolnierzewykleci.polskieradio.pl, featuring communist-era propaganda from trials against opposition activists and testimonies of people who survived repressions.

“Cursed Soldiers” refers to some members of Poland's anti-communist movements.

After Poland's official underground army (AK) of World War II disbanded in January 1945 thousands of Poles continued to fight in other formations as the Soviet Red Army extended its grip across the country.

A Soviet-backed communist regime was later installed in rigged 1947 elections after the war.

The anti-communist guerrillas were largely stamped out by 1948, although one fighter, Józef Franczak, was gunned down as late as 1963.

Colonel Witold Pilecki is known as the victim of two totalitarian systems and the “Auschwitz volunteer”.

In 1940 he allowed himself to be arrested by the Germans and sent to the Nazi-run Auschwitz death camp in order to gain first-hand knowledge of the conditions there.

He managed to send reports from Auschwitz, indicating that an extermination of European Jews was being prepared by the Germans.

In 1943, having escaped from the camp, Pilecki reached Warsaw, and a year later fought in the Warsaw Uprising.

After the war, he went to Italy and joined the Second Corps. He was sent by the Polish intelligence to Poland as a spy. However, he was captured and executed by the communist authorities in 1948. His burial place has never been found.

In 1990, he was rehabilitated, and in 2008 posthumously received the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state distinction.

Polish diaspora communities in the US are expected to mark Cursed Soldiers' Day over the weekend. (vb/pk)

Source: IAR