13th of April 10:30 am - A Memorial March in Remembrance of the Victims of the Katyń Crime.

In the spring of 1940, due to the personal order of Stalin, NKWD (Soviet secret police) murdered more than 21.000 officers of Polish army, police, border guard and prison guard taken captive in September 1939. The 70th anniversary of this dreadful deed is at hand.



13th of April - A Memorial March in Remembrance of the Victims of the Katyń Crime.

At 10.30 in the St. Mary's Basilica, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz will celebrate the Mass in the name of the Victims. After the Mass, the participants will leave flowers next to the water-pump of Walenty Badylak on the Main Market Square, take part in the exhibition of the Institute of National Memory "The Katyń Crime" and will depart from the Main Market Sq down the Grodzka St towards the Katyń Cross next to the St Giles church.

After playing the national anthem, the programme is as follows: a prayer by the Cardinal S. Dziwisz, speeches by the head of the Institute of National Memory, head of the Association of the Families of the Victims of Katyń for Southern Poland, President of Kraków; reading of the Memory Appeal, gun-salute, leaving of flowers at the Katyń Cross, lighting of the candles and sending youth patrols to Katyń monuments in Kraków.

At 2 pm an exhibition takes place, which was prepared by the Institute of National Memory in cooperation with the Archives of the Metropolitan Curia in Kraków, in the John Paul II Centre at 18 Kanonicza St - "The Katyń Material in the archives of Metropolitan Curia in Kraków". At the exhibition you can see documents and personal belongings of the Katyń victims, acquired from the graves in 1943. They were given to the Curia at the end of the war, w 1952 confiscated by the communist secret police (UB) and in 1990 given back to the Curia.

Source www.krakow.pl

Translation:
Free Walking Tour team