On Monday, September 18, the March of Remembrance of the Deportees to Siberia took place. Participants in the event, organized by the Bolesławiec branch of the Association of Siberian Exiles and by students and teachers of Primary School No. 2, walked through the streets of Bolesławiec, from the Market Square to the Municipal Cemetery on Śluzowa Street. There, at the monument commemorating the Polish Martyrs of Siberia and those murdered in Katyń and the gulags, the official part of the ceremony took place.
Maria Niemczuk, head of the Bolesławiec Association of Siberian Exiles, spoke:
This march is a very important patriotic event. For the seventh time, young people from Bolesławiec are taking part in the march to honor and commemorate the events that took place in Poland after September 17, 1939.
On September 17, 1939, the Red Army invaded the lands of eastern Poland—without declaring war—bringing us a foreign system and totalitarian tyranny that surpassed the repression of the tsars. Mass arrests of the Polish population began, followed by deportations. […] More than 1.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the vast territories of the former Soviet Union.
Inhuman conditions during transport, penal labor, disease and hunger took a deadly toll among Poles. Kolyma, Vorkuta and Kazakhstan were just a few of the hundreds of places of execution.
They tried to make us believe that Poland did not exist, would not exist and that we would never return to it. We did not believe our tormentors. Today, we carry within us the memory of those who did not return, who remained forever in foreign soil.
She added:
The tragedy of the Golgotha of the East, one of the greatest of the 20th century, is among the most painful chapters of Polish history. For many years after the war, the truth about these events could not come to light.