On Monday, September 17, the March of Remembrance of Siberian Deportees took place. Participants in the event, organized by the Bolesławiec branch of the Siberians’ Association and the community 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 Katyn and the gulags, the official part of the ceremony took place.
Maria Niemczuk, head of the Siberians’ Association:
This year’s march slogan refers to the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining independence, the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Siberians’ Association and the 30th anniversary of its reactivation. It is: “Through Siberia to Independence.” The march commemorates the victims of deportations, beginning in the 18th century.
For 123 years, our country was occupied by the partitioning powers, but the Polish nation did not sit idly by, waiting for divine mercy. For many years, armed uprisings against the oppressors were organized. We want to speak about those tragic events and pass knowledge of them on to the younger generation.
And she quoted a fragment of a poem by Marian Jonkajtys:
For over two hundred years, they wrote
The history of Poland through deportation to Siberia;
Perhaps at the end of this century
Good God will finally change it…Perhaps when He gave us a Free Homeland,
He may change the meaning of certain words
And the word “Siberia” will henceforth
Mean only a different climate.