Polish WWII leader remembered on death anniversary
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
04.07.2019 17:35
Government officials and parliamentary leaders on Thursday laid flowers at a Warsaw monument to Polish World War II leader Gen. Władysław Sikorski.
Gen. Władysław SikorskiPhoto: Collection of the Office of War Information [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Thursday marked the 76th anniversary of Sikorski's death in an air crash seconds after take-off from Gibraltar.
In a special letter read out during the ceremony, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki described Sikorski as a patriot who devoted his entire life to serving his homeland.
Sikorski led a London-based government-in-exile set up after the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939.
After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Sikorski signed a treaty with Moscow, his erstwhile foe, to free hundreds of thousands of Polish POWs into an exile army.
But the Soviets broke ties with Sikorski in 1943 when he demanded an inquiry into the Katyn Massacre of more than 20,000 others captured in 1939.
Sikorski was buried at a Polish military cemetery in Newark near the central English city of Nottingham. In 1993, his ashes were exhumed and laid to rest at the historic Wawel Cathedral in the southern Polish city of Kraków.
(mk/gs)