Funerals of communist regime`s victims

[Bonobo]

Discovered remains are buried with state honours.

Funeral with honours for Polish resistance members killed by communists
28.08.2016 08:00
A funeral with special honours for two members of the Polish underground Home Army executed by the communist regime after World War II took place in the northern city of Gdańsk.
The funeral of Danuta Siedzikówna and Feliks Selmanowicz happened on the 70th anniversary of their execution.
The ceremonies were attended by senior Polish officials, including President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Beata Szydło.
The funeral was preceded by a Mass, during which the decision to posthumously promote the two heroes was announced.
"We are not restoring their dignity, because they never lost it. We are restoring the dignity of Poland as a country," President Andrzej Duda said in his speech during the Mass.
"A country needs heroes to be strong and to be able to bring up the next generations. And Poland has heroes!"
Siedzikówna (also known as Inka, her nom de guerre) was a medical orderly and was executed when she was just 17 years old.
She was killed together with Selmanowicz (codename Zagończyk) in Gdańsk in 1946, by the Soviet-backed communist regime that came to power in Poland after World War II.
Many who had served in the Home Army (AK), the underground force loyal to the Polish government-in-exile in the UK, were victims of a wave of terror after the war, were vilified as enemies of the state, killed and buried secretly in unnamed graves.
Inka’s and Zagończyk’s remains were found in late 2014 by a team from Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance led by Professor Krzysztof Szwagrzyk. (mol/pk)

Source: PAP

[Bonobo]

State funeral after 65 years for Polish navy officers killed by communists
16.12.2017 14:05
Three senior Polish navy officers on Saturday received a state funeral with honours 65 years after they were killed by the country’s former communist rulers.
President Andrzej Duda speaks at the state funeral for the three officers in the northern coastal city of Gdynia on Saturday.
President Andrzej Duda and a slew of other officials took part in the burial ceremonies in the northern coastal city of Gdynia, for Stanisław Mieszkowski, Zbigniew Przybyszewski and Jerzy Staniewicz, who were convicted and subsequently executed by the country’s communist authorities in 1952 on the basis of trumped-up charges, according to Polish Radio’s IAR news agency.

In 1939, all three defended Poland’s coast against a German attack. After Polish forces were overpowered by the invader, Mieszkowski, Przybyszewski and Staniewicz were sent to prisoner-of-war camps.

After the war, they returned to service in the Polish navy. But in the early 1950s, the country’s communist authorities falsely accused them of espionage, among other charges, according to IAR.

After several months of torture, a sham trial and being handed death sentences, they were executed with shots to the back of the head at an infamous prison for political prisoners on Warsaw’s Rakowiecka Street in December 1952.

On Friday, Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz led memorial ceremonies in the coastal town of Hel where the coffins of the three officers were displayed at a church before being shipped by sea to Gdynia.

The remains of the three officers, whom the communists buried secretly in unnamed mass graves at Warsaw’s Powązki cemetery, were unearthed in 2013 by a team from Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) led by Krzysztof Szwagrzyk.

They were laid to rest with honours at the Polish Navy Cemetery in Gdynia-Oksywie.