Day of Remembrance for Victims of Katyn Massacre

On Friday we celebrated the Independence Day of Remembrance for Victims of Katyn Massacre at the cemetery in Kharkov.

Cemetery Victims of Totalitarianism in Kharkov is a military cemetery in Kharkov, in the region of Kiev, the Piatichatki, built in 1999-2000. There rests 4,302 officers of the Polish Army and Polish civilians murdered by the NKVD in 1940, and about 2,000 Soviet Ukrainians, Russians and Jews murdered by the NKVD in the years 1937-1938.

Polish prisoners of war resting in the cemetery were transferred in 1940 to Kharkov from the camp in Starobelsk and shot in the basement of a Circuit Board NKVD in Kharkov.

Today we celebrate the memory with a prayer, given by began Orthodox priest. Then flowers were placed by various delegations who came to celebrate this day. At the cemetery, there was a speech by the Consul General of Kharkov, which drew us to the only form of murdered woman Janina Lewandowska, who was born in Kharkov, and was murdered in Katyn. She was a Polish airman, an officer of the Polish Army.

At the end of the celebration of the liturgy of Holy Mass presided by Bishop. The whole ceremony was conducted in two languages, Russian and Polish.

We also prayed for the victims of the disaster in Smolensk, where the killing of Polish president- Lech Kaczynski, his wife and the last president of the emmigration – Ryszard Kaczorowski. And many other distinguished Poles, who flew to submit honor the victims of the Katyn massacre.