The Katyn March of Shadows is a tribute to Polish officers murdered by the Soviets during the Katyn massacre in spring 1940. Soldiers, doctors, and chaplains arrested after Russian aggression on Poland on September 17th, 1939 were killed by shots in the back of the head. On March 3rd, 2022 the 15th edition of the march took place.
The date was chosen for historical reasons. On April 3rd, 1940 communists started disposing of the Kozielsk labour camp and relocating the prisoners to places of extermination. In the April-May period, NKVD killed about 22,000 military officials and intelligentsia in Katyn, Kalinin and Kharkiv. The traces of the mass executions were discovered by the German soldiers on April 13th, 1943, in Katyn. That’s where the massacre takes its name from.
This year’s celebration started with a memorial mass at noon in the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw. The main point of the program started at 3 P.M. 300 reenactors dressed up in period-accurate military uniforms and marched in silence from the building of the National Museum in Warsaw. The parade went through Royal Route and the Warsaw Old Town, and finished at the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East.
The march takes its name from the impression it gives: as hundreds of quiet actors advance through the city in ancient clothes, as if displaced from time, they look like ghosts of the past. They become the shadows of those killed by the war.