State funeral of defenders of Westerplatte took place on Friday (November 4) at Polish Army Soldiers Cemetery in Gdańsk. The official burial ceremony of 10 Polish soldiers - who had died in the first days of the World War II in a heroic defence of the Westerplatte peninsula - had a stately character. Caskets containing ashes of the 10 fallen servicemen have finally had a decent burial ceremony, 83 years after the German attack on Poland. As President Andrzej Duda said during the funeral, the soldiers had been "only buried in a shallow pit" by the Germans. The remains of the heroic army men were found in 2019.
The funeral ceremony of Westerplatte defenders began on Friday morning at Saint Bridget Church in Gdańsk. From there, the caskets with ashes of the fallen soldiers, covered with Polish flags, were trasnported to the Polish Army Soldiers Cemetery at Westerplatte.
The remains of the soldiers were found in 2019 at the Westerplatte peninsula, where in the first days of WWII the Polish soldiers had fought against the Germans for a week. As it has recently turned out, their bodies spent over eighty years in the ground, and their discovery was surprising even for archeologists. The remains were indentified and the heroes could be buried on Friday.
"Today we pay homage to them and lay their bodies in the ground, on which they fought for freedom and independence of our homeland," said military chaplain of Polish Armed Forces Wiesław Lechowicz.
President Andrzej Duda spoke about the sensational discovery made in 2019. "Previously they were buried in a shallow pit, not a grave, a pit - let's make that clear - by the Germans simply as soldiers killed here."
The president added that "everyone was amazed when after more than 80 years the remains of the soldiers were discovered, the heroes, defenders of Westerplatte buried sloppily in the ground".
He stressed it was an important and symbolic moment for Poland. "We know how long and difficult was the history of this commemoration, when the communists would remove the cross from here and place a Soviet tank instead, and thus falsifying the history. And later when workers from Gdańsk and steelworkers from Warsaw fought to bring back the true importance of this place and historical truth," Duda said.
Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, thus marking the beginning of the Second World War. At 4:45 a.m., German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fired its guns at the Westeplatte peninsula in the then Free City of Danzig (today's Polish city of Gdańsk). The peninsula was home to Poland's Military Transit Depot, which was heroically defended by some 200 soldiers under the command of Major Henryk Sucharski and Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski. The defence of Westerplatte lasted 7 days, during which Polish soldiers repelled continued attacks from the sea, land, and air, only to become a symbol of Polish resistance.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, PAP