The 1945 massacre is regarded as the biggest crime against the Polish people after World War II, state news agency PAP reported.
During Sunday’s commemoration, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said: “The Augustów Roundup, the Augustów Crime in fact, was the foundational act of communist Poland.”
He told those at the ceremony that at least 7,000 people had been arrested in the Augustów Forest "as part of the Soviet swoop."
He added: “Initially, we thought that some 600 people had been killed. Today, thanks to new reports, new studies and new research, we know that the figure was bigger, that perhaps up to 2,000 people never returned to their homes.”
"The Augustów killings are an unhealed Polish wound," Morawiecki stated at the ceremony on the Hill of Crosses in the village of Giby in the country's northeast.
Suwałki Gap
Morawiecki noted that the Augustów Roundup happened in an area that is today known as Suwałki Gap, a strategic stretch of land near Russia’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
According to the politico.eu website, “in a showdown between Russia and NATO," the Suwałki Gap "would likely be the first point of contact.”
Morawiecki stressed: “The security of this land is being ensured by reinforced units of the Polish Army, which are also supported by NATO, the mightiest military pact in the history of the world.”
He added: “This land can feel fully secure."
'We won't let evil spread'
Meanwhile, in a letter read out during the ceremony, President Andrzej Duda pledged that Poland would not cease in its efforts to fully investigate the Augustów Roundup and commemorate its victims.
“We won’t forget the warning emanating from the painful past,” Duda wrote. “We won’t let evil spread, enslave and harm people.”
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, ipn.gov.pl, euractiv.com
