President Andrzej Duda said at a remembrance event in the north-central town of Sierpc on Wednesday that the fighters, referred to by some as the “Cursed Soldiers” and by others as "Enduring Soldiers," fought for "freedom, sovereignty and independence" for their country.
Decades later, Poland is free from Soviet oppression and "so strong" that it "can be a provider of security and share its potential with its neighbours," Duda stated.
During a ceremony, he laid flowers at a monument honouring Gen. Emil 'Nil' Fieldorf, one of the most prominent of the "Cursed Soldiers," who continued to fight after a Soviet-backed communist regime came to power in Poland in the wake of World War II.
At a separate commemoration in Warsaw, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said earlier in the day that the post-WWII resistance fighters "gave their lives for a free and independent Poland."
A remembrance ceremony in Warsaw on Wednesday to honour Polish post-WWII resistance fighters. Photo: PAP/Andrzej Lange
Morawiecki added: "Our nation will be truly free only if we honour all those who fought and died for their homeland."
He was speaking at a former Warsaw prison, recently converted into a museum, where seven fighters were executed by the communist authorities 72 years ago, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The Polish presidential office said in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning that the anti-communist resistance fighters "stood on the side of freedom to the end and never gave up."
After World War II, Poland's underground Home Army (AK) disbanded, but some of its soldiers continued to fight in other formations against a Soviet-controlled communist government.
The “Cursed Soldiers” faced a brutal crackdown by Poland’s communist authorities and were a taboo subject during the country’s decades under communist rule.
The fighters were largely stamped out by 1948, although one, Józef Franczak, was gunned down as late as 1963.
An official day of remembrance for the fighters was introduced in 2011, more than two decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
March 1 was selected as a poignant date for the day of remembrance, as on this day in 1951, seven prominent members of a postwar resistance force called Freedom and Independence (WiN) were executed in Warsaw.
Poland's Institute of National Remembrance said in a tweet that the seven leaders of the Freedom and Independence organization who were killed 72 years ago were buried in an unmarked grave "because the regime cursed such people and wanted them forgotten, erased from history."
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Source: IAR, PAP
Click on the audio player above for a report by Radio Poland's Piotr Miszczuk.