By MARCIN ZOLTOWSKI, Associated Press WriterFri Nov 9, 6:32 PM ET
Poland began a two-day ceremony Friday to mark a bitter moment in its past, giving posthumous promotions to 14,000 Polish officers who were captured early in World War II and then murdered by the Soviet secret police.
President Lech Kaczynski honored slain members of the army and police as well as border and prison guards at an open-air remembrance of the 1940 killings in the Katyn forest outside Smolensk, Russia, and at other places in the then-Soviet Union.
Poland's red-and-white national flag was raised in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in downtown Warsaw and an army choir sang the national anthem.
"One might say that after more than 67 years, this act has no meaning, but I think this is wrong," Kaczynski told a crowd that included the relatives of men slain in Katyn. "This act is an act of remembrance owed to our heroes, their families and, above all, to our entire nation."
Kaczynski then read out the names of 32 of the highest ranking officers among the dead. On Saturday, he planned to close the reading of names, which was handed over to top officers of the armed services and actors participating in the "We Remember Katyn" ceremony.
The reading recessed at midnight, and was to resume at 6 a.m. Saturday and continue for 12 hours.
The dead were among an estimated 22,000 Polish officers taken prisoner by the Soviet army after it invaded eastern Poland in September 1939 as Nazi Germany overran western Poland.
Polish officials say all the prisoners were slain, but only those whose bodies have been identified can be promoted. They were found in mass graves near Katyn, Mednoye and Kharkov, now in Ukraine. Among them were 8,000 army officers, 5,000 policemen, 400 prison guards and 30 border guards.
The Nazis found the mass graves during their march on Moscow in the fall of 1941, but Soviet propaganda blamed the deaths on Adolf Hitler and put anyone speaking the truth in prison. In 1990, Moscow finally acknowledged dictator Josef Stalin's secret police were responsible.
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Associated Press writers Monika Scislowska and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.