Over 200,000 spectators lined the streets of Katowice to celebrate Armed Forces Day, a public holiday that was established in 1923 to mark Poland’s victory over Bolshevik forces in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw.
This year’s parade saw over 2,600 soldiers march through Katowice and more than 185 vehicles rolled through the streets, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, while overhead, sixty aircraft conducted a ceremonial flyover. Various units were present, including paratroopers and special forces as well as formations representing the USA, Great Britain, Romania and Croatia.

Up to 200,000 spectators are thought to have turned-out for the parade.

March of the living takes place in Poland to mark the 78th Anniversary of a 2nd WW Polish martyr 

Several thousand people took part this week in ceremonies marking the 78th anniversary of the death of Maximilian Kolbe a Polish Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the German death camp of Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Hundreds of people gathered in Auschwitz at Block 11 to remember St. Maximilian Kolbe at the place where he died. Mass was offered and prayers said at the site where over 1 million prisoners died during World War II.
 

This week marks what would have been the 90th birthday of a key player in the Solidarity movement

Anna Walentynowicz the Polish free trade union activist and co-founder of Solidarity, the first non-communist trade union in the Eastern Bloc would have celebrated her 90th birthday this week. Her firing from her job at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980 was the event that ignited the strike at the shipyard, set off a wave of strikes across Poland and bringing about the beginning of the end of communism in the country.

She began working in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland in 1950, first as a welder, later as a crane operator.
She was fired by the shipyard on 7 August 1980, 5 months prior to her plan to retire, For participation in the then illegal trade union. This management decision enraged the workers, who staged a strike action on 14 August, defending Anna Walentynowicz, and demanding her return.

She died on April 10, 2010 in the Smolensk air crash. The plane was heading to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. And she is buried in the Srebrzysko cemetery in Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz.
Soundrive Festival Taking Place This Weekend

The eighth edition of the Soundrive Festival is taking place in Gdańsk today and tomorrow at the Gdansk shipyard

The event which is billed as an “Exceptional journey through alternative music and postindustrial spaces” features over 20 artists

Weather
Today will be partly cloudy with the chance of light rain showers and a light to moderate. Temperatures will reach 21 degrees centigrade (70 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day, dropping to 14 degrees centigrade (57 degrees fahrenheit) during the night.

Saturday will also be partly cloudy, with temperatures in the mid 20s centigrade and light to moderate winds from the south.

RGEN News