US paratroopers join 10th edition of “cursed soldiers” run in Poland

Tens of thousands of runners took part in races around Poland over the weekend to commemorate the “cursed soldiers” (żołnierze wyklęci), underground fighters who resisted the introduction of communism in Poland after World War Two.

Among the participants in the tenth edition of the so-called “Wolf’s Trail” events were US soldiers stationed in Poland, while runners also collected money to help people affected by the war in Ukraine.

Some 200 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, who have been training alongside their Polish allies and helping to prepare aid for refugees from Ukraine, were among the 354 runners at the race in Mielec in south-eastern Poland, reports Hej.Mielec, a local news service.

Organisers of the Wolf’s Trail races estimate that over a thousand events took place in Poland and around the world this year. The previous record numbers came in 2020, when 75,000 runners participated at 370 locations, although they were almost equalled in virtual runs at last year’s pandemic-hit edition.

While individual events offer various distances, each of them features a run of 1,963 metres, a reference to the year of the death of the last cursed soldier, Józef Franczak, nom de guerre Lalek. After being betrayed to the communist secret police, he was killed in 1963 in a shootout with paramilitary police forces.

The initial Wolf’s Trail race was a survival run at a reservoir north of Warsaw attended by around 50 people. Since 2015 it has been a nationwide event that has attracted the patronage of the public TV, President Andrzej Duda, and some of Poland’s biggest state-owned companies.

“An enormous value of this initiative is its grassroots character,” said Michał Dworczyk, the head of the prime minister’s chancellery and a participant in yesterday’s run in Warsaw, at a gala to celebrate the anniversary. “NGOs and volunteers get involved in it.”

Yesterday’s events were held under the slogan “We’re running to help, Ukraine” and volunteers held collections to raise money for victims of the war.

One of the aims of the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, which organises the events, is supporting ethnic Poles living in Ukraine, especially in Donbas. According to the Wolf’s Trail website, the money raised will help “our compatriots fleeing their homes”.

The races followed the National Day of Remembrance of the Cursed Soldiers, which takes place every year on 1 March.

Jan Dziedziczak, the government plenipotentiary for the Polish diaspora, told Polskie Radio that the Wolf’s Trail initiative is an important educational project. “It pays homage to those who fought for Poland, often in a hopeless situation,” while at the same time “we can raise the next, young generations”.

The current government has lent significant support to remembrance of the cursed soldiers. The partisans, who were brutally suppressed by the communist security services, include many widely admired figures.

One was Witold Pilecki, who during the war deliberately had himself imprisoned at Auschwitz to gather intelligence and organise resistance in the camp. Later, he opposed the imposition of communism, resulting in his execution in 1948.

But commemoration of the cursed soldiers also causes controversy, as some of them are accused of involvement in war crimes against civilian populations, including Poland’s ethnic minorities.

Main image credit: Pawel Malecki / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.