On 27 August in Warsaw at the Monument to the Friendship of Polish and Canadian Soldiers, a memorial ceremony was held attended by the IPN Deputy President Karol Polejowski. The event commemorated Polish and Canadian brotherhood in arms during WW2.  

For the Canadians, it was a distant war in Europe; for the Poles, it was a fight aimed at defeating the German state, which had occupied Poland since 1939. However, for both Poles and Canadians, it was a war for your freedom and ours.

An opportunity to commemorate the fate of Polish and Canadian soldiers during World War II was the recent 81st anniversary of the Battle of the Falaise pocket, with the participation of the Polish 1st Armoured Division commanded by General Stanisław Maczek.

The 1st Polish Armoured Division commanded by General Stanisław Maczek, which cooperated with the Canadians and the British, was assigned important tasks in Operations Overlord and Flanders. The Allies fought the fiercest battle at Falaise (15–21 August 1944), where they crushed the Germans and forced their way from Normandy towards the Seine.

In 1942, Poles and Canadians participated in one of the most controversial WW2 military operations, the Allied landing in Dieppe which was a bloody "test" before the proper invasion in Northern France.

The crew of ORP Ślązak, a Polish Navy destroyer evacuated 82 Canadian soldiers from the battlefield. For this act, as well as in recognition of his efficient command, captain, Romuald Nałęcz-Tymiński, was awarded the British Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).

A shared history of brotherhood in arms, as in the battle of Falaise, and above all the kind hospitality that Canada extended to Polish refugees during and after WW2 tightened mutual relations. Those who were not able to return to Poland for political reasons found a safe haven in Canada. In the 1990s, an additional 115,000 Polish anti-communism activists settled mainly in Toronto and Ontario.

The presence of the Institute of National Remembrance here today at the monument commemorating the Canadian and Polish Soldiers who fought side by side during the Second World War is not the only example of the remembrance and cultivation of our shared history, said the IPN Deputy President Karol Polejowski.

In about a month, on 27 September, a monument to the Polish Navy and Merchant Navy will be unveiled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The undertaking is the result of cooperation between the Institute of National Remembrance, the Honorary Consul  of the Republic of Poland in Halifax, Jan Skóra, and the Director of the Committee for the Commemoration of Polish Emigration in Halifax, Elżbieta Rulka. The new commemoration will be located near the Canadian Museum of Immigration and a monument unveiled in 2018, in tribute to the nearly 300-year history of Polish emigration to Canada,” he added.

See also: A ceremony at the Canadian-Polish Memorial, Warsaw 6 August 2024