On the eve of one of the darkest dates in Polish history, September 17, 1939, when the country commemorates the Red Army’s invasion of Poland as it continued to resist Nazi Germany, a solemn canonization of Polish new martyrs was held at St. Sophia Cathedral in Warsaw.
Those canonized were clergy and laypeople who, after the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, ended up in Stalinist camps. They were later executed together with servicemen of the Polish Army.
As the article notes, Poland’s military potential was incomparable to that of Germany. Even so, the country still had a chance to continue resisting Hitler’s aggression for some time after it began on September 1, 1939, hoping for help from its allies, Britain and France.
The situation changed when the USSR suddenly entered the war. The text emphasizes that in Poland, naturally, no one then knew about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and that the Soviet invasion sealed the country’s fate.
By the end of September, the publication says, Hitler’s and Stalin’s forces had crushed the last pockets of Polish resistance and then held a joint victors’ parade in Brest.