President remembers WWII soldiers who gave their lives to free Poland

"I want to pay tribute to our compatriots, Polish soldiers who set off from here to the final battle with the German Third Reich," President Andrzej Duda wrote to the participants of events marking the 74th anniversary of crossing the Oder by the Polish Army.

The president's letter was read by the presidential minister Paweł Mucha during a ceremony at a military cemetery in Stare Łysogórki, northwestern Poland, on Saturday.

"We, present-day Poles, citizens of the sovereign Polish Republic, remember those who died here, we honor their courage and sacrifice," the president wrote.

"At the same time, we remember those who survived that hard struggle and the whole cruel war, because three weeks later there was peace," Andrzej Duda emphasised, adding that "this was not the peace that our nation dreamed about" and that the survivors, although aware of what a totalitarian regime was, "made a great effort to organise the country anew," the president said in the letter.