Grave of Paweł Pałczynski, Hlybokaje 2012. Помнік Паўлу Паўчынскаму, Глыбокае 2012 год.
Under the 1921 Polish-Soviet Treaty of Riga, the Soviets held on to the eastern two-thirds of today’s Belarus, lands which the Bolsheviks had occupied in 1919. The western third of Belarus was incorporated into the Second Polish Republic. On September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. On September 17, under the secret annex to the Soviet-Nazi Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and claiming to be liberating western Belarus, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. The Soviet regime occupied, annexed, and ruthlessly Sovietized western Belarus (and western Ukraine, and in 1940 Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) before the June 22, 1941 German invasion and brutal occupation of Soviet-occupied lands. The Soviets re-imposed their rule on Belarus after pushing the Germans out in 1944 on the way to Berlin. Today, reflecting the Soviet version of history, many streets, especially in western Belarus, still bear the Soviet-era name “17th of September”.
Paweł Pałczynski was a Polish border guard who, on September 17, 1939, single-handedly defended his post at Kamenny Wóz near Hlybokaje against a large group of invading Soviets until he fell. He was buried near where he fell. In 2011 his remains were re-interred in the Catholic cemetery in Hlybokaje next to the graves of Polish soldiers who died in the 1920 Polish-Soviet war. See http://euroradio.by/en/report/remains-polish-frontier-guard-re-buried-hlybokae-56956
