The 21st “Bartka” Rally will be held on 19–20 September 2026 in Beskid Śląski and Żywiecki. On the first day, the participants will depart from Kalashnica to Barania Góra, paying tribute to Captain Henry Flam and the soldiers of his NSZ group. This is simply a surviving memory lesson about the Polish independency underground.
Two days on the memory trail
The celebrations were scheduled for September 19 and 20. According to Radio Maryja, beginning the 21st “Bartka” rally will start on Saturday in Kamesznica, from where participants will decision towards Barania Góra. The site of the event will be Beskid Śląski and Beskid Żywiecki, a site permanently connected with the activities of the National Armed Forces group commanded by Captain Henryk Flamy, ps. “Bartek”.
The event was on official list of patronages of the Chancellery of the president of Poland. The application for the patronage was submitted by Ireneusz Pajak, president of the Silesian territory of Cieszyn State Army Soldiers Association. The very presence of the rally on this list confirms that the memory of independency formations has the rank of a state affairs alternatively than a local addition to the event calendar.
“Bartek” and his soldiers
Henryk Flame was 1 of the most crucial commanders of the anti-communist underground in Cieszynsk and Żywiecz Silesia. After the end of the German occupation, his soldiers did not recognise the communist power imposed on Poland as sovereign representation of the nation. They acted in the mountains, among the local population, paying for their independency with repression and death. Captain Henry Flame's fresh Year's Eve shows the broader context of this fight.
A peculiar place in the past of the group is in Operation Avalanche. A Communist safety camera conducted it in 1946, utilizing provocation and a promise of moving troops to the West. Many of the subordinate “Bart” were subsequently murdered. Anniversary commemoration of victims of Operation Avalanche recalls why the September rally word has specified a strong symbolic dimension.
Memory Acquired With Your Effort
The mountain rally has a different strength than the academy in a closed room. We gotta get on the trail, face the weather and the terrain, see the space where the NSZ soldiers were hiding and fighting. past ceases to be a set of dates. It becomes a space experience.
This is especially crucial for the young generation. For decades the Polish state has been falsifying or ignoring the destiny of the soldiers of the national underground. Rebuilding memory requires more than a 1 - time celebration. Families, schools, associations and local communities are needed to convey the fact further.
The continuity of Polish memory is at stake
The 21st edition of the rally shows the durability of this work. Participants do not go to the mountains for historical decoration. They match people who refused to quit sovereignty and paid the highest price for it. For Poland, the right to their own memory, free from communist accusations and contemporary indifference is at stake.
A nation that knows the names of its defenders and the places where they fight is more hard to deprive political instinct. The Bartka rally combines local past with the work of the state and citizens for the truth. In the Beskids, memory will again have a circumstantial trail.
Source: Radio Maryja, Office of the president of Poland
Source: Radio Maryja
