Freedom is celebrated every year. But who was actually on the front line on April 12, 1945 to make freedom in Borger possible? Many people think of the Canadians, but the liberators of Borger were Polish soldiers. A story that is hardly known, but now gets the attention it deserves.
Today is the exhibition in the Good Herderkerk Trails of Hope. Odyssey of freedom Open. An exhibition that tells the forgotten history of the Polish troops. Under the leadership of General Stanislaw Maczek, the 1st Polish armored division fought its way through Europe, from Normandy to Belgium and eventually to deep in the Netherlands and therefore also to Borger.
“Many people know that Breda has been liberated by the Poles, but that also applies to Borger,” says Peter Krans of the 80 Years Borger Liberation Working Group.
Trails of Hope is part of a worldwide project of the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN). Earlier the exhibition could be seen in the Houses of Parliament in London, the Maczek Memorial in Breda and in New York.
The exhibition, which was opened today by Mayor Jan Seton and Wojciech Kaczmarczyk of the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), takes visitors along eleven panels full of historical photos and stories. It not only shows the advance of the Polish troops, but also the serious circumstances in which they had to fight.
“This was a peat area,” says Krans. “The roads were marshy, the bridges narrow. The advance always stopped. It was really hard fighting here.”
Three Polish soldiers lost their lives in Borger-Odoorn. Boleslaw Laskowski died at Odoorn, Stanislaw Kowalczyk in Borger and Stanislaw Bieleniec in Buinen. In those villages a street and a monument are named after them, but their names do not say much.
It is not for nothing that the exhibition is called Trails of Hope. The Poles that fought here fought not only for the liberation of the Netherlands, but also with hope to see their own country free again. But that didn’t happen. While the Netherlands celebrated freedom, Poland remained under Soviet regime.
The message of the exhibition is clear: this history should not be forgotten. “Freedom is never obvious,” says Kaczmarczyk. “People have to learn from the past. How to live for freedom and not start a war again.”
The exhibition can be visited until 5 May 2025 in the Good Herderkerk in Borger.