Wiktor Węgrzyn was born on 21 July 1939 in Warsaw; he studied at the Main School of Planning and Statistics; he was a bookkeeper and a car mechanic. At the end of the 1960s, he was dismissed from his job at the Central Oil Products Company because of his opposition activity. In the 1970s, he emigrated to the USA, where he ran a bookstore and served on the jury of the Society for the Promotion of Hope, which awarded prizes to Polish emigrants. He returned to Poland at the turn of 2000/2001.

In 2001 he founded the International Motorcycle Rally Katyn Association, which aims to organize motorcycle rallies to places of murder and burial of Polish patriots. Apart from cultivating national traditions, the aim of the Association is also providing help to Poles in the East.

In 2010, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Rebirth of Poland by the President for his outstanding contributions to commemorating the truth about the Katyn massacre. During the 2015 parliamentary elections, he was a member of Grzegorz Braun's "Luck of God!" electoral committee. In the same year, he criticized the Polish government for preventing the Night Wolves (a Russian organization of motorcyclists) who wanted to visit the graves of Red Army soldiers from entering Poland.

In September 2015, during the penultimate edition of the rally, Węgrzyn recalled in an interview with PAP that he had lived in the US for a long time and came to Poland after the fall of communism. - I found out then that there was a test at some school and 14 percent of the students said it was Poles who killed Jews in Katyn. I returned to Chicago, to my friends, and I wondered what to do. And I thought of a motorcycle rally. There are many such rallies in America, they attract attention. So I organized one commemorating the Katyn massacre in Poland," Węgrzyn said.

During the rally, which every year has a slightly different route, motorcyclists visit places in the East associated with Polish martyrdom, especially with the Katyn massacre, including Kuropat, Katyn and Miednoje. It is attended by participants from all over the country, as well as from abroad, representatives of various professions.

- There is a miner, a pilot and an engineer, a farmer and a worker. I think that they all have in common the love for Poland and its history, they discover a different face of it, and often also discover themselves again. On a motorcycle a man has a lot of time to think, because he rides alone, so he has time to reflect - said Węgrzyn, announcing future editions of the Rally.

text: Onet

Photo: PAP/L. Szymanski