The march was preceded by a Holy Mass celebrated at noon in the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Długa Street.

The Katyn March of Shadows is a tribute to nearly 22 thousand Polish officers murdered by the Soviets in Katyn and other sites of execution in the East in 1940. Thie March has already become an integral part of the celebrations related to the anniversary of the Katyn Massacre. It should be remembered that among the Polish Army soldiers, the Border Protection Corps, the State Police and the Prison Guard murdered in the Katyn forest there were doctors, clerics, civil servants, lawyers, teachers, engineers, railway workers and writers ...

"This march is supposed to show that our silence along the Warsaw streets is a symbolic cry for cultivating their memory. We are their shadows, in a sense we are the ones carrying the memory of our heroes. These officers had their names and surnames, and their lives which were brutally interrupted just  because they were Poles. Although they were murdered in 1940, the truth about their extermination ceased to be officially distorted only after 1989. Thanks to several hundred reenactors, the officers from Katyn are symbolically among us in the heart of Warsaw, " said Jarosław Wróblewski, commander of the march.

The March of Shadows set off at 3.00 p.m. from the Polish Army Museum. In front of the column of Polish prisoners there was a historic NKVD vehicle, the so-called black woron. The route led through the Royal Route through the Old Town, to the monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East. At the church of the Holy Cross in Krakowskie Przedmieście fragments of the camp correspondence were read out. On the Castle Square a list of murdered officers was read out. The stop at Krasińskich Square was dedicated to the clergy members executed in Katyn.

The organizer of the 12th Katyn Shadow March is the Institute of National Remembrance and the Historical Reenacment Group "Zgrupowanie Radosław".The Institute of National Remembrance is also a co-organizer of the Katyn Marches held in other cities.

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