On 3 June 2020, we bid a final farewell to the late Krystyna Barchańska, mother and guardian of the memory of Emil Barchański, the youngest victim of Martial Law, arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the communist Security Services. His mother's funeral took place in Warsaw exactly on the 38th anniversary of Emil's death.
Krystyna Barchańska has been laid to rest, together with her son, in a family grave in Warsaw’s Bródno cemetery.
Jarosław Szarek, the President of the Institute of National Remembrance, took part in the funeral ceremonies and said his last goodbyes.
Apart from family members and friends, Krystyna Barchańska was accompanied in her last journey by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Minister Wojciech Kolarski, who read out a letter from the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda, the adviser to the President Zofia Romaszewska and the Head of the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression Jan Kasprzyk.
In 2019, the Institute of National Remembrance published Małgorzata Winkler-Pogoda’s extensive interview with Krystyna Barchańska entitled Miałam syna Emila [I had a son called Emil], in which she talked about her son, his passions and dreams. She described how Emil and his friends set fire to a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky in the centre of Warsaw, the subsequent arrest, interrogations, court hearings, repressions by the Security Services and tragic events on the bank of the Vistula river. It is not only a shocking account of a communist crime of the 80s, but also a moving recollection of the feelings accompanying the loss of an only child. These memories constitute a valuable and important testimony of a mother, being also a participant and witness of those events. The book will not leave anyone indifferent.
