Ceremony at the Katyn Monument in Johannesburg on May 20, 2024

A ceremony took place at the Katyn Memorial at the James and Ethel Gray Park in Johannesburg to commemorate the Katyn massacre in the presence of the Polish Ambassador to South Africa, Adam Burakowski, representatives of the Polish Association of Siberian Deportees and Aimee Mica Ntuli, the representative of the Katyn Foundation for Families of Jewish Origin. Aimee Goldsmith laid a wreath on behalf of the Foundation.

The monument was designed by Andrzej Romanowicz and Adam Snopek as the architects and Leonard Rynkiewicz as the structural engineer.  Bishop Szczepan Wesoły consecrated the completed Memorial on 9 May 1981.  The central stand contains soil from Katyn; on the left soil from the Polish Home Army insurgents’ graves in the Powązki Cemetery; and on the right from the place of the crash of Jack van Eyssen’s Liberator of the South African Airforce in Michalin near Warsaw.