Marshall Józef Piłsudski has been permanently linked to the history of NIK. He was the one to found the Supreme Office of State Audit by signing the decree in 1919. NIK employees also remember their elder colleagues who were killed in the East. One of them was Kazimierz Piłsudski, the Marshall’s brother, economist, NIK auditor. During the war, he was arrested by the NKVD and spent several months in Lubyanka (headquarters of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation). Kazimierz Piłsudski was released following the Sikorski–Mayski Agreement, and died of exhaustion by imprisonment.
The main celebrations of the National Independence Day in Warsaw were attended by representatives of the highest state authorities with President of Poland Andrzej Duda, local government authorities and all uniformed services. NIK President Marian Banaś was among the invited persons. After the official guard mounting, NIK President laid a wreath in tribute to those who gave their lives for the Independent Poland. In the Temple of Divine Providence Marian Banaś together with representatives of the highest authorities prayed during the holy mass for the homeland.
The celebrations were closed with a patriotic concert at the Temple of Divine Providence in Warsaw.
The National Independence Day was established to commemorate the day when Poland regained independence after 123 years of annexation. For the first time it was celebrated in 1937. The 11 November is a symbolic date. On that day in 1918, the truce in Compiegne was signed which in fact stood for the Germans’ failure in the First World War. On 10November, Józef Piłsudski arrived in Warsaw after he was released from the Magdeburg fortress. A day later, disarmament of German soldiers started. That was when the Regency Council handed over the authority over the Polish Army to Józef Piłsudski. In 1937, the Sejm established 11 November as a state holiday. In 1945, it was lifted by communists and then restored in 1989.
