Qualla: 1962 Szczecin Military Parade Accident

1962 Szczecin Military Parade Accident: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The flowers were handed out in the classrooms that morning. Teachers in Szczecin gave them to their pupils with instructions to wave them at the soldiers, and set homework: write about the parade. Lessons were cut short so that every school in the city could get to the route in time. Along Aleja Wojska Polskiego, Aleja Piastow and Aleja Kosciuszki the pavements filled with families, and the smallest spectators worked their way to the front, where the kerb put them within arm's reach of the armour. It was 9 October 1962. By the end of the afternoon seven children were dead, and the state that had invited them there had already begun to make the afternoon disappear.

1962 Szczecin Military Parade Accident: A Parade of Our Might

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The timing was not local. Through the autumn of 1962 the Cuban missile crisis was pushing the two blocs toward a war neither had planned, and under Soviet pressure the Polish authorities staged large exercises across the north-west of the country, in the country around Szczecin. ...

1962 Szczecin Military Parade Accident: The Last Tank in the Column

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It came down the avenues in order: East German equipment first, then Soviet, then Polish units, among them fourteen tanks of the 5th Armoured Division from Slubice on the Oder. Cannons, mortars, howitzers, armoured personnel carriers. Heavy Mi-6 helicopters passed over the roofto...

1962 Szczecin Military Parade Accident: Seven Children

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

They were between six and twelve years old. Four of them were pupils at Szczecin's Elementary School Number 1, and the others came from schools across the city that had all been let out early for the same reason. Twenty-one more people were hurt in the impact, several of them chi...

1962 Szczecin Military Parade Accident: The Notice in the Paper

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 10 October the local daily Glos Szczecinski carried a short notice stating that seven children had died during a parade. That was the sum of what Poles were told. The military prosecutor's office called in hundreds of witnesses and informed each of them that the matter was cla...

1962 Szczecin Military Parade Accident: The Tablet by the Door

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Aleja Piastow today is an ordinary Szczecin avenue - tram wires, plane trees, the tall pre-war facades that survived the bombing, students walking to the university buildings nearby. There is no monument on the spot. The commemoration that exists is small and specific: a tablet p...