Smolensk tragedy - APRIL 2010 - Special commemorative issue
Poland in the Rockies alumni, CR contributors as well as their friends have sent words of grief, reflection and remembrance our way:
"Dobry Wieczor. Good evening. Thank you, Father Provincial Janusz Blazejak, Provincial of Missionary Oblates, for your kind introduction.
15 Apr 2010 by Michał Tabisz Every human life suddenly ended in the Smolensk plane crash fills us with deepest grief and sorrow. We are all united in mourning and prayers with families that lost their members and friends. But we should also remember that on Saturday morning, April 10th, there was one more victim of the TU-154 catastrophe - the Polish State.
PIASA mourns the death of the Polish President and 95 prominent Poles
14 Apr 2010 The Board of Directors and the members of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America based in New York City are shocked and deeply saddened by the news that a tragic plane accident on April 10, 2010 took the lives of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 prominet Polish political, military, cultural and civic leaders on their way to Smolensk, Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.
13 Apr 2010 Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced that he will attend the State Funeral of President Lech Kaczynski and First Lady Maria Kaczynska on Sunday, April 18, in Krakow, Poland.
"This Sunday, the people of Poland will lay to rest a true patriot and a staunch defender of democracy and human rights," said Prime Minister Harper. "On behalf of all Canadians, I will express our country's respect for a strong and trusted ally and stand alongside the Polish people in their grief."
President Kaczynski, the First Lady and numerous political, military and civil society leaders were tragically killed on Saturday in a plane crash en route to an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre.
Apr 13 2010 On Saturday evening, the President will travel to Krakow, Poland to attend the State Funeral of President Lech Kaczynski and First Lady Maria Kaczynska on Sunday, April 18th. The President will travel to Krakow to express the depth of our condolences to an important and trusted ally, and our support for the Polish people, on behalf of the American people.
Toronto -- "Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) mourns the tragic passing of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, Mrs. Maria Kaczynska and the other passengers who perished in this horrific accident," stated CJC President Mark J. Freiman. "President Kaczynski played a major role in the growth and revitalization of modern Poland and its development as a valued democratic member of the European Union and the international community at large. We extend our deepest sympathies to the people of Poland on this terrible loss."
Canadian PM Stephen Harper Announces National Day of Mourning for President of Poland - 15 Apr 2010
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on 12 April 2010 that Canada will mark a National Day of Mourning on Thursday, April 15, following the death of Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland, who died in a plane crash on Saturday along with Polish political, military and civil society leaders.
13 Apr 2010 By Dominic Roszak The unspeakably tragic death of the Polish President and numerous Polish leaders shocked the world. Some have called it tragically ironic, occurring near that 'cursed' place of Katyn. While it was and remains difficult for me to comprehend the scale of this disaster, I find myself hit with a deep sense of sorrow when reading about the vibrant lives that each of the victims had led. These were people whom Poles knew very well as being devoted to the service of their country; coming from all sides of the political spectrum and a wide range of positions of responsibility. Most of them were also proud parents. I cannot help but keep imagining in my mind the moment that the plane went down...the last thoughts in their minds and the despair felt by their families when they learned of the crash. It is a haunting thought.
13 Apr 2010 By Roger Cohen My first thought, hearing of the Polish tragedy, was that history's gyre can be of an unbearable cruelty, decapitating Poland's elite twice in the same cursed place, Katyn.
13 Apr 2010 By Allen Paul The tragic crash that wiped out nearly half the leadership of the Polish government Saturday is a stark reminder that death stalks always in ways no man can see.
Late last Friday I declined an offer to fly with those whose lives were so suddenly and unexpectedly lost. The invitation came at the end of an hour-long meeting with a close friend, Andrzej Przewoznik, the high-ranking official in charge of on-the-ground arrangements for the visit of President Lech Kaczynski and his entourage to the cemetery in Katyn Forest near where the crash occurred.
Grieving from Shamokin, Pennsylvania
13 Apr 2010 By Vince Chesney These past few days have been numbing. Although we in the Anthracite Coal Region may only be the fingertip on the hand that is Poland, we still flinch whenever the motherland is harmed. Even those that have no Polish identity can certainly appreciate Poland's loss by imagining a comparative catastrophe in America.
It is my hope that by screening Wajda's Katyń that the students here can appreciate Poland as a partner in liberty who's history intertwines with its young fellow Eagle: America. Boże, coś Polskę!
12 Apr 2010 By Ania Barycka April 10 will forever be a memory etched in my mind. It began with a shock, my roommate waking me up, his fists pounding on my door and his voice saying something tragic was on the news. I got up, unlocked the door, and found him shaking. "A terrible, terrible tragedy," he began. I was barely awake; his voice trembled as he told me about the deaths of the Polish President, his wife, and almost a hundred other members of the Polish government in a tragic airplane crash. I just stood there, half asleep, wondering when I would awake from this nightmare.
11 Apr 2010 By Alex Stororzynski The tragic death of President Lech Kaczynski and Poland's political and military elite among the trees of the Katyn Forest is surreal, given that in those same woods, thousands of Polish prisoners of war were murdered by Joseph Stalin's secret police.
Newsweek - What's Next for Poland
10 Apr 2010 President Kaczynski's visit to Russia was supposed to help heal a historic rift between the two countries. But as NEWSWEEK's former Warsaw bureau chief Andrew Nagorski explains, that won't be easy. Especially now.
BBC News - Looking beyond Poland's 'unprecedented disaster'
10 Apr 2010 ... Krzysztof Bobinski consider the immediate and longer-term effects of the 70th anniversary of the massacre in a wood outside Smolensk. ...
Remembering the Katyn Forest Massacre
7 Apr 2010 By Wanda Urbanska After weeks of delay, the Russians issued my friend Allen Paul a visa yesterday. He had been invited by Prime Minister Donald Tusk to be a part of the Polish delegation to the ceremony at Katyn, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet massacre of more than 20,000 of Poland’s military officers and reservists, its best and brightest, in 1940.
7 Apr 2010 By Justine Jablonska A historic meeting scheduled for Wednesday between top leaders of Russia and Poland is expected to provide new details about Russia's mass execution of 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest in 1940 and may open the way toward improved relations between the two countries.
The mass slaying of the Polish prisoners of war by the Soviet secret police is one of the darker and less known chapters of World War II, said Kyle Parker, a Russian expert and policy adviser to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an independent U.S. agency that helps formulate American policy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
