Television showed chunks of flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest near Smolensk, where the president was arriving for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Red Army as it invaded Poland.
The governor of Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiyev, said the plane did not reach the runway but instead hit the treetops and broke apart. An official with the Russia’s Investigative Committee said possible causes were bad weather, mechanical failure and human error.
The crash came as a staggering blow to Poland, killing what may be a tenth of country’s top leadership in one fiery explosion. In the numb hours after the crash, leaders in Warsaw evoked the horror of the massacre at Katyn, which stood for decades as a symbol of Russian domination of Poland.
Why this is so horrible:
Photo from the crash site In Russia
“It is a damned place,” former president Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine. First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk, now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”
“This is a wound which will be very difficult to heal,” he said.
Former president Lech Walesa, who presided over Poland’s transition from communism, cast the crash in similarly historic terms.
“This is the second disaster after Katyn,” he said. “They wanted to cut off our head there, and here the flower of our nation has also perished. Regardless of the differences, the intellectual class of those on the plane was truly great.”
Poland is a good friend of the United States, and President Kaczynski went out of his way to honor Ronald Reagan for the fight to free Poland from communism when he visited the United States in 2007 (photo above right from Reagan Library).
Kaczynski also worked to acknowledge the Holocaust and the extermination of millions of Polish Jews during World War II, including honoring Poles who risked their lives to save Jews, and just recently giving a Polish national medal to the head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel:
On January 27, 2010, during a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day held at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, Polish President Lech Kaczy?ski awarded Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
During the ceremony, which marked this year 65 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army, speeches were delivered by the President and Prime Minister of Poland, the Prime Minister of Israel, international delegates and figures, and Holocaust survivors. Polish President Kaczy?ski also awarded decorations during the ceremony to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Director Sara Bloomfield and Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywi?ski.
The three decorations were awarded for “eminent services in educational and museum work commemorating the victims of the Nazi German labor camps, concentration camps, and extermination centers, and for their accomplishments in the development of the Polish-Jewish dialogue.”
I can only fathom what the people of Poland are going through this day. My prayers are with the families, and with the people of Poland this evening. If there was ever a time, for President Barack Obama to show some class and leadership; this would be that time.
More information will be posted, as it becomes available.
A special message to the people of Poland:
Do dobrych ludzi Polska.
Uprzejmie informujemy, ten pisarz serce jest podzielone na wie?? o swoje straszne straty. Prosz? wybaczy? z?e t?umaczenie, jak ja jestem przy pomocy Google Translate.
Mam nadziej?, ?e ten komunikat ma sens dla mieszka?ców Polska.
Nie mog? tu siedzie? i wyobra?a? sobie co to smutek przechodzi. Jednak wiem, ?e jest to tragedi?.
Uprzejmie informujemy, ?e modl? si? za was wszystkich i ?e modlitwy, Comfort, Wszechmog?cego Boga i Jego Syna Jezusa Chrystusa b?dzie z wami wszystkimi. To jest moja nadzieja i wyrazi? moje osobiste modlitwy, ?e pokój, który pochodzi od Boga tylko w niebie, b?dzie tam komfort was wszystkich, w momencie utraty.
Niech Wszechmog?cy Bóg w niebie, Bless i przechowywa? ka?dego z was.
-Patrick
W?a?ciciel
politicalbyline.com
English Translation:
To the good people of Poland.
Please know this writer’s heart is broken at the news of your horrible loss. Please excuse the bad translation; as I am using Google Translate.
Hopefully this message makes sense to the people of Poland.
I cannot sit here and imagine what sort of sorrow you are going through. However, I do know that this is a human tragedy.
Please know, that I am praying for you all and that I prayer that the Comfort, of the Almighty God and his son Jesus Christ would be with you all. It is my express hope and my personal prayer, that the peace that only comes from God in Heaven; would be there to comfort you all, in your time of loss.
May the Almighty God in Heaven, Bless and Keep each and every one of you.
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