mardi 13 avril 2010

The Glory of Poland Or how Katyn can help the world conflicts


What if the Katyn 2010 was a tremendous reconciliation between Russia and Polska, Legacy offered by the Katyn Nightmare. Here's the point of view of Roger Cohen who wrote an article who should be an example for all wars and tentions in our all entire world.

The Glory Of Poland

"NEW YORK — 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.

My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:
“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”
Michnik’s obsession has yielded fruit. President Lech Kaczynski is dead. Slawomir Skrzypek, the president of the National Bank, is dead. An explosion in the fog of the forest took them and 94 others on the way to Katyn. But Poland’s democracy has scarcely skipped a beat. The leader of the lower house of Parliament has become acting president pending an election. The first deputy president of the National Bank has assumed the duties of the late president. Poland, oft dismembered, even wiped from the map, is calm and at peace.
“Katyn is the place of death of the Polish intelligentsia,” Michnik, now the soul of Poland’s successful Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said when I reached him by phone. “This is a terrible national tragedy. But in my sadness I am optimistic because Putin’s strong and wise declaration has opened a new phase in Polish-Russian relations, and because we Poles are showing we can be responsible and stable.”
Michnik was referring to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s words after he decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.”
The declaration, dismissed by the paleolithic Russian Communist Party, mattered less than Putin’s presence, head bowed in that forest of shame. Watching him beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, I thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984: of such solemn moments of reconciliation has the miracle of a Europe whole and free been built. Now that Europe extends eastward toward the Urals.
I thought even of Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, a turning point on the road to a German-Polish reconciliation more miraculous in its way even than the dawning of the post-war German-French alliance. And now perhaps comes the most wondrous rapprochement, the Polish-Russian.
It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.”
Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.
For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.
It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.
So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.
Ask the Poles. They know."
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Katyn 1940 - 2010
Lech Kaczynski was supposed to lecture a speech during the Katyn ceremony, you can read it here

dimanche 11 avril 2010

"Why Poland's grief is doubled"

I wanted to write my thought about the Katyn 1940 - 2010 but i considered that the pictures and the video meant enough... then i ve read the Alex Storozynski opinion "Why Poland's grief is doubled" and i was impressed by its point of view which represents exactly the zeitgeist about what Poles consider Katyn and how much important is the Katyn Massacre to their eyes. Unfortunetaly, Katyn read a new chapter to the Polish and Europe History. Alex Strorozynski explains us why.


Editor's note: Alex Storozynski is president and executive director of The Kosciuszko Foundation and author of "The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution." The foundation promotes educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and Poland and seeks to increase American understanding of Polish culture and history.
"New York (CNN) -- 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.
The delegation was headed for the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia, to honor the 22,000 Polish prisoners of war killed 70 years ago by the Soviet Union's NKVD, forerunner of the KGB.
In 1940, Stalin ordered the assassination of Poland's military and political leaders in order to create a leadership vacuum so he could prop up a Communist puppet state in Warsaw.
Many of those killed in Saturday's plane crash helped to overturn Soviet Communism in Poland in 1990. They included Poland's top generals, several bishops, the head of the national bank and several deputy government ministers.
During the five decades of Soviet occupation of Poland in the Cold War, the Russians covered up the Katyn Massacre, claiming that Nazi Germany had murdered these officers. But forensic evidence found in mass graves proved that the Polish prisoners were taken into the woods, with their hands tied behind their backs, and one by one, they were shot dead in the back of the head by the Russians. The mass graves were discovered by German soldiers in 1943 when they saw pawprints of wolves that had been digging up the bones.
In 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the truth began to slowly emerge with revelations by Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
It's no secret that Moscow was not excited about Kaczynski's visit to Katyn, because he demanded to know the full truth about the murders. For the Kremlin, the official commemoration took place last Wednesday when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Kaczynski's political rival, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, took part in ceremonies at the same gravesite where Kaczynski was heading.
But Kaczynski's delegation included family members of murdered officers who wanted the Russian government to open all of the remaining archives concerning the massacre.
For decades, the cries of Polish families who want to know what happened to their loved ones have fallen on deaf ears. Kaczynski was their voice.
Many will no doubt compare this crash to the 1943 death of Polish Prime Minister Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, who died mysteriously when his plane crashed into the sea near Gibraltar after he asked the International Red Cross to investigate the Katyn Massacre. At the time, the American and British governments were not willing to address the massacre because they were trying to help the Soviet Union fight Nazi Germany on the Eastern front.
Let us hope the flight data recordings from Kaczynski's downed plane will provide enough evidence to dissuade conspiracy theorists.
Ironically, because of Kaczynski's death, more people have already heard about the Katyn Massacre than would have heard about it had he simply placed a wreath at the gravesite. For those Polish officers in the mass graves at Katyn, Lech Kaczynski's death was not in vain.
Many Russian government officials appeared on Polish television after the disaster expressing sincere regrets over the death of Kaczynski and his delegation. Putin has flown to Smolensk, where he said that he would oversee the investigation into the crash. Hopefully, these are signs that this tragedy will somehow lead to the full truth about Katyn and reconciliation between Poland and Russia.
For decades, Katyn has been the symbol of the worst in Polish-Russian relations. That is why several months ago, the Kosciuszko Foundation began working on a conference about the Katyn Massacre to be held at the Library of Congress on May 5. The goal is to provide a forum for political leaders, scholars, authors and human rights advocates from Poland, Russia and the United States to discuss new details on the massacre, and the possibility of finding a path toward reconciliation between Poland and Russia.
There will also be a display of rare Katyn photographs and documents on loan from The Council to Protect the Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom. Andrzej Przewoznik, secretary-general of the Council, was to be one of the speakers. He died in Saturday's crash. Now, this conference and exhibit will be a tribute to him, as well as to the other Polish leaders killed in Katyn during the 1940s, and in 2010."
By Alex Storozynski, Special to CNN
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Alex Storozynski.




PAMIETAMY (WE REMEMBER)

Katyn 1940 - 2010 ou la Malédiction de Katyn



Extrait du site web de l'Institut Polonais qui se passe de commentaires :
C'est avec une profonde tristesse
que nous portons a votre connaissance
que suite a la catastrophe de l'avion présidentiel TU-154,
survenue le 10 avril 2010 prés de Smolensk (Fédération de Russie),

Monsieur Lech KACZYNSKI, Président de la République de Pologne, son épouse,
ainsi que les hauts dignitaires de la vie politique et institutionnelle polonaise
ont perdu leur vie.

Le deuil national a été déclaré
a partir du samedi 10 avril, 18 heures
jusqu'au samedi 17 avril, 18 heures.
Un livre de condoléances sera ouvert a l'Ambassade de Pologne
(entrée par 57, rue Saint-Dominique, Paris 7eme)
du lundi 12 avril
au mercredi 14 avril
de 11H00 a 18H00.