No Smolensk Secrets

Never-ending Story

On Tuesday in Kielce, Antoni Macierewicz, the head of the parliamentary group on the Smolensk plane crash, assured MPs that information about three persons, who survived the crash, is true. He mentioned three independent sources. On Saturday, in Rybnik, he stressed that the Prosecutor’s Office did not fulfill its duties and found nothing. What is more, he added that the Prosecutor’s Office did not interrogate any paramedics or doctors. Macierewicz has therefore filed an official complaint. On Saturday Prosecutor Mateusz Martyniuk, press spokesman for the General Prosecutor’s Office, said that there is no evidence that anybody survived the Smolensk crash. He highlighted the fact that evidence which was collected on the spot as well as later examinations, did not confirm such a theory.

What is more, Colonel Zbigniew Rzepa, press spokesman of the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office, confirmed that material evidence, which was collected by the Military Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw, indicates that nobody survived. Rzepa said that the Military Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw has yet again asked Macierewicz’s group to make their documents available to them, which they have not done. On Saturday, Macierewicz said that both he as well as the experts of the parliamentary group would share all information with the Prosecutor’s Office. On Friday, Leszek Miller, head of SLD, said that if Mr Macierewicz possesses this type of information, he is required by law to disclose it because he might know something important. So if these people survived, where can they be? Perhaps they have been kidnapped, perhaps they came to a sorry end, chided Miller.
Wirtualna  Polska

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Turning In Their Graves

Kuba Wojewódzki and Michał Figurski have both shocked and amused thousands of radio listeners and YouTube viewers with their latest shenanigans. Live on EskaRock radio, rapping to the tune of Dr Dre’s “Still”, Figurski and Wojewódzki launched into a full frontal attack on Law and Justice (PiS) presidential candidate Jarosław Kaczyński. Wojewódzki’s and Figurski’s song, entitled, “Po Trupach Do Celu” (literally, ‘to trample over corpses in order to get what one wants’) begins with Wojewódzki rapping, “Be afraid Poles, the (Kaczyński) Fourth Republic is returning”. We hear him later singing, “Jarek, Jarek, has lots of friends and every one of them wants to be buried at Wawel”.  The song has led to Coca-Cola pulling out of their sponsorship deal with Wojewódzki and Figurski. What is more, Magdalena Bajer, head of the Media Ethics Commission has called the song disgraceful and feels it goes well beyond the ethical line that journalists should not cross. However, the head of EskaRock Bogusław Potoniec does not believe the song was over the top. Listen for yourselves:

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Jarosław Kaczyński Has Decided

Twin For President?

“The general feeling in Law and Justice (PiS) is that Jarosław Kaczyński, identical twin brother of the late Lech Kaczyński who died in the tragic air crash over Smolensk should run for President. He is a hard man and only he knows what he will do in the race for the Presidency,” said PiS MEP Jacek Kurski live on air on RMF FM. Kurski added, “the general feeling in the PiS camp and amongst those who survived the tragic Smolensk air crash is that Jarosław Kaczyński should be the PiS candidate for President. He already knows what he’s going to do. But it’s clear that we have to continue with the fight, in honour of those who died”. Kurski also stated that, “the Lech Kaczyński myth will be to Poland’s advantage in the years to come. His brother must decide if his candidacy will augment or erode this myth”.
RMF FM

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Kaczyński Funeral in Kraków

Poland Bids Farewell

On this day, the 18th April, in 1025 Bolesław I the Brave was crowned in the former capital of Poland, Gniezno. On the 18th April 2007, UEFA took the historic decision to award the 2012 European Championships to Poland and Ukraine. Tthe 18th April 2010 witnesses the funeral of President Lech Aleksander Kaczyński together with his wife Maria at Wawel Castle, Kraków. Already this morning, thousands of people have lined the streets patiently waiting for the funeral procession that will take in many of Kraków’s historic streets. The funeral procession will begin at St. Mary’s Basilica, Kraków where the coffins of the President and his wife now lie and will then wind its way through Kraków, along the Royal Road and to Wawel Castle where the President and the First Lady will be buried.
Wirtualna Polska

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Funeral Cancellations Begin

Volcanic Ash Problem

Due to the eruption of the volcano on the Icelandic glacier in the area of Eyjafjallajoekull thousands of planes around Europe have been grounded. For the people of Poland awaiting the world’s heads of state for the funeral of President Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, it may spell disaster as the ash cloud that has now spread over much of northern Europe and provoked many countries to close their airspace could well affect the President’s funeral. Kraków is gearing up for one of the largest international events in recent years and will host kings, queens, princes, presidents, prime ministers and other world leaders. The funeral will begin on Sunday at 2pm. Due to the volcanic ash cloud, and the cancellation of flights and closure of airspace, the Prime Minister of South Korea and Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs have cancelled their visit to Kraków. US President Barack Obama has vowed to make the journey although his visit is also in doubt. Many leaders including Slovakian President Ivan Gašparovič and Austrian President Heinz Fischer will make the journey to Kraków by car.
Gazeta Wyborcza

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Kopacz: Right Person, Right Time

Kopacz - Doing Her Best

Poland’s Minister of Health Ewa Kopacz travelled to Moscow the day after the Smoleńsk air crash in order to help with the identification of bodies, help the families of the victims and help in the coordination of the investigation. The Russian team of experts are clearly impressed by her professionalism and dedication. She did, after all, previously work in forensics. Minister of Health Ewa Kopacz has only words of gratitude and thanks for her Russian colleagues and is at great pains to praise the work they are doing. “I wonder if Poland’s doctors would have helped as much as our Russian friends if a similar disaster had happened in Poland?” she asks. She goes on to talk about one of the most difficult moments she had in the last few days where the remains of some of the victims were in several coffins. “To begin with, we were unable to say how many people we had in front of us,” her voice visibly shaking as she re-tells the story. She goes on to add, “One of the biggest problems we have is that the families of the victims are often unable to identify the bodies in front of them. They find it impossible to believe that the remains lying before them might be their loved one”.
Fakt

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Sue Russia

Bullet in the Head

A trial in Strasbourg and a million-euro compensation might convince Russia that the good name of Stalin is not worth fighting for. Another trial concerning the victims of the Katyń massacre took place yesterday in Moscow. The case, similar to several previous ones, concerned Mariusz Świderski, a policeman from Łódź, who was executed in 1940 in Kalinino. His body was identified during the exhumation of the mass grave, conducted by the Russian Prosecution 18 years ago. In 2006, the Russian society, Memorial, put forward a motion to the military prosecution to rehabilitate 16 NKVD victims, including Świderski. The prosecution dismissed the motion, claiming that the case cannot be conducted because of a lack of documents proving that the Poles were executed. Then a marathon of similar sentences began: “The court decided to dismiss Memorial’s motion”.

Alexander Guryanov, the head of Memorial’s Polish section, keeps on reminding us of the true facts of those days. In 1939, more than 14,000 Poles, one of whom was Świderski, were sent to prisoner-of-war camps in Russia. On the 3rd of March 1940 Stalin ordered the execution of the Poles without trial or investigation, recognising them as enemies of the USSR. These documents, signed by the Soviet government as well as the lists of Poles sent from the prisoner-of-war camps to where the mass murders took place still exist. Also, the documents signed by the head of the KGB in 1959, informing Nikita Khrushchev that the victims’ files should be destroyed to cover up the mass murder, have survived.

Exhuming the Past

Even Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin admitted that Polish prisoners of war were killed by the NKVD and the documents were destroyed.  The military prosecution claim that even if the bodies from the mass grave were found with a bullet in the head, it does not mean that the person was repressed. The court and the prosecutors do not even see the connection between the trials of the Katyń victims and the murder of Nicholas II or the Swedish diplomat Raul Wallenberg. Surprisingly, although they were also killed by the Bolsheviks without trial or sentence, they were rehabilitated by Russia. Yesterday, the prosecutor Sergey Shalamayev who was present at the exhumation in Mednoye in 1991, claimed again that we cannot be sure who killed Świderski.

They are sneering at us in Moscow to hide the muss murderers, who in Russia are now being called “effective managers”. The Russian Federation is not guilty of the Katyń mass murder, but by covering up the facts and hiding the murderers it is jointly responsible for the crime. It is the duty of the National Institute of Remembrance (IPN) to put forward to Russia a motion to rehabilitate all the Katyń victims. There were more than 22,000 Poles in prisoner-of-war camps in Western Ukraine and Belarus. If the Russian courts dismiss this motion the case will be put to the European Court of Human Rights where Russia will be forced to pay EUR 30,000 for each of Stalin’s victims with the total amounting to approximately EUR 660 million. Then perhaps Moscow may admit that Stalin’s good name is simply not worth it.
Gazeta Wyborcza

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London welcomes “Katyn”

The English première of Andrew Wajda’s film will take place tomorrow in the British Film Institute. The Times has announced the event by publishing an interview with Wajda. The Times describes the history of disclosing the truth about the war crime, the course of the work over the script, giving also Wajda’s profile. It also enumerates the director’s most important films including Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, The Promised Land, Man of Marble. However the core of the interview concerns Katyn. Wajda remarked about one particularly important scene, in which Russians kill Polish officers, saying that “This was the greatest betrayal. Despite the fact that they were imprisoned by the Russians, they trusted them in a way. They were convinced that they will fight against Germans together.”

The Times claims that Katyn was received with enthusiasm in Russia, where it was treated as an attack on Stalin, not on Russians. Brigid Brauman says that Wajda found out recently that the opposition newspaper Nowaja Gazieta demanded that prosecutors should have access to all 183 Katyn volumes, and not to the 67 they were given so far. “If Katyn had an influence on such a decision it would be the largest achievement of my life,” says Wajda. Asked about his father who was in prison in Kharkov and then murdered when Wajda was 13, he answers: “I am not able to talk about him, except the fact that he was my hero who died when I needed him most”. The Katyn première will inaugurate a retrospective of Wajda’s films in the British Film Institute.
Gazeta Wyborcza

Katyń Remembered

The Day commemorating the victims of the Katyń massacre was celebrated yesterday. On April 13 we celebrated the 65th anniversary of the disclosure of news concerning the killing of 15,000 millitary, police and border control officers by the NKVD in 1940. Andrzej Sariusz-Skąpski, chairman of the Katyń Families Association emphasized that the victims’ families still have not received any compensation. “Through all the years of communist repression we have learnt how to be humble and patient and we believed that the truth will prevail and the sacrifice of our relatives’ lives will never be forgotten”, he said. The solemn change of guard took place in front of the Warsaw Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Speaker of the House Bronisław Komorowski and Defense Minister Bogdan Klich participated in the ceremony. Moreover, a field mass was celebrated by the Monument of the Warsaw Uprising.

Forgive Us for Katyń

Nowaja Gazieta, a Russian oppositionist newspaper, recently wrote: “Forgive us for the Katyn tragedy, forgive us for the assassination of 22,000 Polish citizens. We salute the children, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of those murdered people”. Additionally, Nowaja Gazieta wants the Military Attorney General to break the silence surrounding the NKVD massacre of Polish officers in 1940. According to the oppositionist newspaper, the Military Attorney General has not said the last word about the 1994-2004 investigation into the Katyń massacre. Furthermore, Nowaja Gazieta claimed that the closure of the investigation is one of the reasons why Russian fascists still kill people. The newspaper stated that “it seems that the investigation has been closed because of the death of Stalin, Beria, Voroshilov, Molotov and Mikojan, in other words, those who signed the death warrant”. The Attorney General Jurij Czajka has been called by the Memorial association to reveal the Military Attorney General’s resolution of 2004. According to the Memorial, the obfuscation of the resolution is unacceptable in both moral and legal terms.
Dziennik