Shock and Grief in Poland and Beyond
The world, in a very real sense, mourns with Poland on the country's loss of 97 Poles.Above all, the loss of so many of the nation's leaders. There are huge expatriate Polish communities all around the world, but particularly in Canada and the United States. These communities are in deep mourning, unsurprisingly. They may be citizens of North American countries, but they are still Poles, with a deep and abiding place for their country of origin in their psyches.
Perhaps it will never be adequately explained who took the decision, and why, to have so many of the country's political and social elite fly in one somewhat-aged plane. A 26-year-old Russian-manufactured plane whose reliability had come under question on previous occasions. The convention is that when high-placed government elites fly to any destination, they never fly en masse, but split up, in recognition of the potential for an unforeseen disaster.
There are so many ironies that abound in this tragedy as to imbue it with a very special air of mysterious happenstance. That the government executives, along with war veterans and former anti-Communist protesters all of whom assembled for the solemn purpose of remembering their mourned comrades are now being mourned.
Fully 24,000 Polish officers and officials murdered and placed in a mass grave, after the invasion of Poland by Soviet forces at the start of the Second World War. The atrocity attributed for 40 years to a slaughter perpetrated by the Nazis. Until new information came to light implicating the true perpetrators, the Soviet secret police.
And it was while they were en route to a ceremony to recall the Katyn Forest massacre that they encountered bad weather, making it difficult to land the aircraft at its destination in Smolensk to attend a Catholic ceremony of remembrance. The pilot was repeatedly entreated by air traffic controllers to land in Moscow due to the difficulty of navigating in the all-encompassing fog.
The crowd of a thousand people, mostly Poles - awaiting the arrival of the elite Polish delegation at the memorial site - along with a priest prepared to say Catholic Mass at the arrival of the presidential group, was finally advised, to their horror, that they would never arrive. "Suddenly people started talking quietly about something. There were many concerned faces.
"Soon people started running around and talking to each other. Everybody was wondering what was going on. It was an atmosphere of tension." After the priest led a prayer, the Polish ambassador broke the news that the presidential plane had crashed. No one survived. Not the president, his wife, the army chief of staff, head of the national security office, national bank present, deputy foreign minister; no one.
Official Russia is in shock and in mourning. There will be an official enquiry and investigation, and Vladimir Putin will head it. Most Poles are not impressed; there has been too much history to surrender to pacific forgiveness, and conspiracy theories abound now, in Poland. Were Polish-born Pope John-Paul II to have been still living, he too would most certainly be in a state of shock.
It was John Paul's support for Solidarity, of which President Lech Kaczynski and his brother were ardent supporters, that helped bring down the then-Communist government in Poland. On a mission to remember the Katyn Forest massacre, the 97 Poles intent on memorializing their death, met their own.
Life moves in mysterious ways - toward death.
An extension of sincere condolences to fellow Canadians of Polish extraction. Their loss is also the world's. There are many who grieve along with them at this cataclysmic loss.
Labels: Human Relations, Realities, That's Life, World News
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 11, 2010
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