On the recordApril 13, 2010
This past Saturday, one of America's longest and strongest allies, the Republic of Poland, suffered a horrendous loss. A plane carrying 97 passengers crashed in Russia, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski; First Lady Maria Kaczynski; Ryszard Kaczorowski, who led a government in exile during the Communist era; Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the Deputy Speaker of Poland's Parliament; Aleksander Szczyglo, the head of the National Security Bureau; Adrrzej Kremer, the Deputy Minister of foreign affairs; Franciszek Gagor, the Army Chief of Staff; along with the president of Poland's National Bank, and a host of other public servants, including Anna Walentynowicz, the brave worker and opposition activist whose dismissal at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 started the strike that led to the formation of solidarity. All modern leaders of the Polish nation, they were mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, proud Poles all, now lost to this life but not to history. But yet again, the Katyn forest embraces the collective tragedy of Poland's precious leaders. In the most morbid of ironies, the doomed plane was flying to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when more than 22,000 Polish officers and leaders were murdered at the hands of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Army in and around that forest during World War II. Their bodies were buried and the truth hidden for seven decades. That is the truth of their slaughter.
