JAN III SOBIESKI ~ August 17, 1629 ~ June 17, 1696

John III Sobieski (Polish: Jan III Sobieski) (17 August 1629 - 17 June 1696) was one of the most notable monarchs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1674 until his death King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Sobieski's 22-year-reign was marked by a period of the Commonwealth's stabilisation, much needed after the turmoil of the Deluge and Khmelnytsky Uprising. Popular among his subjects, he was also a brilliant military commander, most famous for the victory over the Turks in the 1683 Battle of Vienna. For his victories over the Ottoman Empire, he was dubbed by the Turks the "Lion of Lechistan."

Image & Text:wikipedia.com

(More about the Battle of Vienna was posted on September 12, 2009.)

74th Anniversary of the Katyn Massacre

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, left, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin commemorate the 22,000 Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet troops in the 1940 Katyn massacre. Photo:Nilosky/Pool

Seven decades ago, Soviet secret police executed thousands of Polish military officers in a forest in western Russia. On April 7, Russian and Polish leaders will meet to officially commemorate the massacre's anniversary together for the first time.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, are due to attend a memorial ceremony in the village of Katyn honoring the more than 20,000 officers, policemen, and intellectuals who were killed on Soviet leader Josef Stalin's orders during World War II.

The two men will also pay tribute to Soviet victims of the Stalinist terror.

Marek Lasota, a Polish historian with the Institute of National Remembrance in Krakow, says Putin's attendance at the ceremony, and the Kremlin’s decision to extend an official invitation to Tusk, are signs that Russia's attitudes toward what has become known as the "Katyn Forest massacre" are changing.

"I would like to believe that if Prime Minister Putin is really going to take part in the...ceremonies, then it means that the Russian side is not avoiding responsibility for the historical heritage that it's taken, that in this way it wants to emphasize and articulate its emotions and feelings about this crime," Lasota said.

In what was seen as a political watershed, Putin extended an official invitation to Tusk in February to attend the 70th anniversary commemorations of the massacre. In the past, visits by Polish leaders to Katyn to honor the dead were unofficial, semi-private affairs.

According to media reports, Tusk saw the invitation as an important step in improving relations between Poland and Russia, and said Putin's decision to honor the Katyn victims was symbolically "very important."

Suppression And Denial

The Katyn massacre has long been one of the key sore points in the troubled Russian-Polish relationship. For nearly 50 years, the Soviet Union claimed that it was Nazi troops who had committed the murders and suppressed historical evidence to the contrary. The pro-Kremlin communist regime in Poland at the time dutifully toed the Moscow line.

Andrzej Skapski, who lost a parent in the massacre, says the families of the victims were treated like outcasts by Poland's communist-era rulers. "The mothers, a generation of mothers, were denied the right of existence," Skapski says. "They couldn't find a job, and if they found one and somebody found out that they were the widows of officers or Katyn victims, they were fired. Young people, the sons and daughters, were in fact cut off from higher education."

Soldiers exhume the bodies of victims of the Katyn massacre in 1943.

In 1989, when communism fell in Poland and across Eastern Europe, Moscow came under pressure to acknowledge the truth. In 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that it was in fact the NKVD, the precursor to the Soviet KGB, which carried out the killings.

Russian historian Natalia Lebedeva says resolving the Katyn issue will go a long way toward improving relations between Moscow and Warsaw.

"It is one of the obstacles to improving relations not only between the governments but the people as well," Lebedeva says. The Poles "are deeply hurt that we don't share their pain, that we are hiding the truth. As soon as they feel that their pain is close to us too, that we share their pain, and we want to know the truth about it, people in Poland will welcome it very much."

In the 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin released previously classified documents to the Polish authorities, including an order dated March 5, 1940, from NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria, signed by Stalin, to execute the Polish POWs.

During former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski's visit to Russia in September 2004, the Kremlin said they would to turn over all their information on the Katyn massacre to Warsaw as soon as it was declassified.

Months later, in March 2005, the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office concluded a decade-long investigation of the massacre. Prosecutors announced that they had been able to confirm the deaths of fewer than 2,000 Polish citizens; that the killings did not constitute genocide; and that since the perpetrators were dead, there was no reason to pursue the matter further.

The vast majority of the files gathered during the investigation were deemed to contain state secrets and were thus classified. Russian courts have refused to declassify them, making it impossible for relatives to access information that would help them find the remains of those still missing.

On March 5, the Russian human rights group Memorial called on President Dmitry Medvedev to reopen the investigation into what it called a "war crime and a crime against humanity."

Changing Attitudes

Despite the continuing state secrecy, the April 7 commemorations are also taking place as society seems to be embracing a new willingness to talk about the tragedy.

On April 2, the Oscar-nominated 2007 film "Katyn," by Polish director Andrzej Wajda -- whose father was a Katyn massacre victim -- premiered on Russia's "Kultura" television channel.

The official Russian government newspaper "Rossiiskaya gazeta," which in the past had published articles casting doubt on Soviet responsibility for the Katyn massacre, opined that the screening "shows our society's serious progress on the path toward restoring historic truth about the tragedy of World War II."

Historian Lebedeva says it's in Russia's interest for the truth about Katyn to be fully aired. "When people tell me that I work in the interests of another country, I say that we are the ones interested in the truth about Katyn before anyone else, because this crime was committed in our land," she says. "Unless we uncover the whole truth about the actions of Stalinism, then sooner or later we will end up in the same situation."

Polish President Lech Kaczynski did not receive an invitation to the April 7 ceremonies, leading to speculation that Russia was punishing him for his outspoken criticism of Moscow. Kaczynski says he plans to lead a separate ceremony in Katyn forest on April 10, joining Polish veterans organizations and victims' relatives.

Text:Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, 'Katyń crime'), was a mass murder of thousands of Polish prisoners of war (primarily military officers), intellectuals, policemen, and other public servants by the Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated March 5, 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Beria. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21,768. The victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere. About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials." Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, and the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship.

The "Katyn massacre" refers to the massacre at Katyn Forest, near the villages of Katyn and Gnezdovo (ca. 19 km west of Smolensk, Russia), of Polish military officers in the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp. This was the largest of the simultaneous executions of prisoners of war from geographically distant Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps, and the executions of political prisoners from West Belarus and West Ukraine, shot on Stalin's orders at Katyn Forest, at the NKVD headquarters in Smolensk, at a Smolensk slaughterhouse, and at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkov, Moscow, and other Soviet cities. The Belorussian and Ukrainian Katyn Lists are NKVD lists of names of Polish prisoners to be murdered at various locations in Belarus and Western Ukraine. The modern Polish investigation of the Katyn Massacre covered not only the massacre at Katyn forest, but also the other mass murders mentioned above. There are Polish organisations such as the Katyn Committee and the Federation of Katyn Families, which again are inclusive of victims of the various mass murders at various locations.

Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943. The revelation led to the end of diplomatic relations between Moscow and the London-based Polish government-in-exile. The Soviet Union continued to deny the massacres until 1990, when it finally acknowledged the perpetration of the massacre by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up. An investigation by the Prosecutor's General Office of the Russian Federation has confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres, yet does not classify this action as a war crime or an act of genocide. This acknowledgement would have made necessary the prosecution of surviving perpetrators, which is what the Polish government had requested. The Russian government also does not classify the dead as victims of Stalinist repression, which bars formal posthumous rehabilitation.

Text:wikipedia.com

Three days after this commemoration would occur a most unimaginable tragedy.

FRYDERYK CHOPIN ~~ 203rd BIRTHDAY!! ~~ March 1, 1810 ~ October 17, 1849

Frédéric François Chopin, christened Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin sometimes written Szopen in Polish (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849), was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music.

Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a French-expatriate father and Polish mother. He was considered a child-prodigy pianist. At age twenty, on 2 November 1830, he left Warsaw for Austria, intending to go on to Italy. The outbreak of the Polish November Uprising 27 days later, and its subsequent suppression by Russia, led to his becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration.

In Paris, Chopin made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. Though an ardent Polish patriot, in France he used the French versions of his given names, and traveled on a French passport, possibly to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents. After ill-fated romantic involvements with Polish women, from 1837 to 1847 he had a turbulent relationship with the French novelist Aurore Dupin, better known by her pseudonym, George Sand. For the greater part of his life Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849, aged thirty-nine, of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Chopin's compositions were written primarily for the piano as solo instrument. Though technically demanding, they emphasize nuance and expressive depth rather than sheer virtuosity. Chopin invented musical forms such as the instrumental ballade and was responsible for major innovations in the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

Warsaw is a little bleak this time of year, as I discovered on a visit to the Polish capital last week. Expeditions that look straightforward on paper may turn arduous. On my first day, I set out for theChopin Museum, which appeared to be a twenty-minute walk from my hotel. The temperature was well below freezing, the wind off the Vistula invasive, the sidewalk glazed with ice. After a few blocks, I felt the need to take refuge, and followed several elderly women into Holy Cross Church, on Krakowskie Przedmieście, one of Warsaw’s main thoroughfares. Sitting in a pew, I looked to my left and saw, on one of the church’s pillars, the legend “HERE RESTS THE HEART OF FREDERICK CHOPIN.” After a moment of confusion, I remembered a story from the Chopin biographies: in his last days, in Paris, the supreme poet of the piano had asked that his heart be brought back to his native land. So while Chopin’s body rests at Père Lachaise, in the company of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, his heart resides at Holy Cross, in the first big pillar on the left. I made a note to look up the story when I got home. The definitive chronicle is by the Polish journalist Andrzej Pettyn. There is also “Chopin’s Heart,” a book by the American physician Steven Lagerberg.

The woman who set the saga in motion was Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, Chopin’s eldest sister, who heard and recorded his curious request for dismemberment. She saw to it that the heart was preserved in a hermetically sealed crystal jar filled with an alcoholic liquid, possibly cognac. That vessel was, in turn, encased in an urn made of mahogany and oak. In early 1850, a few months after her brother’s death, Jędrzejewicz smuggled the assemblage into Poland, hiding it under her cloak in order to elude the attentions of Austrian and Russian inspectors. In 1879, it was placed in its present position at Holy Cross. A memorial slab bore a citation of the Book of Matthew: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

As Jędrzejewicz must have anticipated, the erection of a memorial at Holy Cross soon acquired political resonance. For decades, it was the only public monument to Chopin that tsarist authorities permitted in the city, and it drew covert displays of nationalist fervor. When Poland achieved independence, in 1918, the site became an open shrine. “All our past sings in him, all our slavery cries in him, the beating heart of the nation, the great king of sorrows,” the cleric Antoni Szlagowski intoned, in 1926. While Chopin believed strongly in the idea of a Polish nation, such sentiments might have made him uncomfortable; in one of his letters, he dismissed as “nonsense” the idea that Poles would one day be as proud of him as Germans are of Mozart.

During the German occupation of Poland, the heart was nearly lost. Conscious of Chopin’s symbolic power, the Nazis prevented performances of his music and destroyed a statue that had been erected in his honor in 1926. (Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland, later allowed Chopin to be played as long as his name was given as “Schopping.”) During the Warsaw Uprising, battles raged around Holy Cross, and the building suffered heavy damage. In the midst of the fighting, a German priest named Schulze asked his Polish counterparts whether they would let him take the heart into safekeeping. After a discussion, the priests agreed. The urn passed into the hands of Heinz Reinefarth, a high-ranking S.S. officer who professed to be a Chopin admirer. For the remainder of the uprising, the heart was kept at the headquarters of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the infamously brutal commander of German forces in the region.

Once the uprising had been suppressed, Bach-Zelewski made a show of returning the urn to Polish hands. It was, Andrzej Pettyn proposes, a “gesture aimed at reducing his own fault and present himself to the world in a more favorable light.” A film crew was summoned to record the transfer of the heart to Szlagowski, who had since become the archbishop of Warsaw. At the crucial moment, though, spotlights that had been set up to illuminate the scene malfunctioned, and, as the story goes, Szlagowski muttered thanks to God that the Nazis’ propaganda spectacle had been spoiled. Not surprisingly, this grisly charade failed to erase memories of the mass slaughter of Polish civilians. (Anyone who is reminded here of the plot of “The Pianist” might be interested to know that Halina Szpilman, the widow of Władysław Szpilman, who inspired the Polanski film, is alive and well in Warsaw; I met her at a concert by the Sinfonia Iuventus.)

The priests of Holy Cross took the urn with them to Milanówek, outside of Warsaw. Fearing that the Germans would change their minds, they hid it. For the first time in decades, the container was disassembled and the organ itself glimpsed. It was “incredibly big,” one observer recalled. On October 17, 1945, the ninety-sixth anniversary of Chopin’s death, the heart went back to Holy Cross. White and red flags flew along the route, and masses of people gathered to pay their respects. By the time the car carrying the relic reached Warsaw, Pettyn relates, it was heaped high with flowers.

Chopin’s heart remains an object of fascination and dispute. In 2008, a team of scholars asked for permission to subject it to a DNA analysis, in order to test a theory that Chopin died not of tuberculosis, as was long believed, but of cystic fibrosis. (That might explain the largeness of the heart.) The Polish government refused the request. Indeed, it seems right to let the heart rest in peace for a long while.

In all likelihood, the composer of the “Revolutionary Etude” has no further role to play on the political stage, but he retains a high profile in his native land. When, at the end of my stay, I got into a taxi, the driver asked, “Chopin?” He meant, of course, the airport.

Photograph by Maciej Szczepanczyk.

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

CHOPIN’S HEART

POSTED BY ALEX ROSS

Courtesy of the tHe NEW YORKER

Start of POLISH ROUNDTABLE TALKS ~ February 6, 1989

The Polish Round Table Talks took place in Warsaw, Poland from February 6 to April 4, 1989. The government initiated the discussion with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest.

History
Following the factory strikes of the early 1980s and the subsequent formation of the (then still underground) Solidarity movement under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa the political situation in Poland started relaxing somewhat. Despite an attempt by the government to crack down on the anti-Communist sentiments, the movement had gained too much momentum and it became impossible to hold off change anymore. In addition there was fear of a social explosion due to economic malaise and runaway inflation that had depressed Polish living standards and deepened public anger and frustration. By 1988 the authorities began serious talks with the opposition.

In September 1988, when a wave of strikes was coming to an end, a secret meeting was held which included amongst others the opposition leader Lech Wałęsa and Minister of Internal Affairs Czesław Kiszczak. They agreed on holding the so-called Round Table talks in the near future to plan out the course of action to be undertaken in the country. The Round Table talks began on February 6th 1989. They included the solidarity opposition faction and the coalition government faction. The talks were held in the Council of Ministers Office. The meetings were co-chaired by Lech Wałęsa and Czesław Kiszczak.

The Polish Communists, led by Gen. Jaruzelski, hoped to co-opt prominent opposition leaders into the ruling group without making major changes in the political power structure. In reality, the talks radically altered the shape of the Polish government and society. The events in Poland precipitated and gave momentum to the fall of the entire Communist bloc; the Yalta arrangement collapsed soon after the events in Poland.

Sessions
The sessions were divided into three main work groups:
Political reform workgroup
Union pluralism and party pluralism workgroup
Economy and social issues workgroup

Specific issues were handled by these work groups. The meetings often ground to a halt. This was caused by a mutual distrust of the factions and an obvious unwillingness of the government faction to relinquish power. The most controversial questions were:
Pay raises and indexation
Future pluralist elections
The limit of the future president's competence
The limit of competence for the future Sejm and Senate
The access to mass communication media by opposition forces

A number of (radical) opposition organisations were quite opposed to the talks. They did not believe in the good intentions of the sitting government. Despite their fears a number of important documents were signed on April 5th at the conclusion of the sessions. These documents became known as the Round Table Agreement.

Results
An agreement ("Round Table Agreement") was signed on April 4, 1989. The most important postulates, including those reflected in the April Novelization, were:
Legalization of independent trade unions
The introduction of the office of President (thereby annulling the power of the Communist party general secretary), who would be elected to a 6-year term
The formation of a Senate

As a result, real political power was vested in a newly created bicameral legislature and in a president who would be the chief executive. Solidarność became a legitimate and legal political party. Free election to 35% of the seats in Sejm and an entirely free election to the Senate was assured.

The election of 4 June 1989 brought a landslide victory to Solidarność: 99% of all the seats in the Senate and all of the 35% possible seats in Sejm. Jaruzelski, whose name was the only one the Communist Party allowed on the ballot for the presidency, won by just one vote in the National Assembly. The 65-35 division was soon abolished as well, after the first truly free Sejm elections.

The Round Table sessions were of momentous importance to the future political developments in Poland. They paved the way to a free and democratic Poland as well as the final abolition of communism in Poland. Poland has now truly entered a new chapter in its history.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

The Red Army Liberates Auschwitz-Birkenau ~ January 27, 1945

1945 – World War II: The Red Army liberates the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was a network of concentration camps built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was the largest of the German concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I (the Stammlager or main camp); Auschwitz II-Birkenau (the Vernichtungslager or extermination camp); Auschwitz III-Monowitz, also known as Buna, a labor camp; and 45 satellite camps.

Auschwitz is the German name for Oświęcim, the town the camps were located in and around; it was renamed by the Germans after they invaded Poland in September 1939. Birkenau, the German translation of Brzezinka (birch tree), refers to a small Polish village nearby that was mostly destroyed by the Germans to make way for the camp.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau was designated by Heinrich Himmler, Germany's Minister of the Interior, as the locus of the "final solution of the Jewish question in Europe." From spring 1942 until the fall of 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over Nazi-occupied Europe. The camp's first commandant, Rudolf Höss, testified after the war at the Nuremberg Trials that up to three million people had died there, a figure since revised to 1.1 million, around 90 percent of them Jews. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and tens of thousands of other nationalities.Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and purported medical experiments.

On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops, a day commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1947, Poland founded a museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, which by 1994 had seen 22 million visitors—700,000 annually—pass through the iron gates crowned with the infamous motto, Arbeit macht frei ("work makes you free").

Image & text:wikipeida.com

The metal Arbeit macht frei motto was stolen about a year ago from the gate at Auschwitz. It was recovered a few months later, after having been cut into three pieces. It is now being or has already been restored.

The irony is that many German Jews decided not to leave Germany in the 30's because they felt that Nazi rhetoric was just a ploy to gain political power, and not a genuine strategy for action. After all, Germany and German culture was the land of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven and especially Mozart!

JADWIGA ~ Female KING of Poland ~ Crowned November 16, 1384

1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.

Jadwiga (1373/4 – 17 July 1399) was a monarch of Poland from 1384 to her death. Her official title was 'king' rather than 'queen', reflecting that she was a sovereign in her own right and not merely a royal consort. She was a member of the Capetian House of Anjou and the daughter of King Louis I of Hungary and Elisabeth of Bosnia. She is known in Polish as Jadwiga, in English and German as Hedwig, in Lithuanian as Jadvyga, in Hungarian as Hedvig, and in Latin as Hedvigis.

She is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Hedwig. Jadwiga is the patron saint of queens, and of United Europe.

Image & Text:wikipedia.com

Second Polish Republic Proclaimed ~ November 6, 1918

The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; from the creation of an independent Polish state in the aftermath of World War I, to the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, which marked the beginning of World War II.

When the borders of the state were fixed in 1922 after several regional conflicts, the Republic bordered Czechoslovakia, Germany, Free City of Danzig, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, and the Soviet Union, plus a tiny strip of the coastline of the Baltic Sea, around the city of Gdynia. Furthermore, in the period March 1939 – August 1939, Poland bordered then-Hungarian Carpathian Ruthenia. It had an area of 388 634 km² (sixth largest in Europe, in the fall of 1938, after the annexation of Zaolzie, the area grew to 389,720 km².), and 27.2 million inhabitants according to the 1921 census. In 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, it had an estimated 35.1 million inhabitants. Almost a third of these were of minority groups: 13.9% Ukrainians; 3.1% Belarusians; 8.6% Jews; 2.3% Germans; and 3.4% percent Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians).

The Second Polish Republic is often associated with times of great adversity, of troubles and of triumph. Having to deal with the economic difficulties and destruction of World War I, followed by the Soviet invasion during the Polish Soviet War, and then increasingly hostile neighbors such as Nazi Germany, the Republic managed not only to endure, but to expand. Lacking an overseas empire (see: Maritime and Colonial League), Poland nevertheless maintained a level of economic development and prosperity comparable to that of the West. The cultural hubs of Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Wilno and Lwów raised themselves to the level of major European cities. They were also the sites of internationally acclaimed universities and other institutions of higher education. By 1939 the Republic was becoming a major world player in politics and economics.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

Best wishes to my friends Magdalena in Warsaw and Adam K, originally from Warsaw, now residing in San Francisco!

Unimaginable Tragedy in Poland ~ April 10, 2010

A young woman lights a candle among hundreds of others left by mourners outside the Presidential Palace in memory of late Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Monday in Warsaw, Poland.

Image:Sean Gallup/Getty

Unimaginable tragedy in Poland as President, First Lady, Top Military Commanders, Advisors die in Plane Crash

by Infidelesto on April 10, 2010


Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of the country's most prominent military and civilian leaders died Saturday April 10, 2010 along with dozens of others when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in near Smolensk in western Russia.

NYT:
The crash came as a staggering blow to Poland, wiping out a large swath of the country’s leadership, including the commanders of all four branches of the military, the head of the central bank, the president and many of his top advisors. 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.

“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.”

The Economist calls this a decapitation of Polish society: the plane crash also seems like a decapitation of Polish society. Among the 96 people who died were the chief of the Polish general staff, the head of the central bank, the director of the Institute of National Remembrance (which investigates and documents crimes such as Katyn) and many other of the country’s top public figures. Many politicians from the opposition Law and Justice Party, which is led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president’s twin brother, were among the delegation.

The country’s military chiefs were on board because they were going to attend ceremonies in the Katyn forest, near Smolensk, marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers there and elsewhere in Russia and Ukraine during World War II.

Poland plunged into political turmoil after crash:

The tragedy has forced an early presidential election which under the Polish constitution must be held before the end of June.

“This kind of dramatic tragedy is unheard of in the modern world,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in Warsaw after an emergency cabinet meeting before he headed to the crash site in Smolensk in western Russia.

At the same time Bronislaw Komorowski, Poland’s parliamentary speaker who became acting head of state after Kaczynski’s death, declared a week of mourning for the 97 people killed in the crash.

Poland Had Nicknamed Government Planes ‘Flying Coffins’ – WSJ
Polish Premier Donald Tusk on board arrived to the Czech capital to meet U.S. President Barack Obama and eleven leaders of Middle and East European countries. Only 39 hours later, the same aircraft crashed near Smolensk, western Russia, on Saturday.

The airplane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski Saturday is deeply shocking — but, sadly, not a complete surprise. Poland has for years been calling the Soviet-era military aircraft used by Polish officials “flying coffins."

Poland’s former Prime Minister Leszek Miller once had to leave the government airplane at an airport in Germany after an engine caught on fire. He was later nearly killed in a helicopter crash — and still politicians were too afraid of the public reaction to buy new aircraft.

The possibility of a government aircraft crashing and killing an important official was so strongly discussed that it became absorbed into popular culture. Commercial television broadcaster Polsat produced a series called Ekipa in 2007 in which a fictitious president crashes in a helicopter and dies shortly afterward.

Poles continue to mourn President Lech Kaczynski, whose body was returned to home soil Sunday amid questions about the airplane crash that killed him and about the pilot who flew the jet.

The first lady and scores of others from the country's military and political elite also died in the crash in western Russia.

Russian investigators say a preliminary analysis of the flight data recorders indicates that there were no mechanical problems on board. So far, they are pointing to pilot error.

On Monday, Poland's acting president, Bronislaw Komorowski, ordered a review of rules governing travel for all senior military personnel. Saturday's crash killed 96 people, including senior leaders of all of Poland's branches of armed forces.

The presidential plane was repaired and overhauled in December. But Wawrzyniec Konarski, a professor of political science at the Warsaw School of Social Sciences, says it's absurd that the president and other top officials were flying in a two-decade-old Tupolev despite several warnings from senior officials and pilots that the aging official Polish fleet desperately needed to be replaced.

"The sources of transport, especially the planes, were perceived as obsolete and bad, should be absolutely replaced by new and modernized machines. This kind of debate, even a technical one, really has to be accelerated," Konarski says.

There was heavy fog before the crash, and the Russians say they advised the Polish pilot several times to divert the Tupolev 154 to another airport. Russian media reports suggest that the pilot made several attempts to land before the crash.

But Col. Tomasz Pietrzak of the Polish air force disputes that. He says sources on the ground at the airport in Smolensk in western Russia near where the plane went down tell him the pilot made one approach and, moreover, the advice to divert was just that — advice. In the end, Pietrzak says, it is up to the pilot to decide what to do.

"It's not mandatory, it's only suggestion. If the weather was really bad in the airport, the decision is only one: The controller must say, 'OK, the airport is closed,' " he says.

The airport was not closed, says Pietrzak, who trained and commanded the two pilots who flew to Russia on Saturday — the one who was flying the plane carrying journalists and which landed safely; and the pilot killed in the crash of the president's plane.

Pietrzak says he has spoken with the pilot who landed safely, and he confirmed that the other aircraft made just one approach to the airport and that the airport in Smolensk is a primitive Russian military post whose control tower lacks modern aviation guidance equipment.

For several years, Pietrzak commanded the Polish air force regiment that was in charge of flying the president and other senior officials. But he resigned two years ago in large part to protest the poor shape of the fleet.

"The technology of these aircraft is too old," he says, adding that he got tired of waiting for aircraft improvements that never came.

A breaking point came in 2003, the colonel says, when a helicopter carrying the prime minister crashed. All of the passengers survived, but Pietrzak says that crash should have been a wake-up call.

"It was a sign from [God] seven years ago that we have to do something, we have to change something. But all of them ignore the situation. Everybody put under the carpet these problems," Pietrzak says.

Some are asking whether the pilot was under pressure from President Kaczynski or others on the plane to land and make the commemoration ceremony on time. In at least one previous instance, the president had reportedly pressured his pilot to land despite warnings.

Polish media report that in 2008, pilots flying Kaczynski to Tbilisi refused the president's order to land in Georgia because of the country's military conflict with Russia. Instead, the plane diverted to Azerbaijan.

Pietrzak says this is speculation, and the flight data recorders would most likely be able to shed light on the question.

He notes that there were four microphones in the cockpit of the president's Tupolev, which he says would probably have picked up any chatter relating to pressure to land.

But, he says, an upgrade for the presidential fleet is still much needed, no matter what the recovered flight data recorders show to be the cause of Saturday's crash.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Poles lined the route from Warsaw's airport to the presidential palace Sunday. Many stood somberly in silence. Some tossed flowers at the entourage carrying the president's casket as it slowly made its way to the palace for eventual public viewing.

Magdelena Udalkowska came out to view the procession with her son.

"I wanted to be here to honor Lech Kaczynski," she said. "He was a great Polish patriot, and it was important to come out and pay our respects."

The president and the other dignitaries were traveling to Katyn, Russia, for a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 1940 massacre there of thousands of Polish officers, police and intellectuals by Joseph Stalin's secret police, known as the NKVD. Historians believe Stalin wanted to cripple a postwar Poland by eliminating much of the country's officer corps and key members of the intelligentsia.

Some Poles are now calling the plane crash the "second Katyn." Udalkowska said the fact that the crash occurred in a place already soaked in Polish blood only worsens the confusion and shock.

"The fact that this catastrophe occurred in this place again — and on the 70th anniversary — makes me think it was some kind of act of God. I don't know. It makes it all even more sad," she said.

Text:NPR.org

FRYDERYK CHOPIN ~ March 1, 1810 ~ October 17, 1849

Image: wikipedia.com

2nd Partition of Poland by Russia & Prussia in 1793

Image: The Fall of Poland/painting by Jan Matejko/wikipedia.com

Image: Catherine the Great: library.state.ak.us

Image: Frederick the Great: munger.ca

The partition of Poland in 1793 was the second of three. The third in 1795 abolished Poland as an independent country, and it was not restored until the Versailles Treaty after World War I. One of Napoleon's most serious mistakes was his failure to do so earlier. Sadly the invasion of Poland by Germany on September 1, 1939 caused the outbreak of World War II. (No mention here of the heroism of the Poles, or the horrors of that war.) During the Cold War Poland was under the weight of the Iron Curtain. The Solidarity movement in the 1980's, however, helped to bring about significant changes in the Communist bloc. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Poland regained its proud sovereignty. Today Poland is a strong member of the European Union.

With sad commemoration on this anniversary of the second partition and with special greetings to Magdalena in Warsaw and my dear friend Adam K, born in Warsaw-- still with parents & relations there.