Ed Morrissey and Professor William Jacobson inform us about the tragic death in an airline crash of the brave Polish president and a large number of Poland’s leadership, on their way to a joint commemoration with Russia of the 1940 slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Union.
For those of you who don’t recall Katyn, I wrote about it last August.
Katyn: In 1962, one of my later mentors published the first definitive book proving that the Soviets committed the massacre of Poland’s military elite at Katyn. This is a very important key to understanding the Captive Nations outcome of WWII and the Cold War. I just rented the film, Katyn, directed by Poland’s most famous director. Anne Applebaum, steeped in Soviet history, has an interesting review of the film, “A Movie That Matters.” An excerpt:
"Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army's subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda's father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland's best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union's plans to absorb and "Sovietize" Poland's eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.
"But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.
"Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word "Katyn" thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn't a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland's loss of sovereignty."
Obama snubbing Poland for 70th anniversary of WWII? Poland was the most screwed over country going into, during, and after WWII. Those of its soldiers who escaped the Nazis and Soviets were among the bravest fighters with the Allies. Poland and Poles deserve more respect.
Wonder what hollow words President Obama will utter now?
Today’s loss is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world. President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity. With him were many of Poland’s most distinguished civilian and military leaders who have helped to shape Poland’s inspiring democratic transformation. We join all the people of Poland in mourning their passing.
As usual from Obama, contradicted by his undercutting of Poland volunteering to host anti-missile defense and his disdain for Polish President Lech Kaczynski when alive. Israel surely gets the point.
The New York Times asks: "For Poland, the losses raise the question of how a country of 38 million can replace a whole political class." It had to before and will again, because Poles and their leaders have clearsighted historical memory and courage.
