Poland's Mourning

I would be remiss if I did not comment on the latest tragedy of Poland, a nation so fraught with misfortune in its history. The airplane crash that killed Lech Kacyznski, his wife, 87 other high-ranking Polish officials, and seven crew members has shaken the country to its core, with the elite of the Polish ruling class having been wiped out. Yet the Poles have stood steadfast and unbowed in the wake of this tragedy, adn they, like other eastern Europeans shackled by a sorrowful history, seem to be ready to move forward.

Ironically, the crash occurred because President Kacyznski and the others involved were on their way to Russia to commemorate the Katyn Massacre, a mass killing in the Russian city of Smolensk in which Soviet authorities shot Polish army officers and commanders rounded up in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland during the Second World War. Russia and Poland have been in dispute over the nature of the massacre, but the Russians have at least acknowledged that they, not the Germans, were the perpetrators. (Germany hadn't even invaded the Soviet Union yet.) Poles have shown vigilance over the present to not only avoid repetition of past sins against them, but also to press on for a happier future, like their Lithuanian neighbors. Poland is - and will always be - unbroken.