It is three months ago today that the Polish presidential plane crashed in Smolensk in western Russia, killing President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and ninety four other people, mostly high-ranking MPs, state and military officials.

A Mass in tribute to the victims of the crash, which was described in a parliamentary resolution as the greatest tragedy in the nation’s post-war history, was said this morning in Warsaw’s Seminary Church.

A priest recalled in the homily that President Lech Kaczyński and those who travelled with him were on their way to Katyń to pay homage to Polish officers killed by Stalin’s NKVD police seventy years ago.

After the service, at 8.41 am, the hour of the crash, a group of parliamentary deputies – members of the Law and Justice party, with its leader Jarosław Kaczyński, the twin brother of the late president, laid flowers and candles in front of the Presidential Palace.

Several hundred Varsovians took part in the ceremony. They sang the national anthem and chanted ‘We shall win’, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Jarosław’.

Later in the day, the grass-roots ‘April 10 Movement’ organised an event in the Pilsudski Square, close to the Presidential Palace. Ninety six people, the same number as the victims of the Smolensk crash, stood within the shape of a plane marked on the pavement, in a symbolic recollection of the tragedy.

The aim of the happening is to draw public attention to several issues connected with the investigation as to the causes of the tragedy, such as the demand to have all the remains of the plane and the black boxes brought to Poland, as well as a need to set up an independent, international commission to examine all the technical aspects of the crash. (mk/jb)

Thenews.pl |