Anna Komorowska. photo - PAP

Poland’s First Lady Anna Komorowska has supported an initiative by some of the families who had relatives die in the Smolensk air disaster to organize a pilgrimage to the crash site in western Russia, and take the cross from outside the Presidential Palace with them.

“I’m very moved by the proposal to lead a pilgrimage to Smolensk and I will participate in it, says Anna Komorowska, wife of President Bronislaw Komorowski said Friday, exactly five months since the plane crash which killed 96, including President Lech Kaczynski.

“My husband assured me that the Chancellery of the President will help organize the pilgrimage,” writes the First Lady on the Chancellery’s web site after family members of 28 victims of the Smolensk plane crash asked her to help organize the pilgrimage on 10 October, half a year after the tragedy.

Earlier, President Komorowski said that he supports the idea “wholeheartedly”.

Families of the 28 Smolensk victims would like to take the cross from outside the Presidential Palace, to the crash site in what some observers say is a clever move to outflank those, including members of the opposition Law and Justice party, who want the cross to stay outside the Presidential Palace.

“It is so difficult to find a place for the cross which would be accepted by everyone,” say the initiators of the pilgrimage.

They would also like all members of the families of the Smolensk victims to participate in it.

“We believe that this journey will help soothe negative emotions and those who do not understand our pain,” wrote the Smolensk family victims in an official letter to the First Lady.

Organisers of the pilgrimage to Smolensk want to land at the Severny airport, where the presidential plane crashed.

“In a symbolic way, we would like to complete that unfinished journey,” they say.

However, not all Smolensk family victims support the idea of the pilgrimage.

“I’m not going to go there. It’s a damned place, damned by the death of my brother and of thousands of Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in 1940,” said Andrzej Melak, brother of Stefan Melak, chairman of the Katyn Committee, who died on April 10.

Magdalena Merta, wife of deputy culture minister Tomasz Merta, said she will go to Smolensk but does not agree with removing of the cross from outside the Presidential Palace to Smolensk. “The cross is a symbol of what was happening here, at the Presidential Palace during the national mourning, and not of what happened in Smolensk,” said Merta. (mg/pg)

Source: PAP