Polish leadership owes duty to country after Smolensk: Polish president

The day marked exactly nine years since a Polish plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 94 others, including top political and military figures, crashed near Smolensk, western Russia, killing all those on board.

In a speech held outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Duda said the tragedy compelled the Polish leadership “to bring about the kind of Poland that President [Lech Kaczyński] dreamed of.”

Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of Poland’s governing Law and Justice (PiS) party and the late president’s twin, said the journey of the Polish leaders to Smolensk in 2010 was part of a mission that aimed to restore truth and dignity by Poland.

The plane was taking Polish delegates to an event near Smolensk to commemorate the Katyn Massacre of 1940, a Soviet campaign to eliminate Poland’s military elites and intelligentsia which started with some 4,000 executions in Katyń and ultimately saw some 22,000 Poles killed with a shot in the back to the head.

The massacre was officially kept under wraps by Moscow until 1990.

Kaczyński said: "The aim was for Poland to regain what is of utmost importance and what was taken away from [Poles], not only during the terrible years of World War II, but also later … after 1989.”

He added that the goal was “to regain the right to the truth. And in the case of [Poland], the right to truth is also the right to dignity.”

A raft of events held across Poland and abroad throughout the day commemorated a disaster that scarred the national psyche and is still a source of controversy and recriminations.

(aba)

Source: IAR