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Poland continues to mourn the loss of its president, Lech Kaczynski, and the many others who died when the presidential plane crashed in western Russia. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Adam Easton in Warsaw. (flickr image of Warsaw candle trail by Effervescing Elephant)
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MARCO WERMAN: The people of Poland will pay their last respects to President Lech Kaczynski and his wife this week. The bodies of the first couple will lie in state at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. The President, the First Lady and 94 others were killed in a plane crash Saturday. Dozens of Polish political, military and religious leaders are among the dead. The plane went down while trying to landing dense fog near Smolensk airport in western Russia. The BBC’s Adam Easton is in Warsaw. Adam it’s got to be still quite somber there in the Polish capital there today.
ADAM EASTON: Yeah, as you can imagine the atmosphere is pretty solemn and pretty somber here. Yeah, it’s Monday, the start of the working week, but people in Warsaw taking the time to come to the outside of the Presidential Palace here just to pay their respects. I’ve seen groups of school children; I’ve seen young people, old people, families with children, many with flowers, mourning the human tragedy.
WERMAN: You are at the Presidential Palace Adam where you have been watching these mourners all day. Beyond the Palace, how has the transitional government been dealing with this catastrophe and, as you point out, this first business day since the crash?
EASTON: Well the focus from a political perspective and even to some extent the media perspective has really been on them mourning. There’s not really so much finger-pointing going on at the moment. This is a country which is uniting in grief.
WERMAN: Now, as listeners may know, the Polish President was on his way to attend events commemorating the Katy Massacre in Russia that was a World War II massacre. Remind us why this was such a turning point in Russian-Polish relations. There is a tragic irony to this.
EASTON: Yeah, I mean Lech Walesa, the great Polish legend, the hero of the solidarity movement against the communist authorities in the 1980′s in the former President himself; he pointed this out immediately; the second time that the Polish nation has had a tragedy in the same place. Seventy years ago in the spring of 1940 over 20,000 Polish officers, prisoners of war after the Soviet Union invaded Poland, were murdered by the Soviet Secret Police, their bodies dumped in mass graves and for 50 years people in Poland were not allowed to even discuss this because the communist authorities forbade it and it was only 20 years ago that the Soviet Union admitted responsibility. They blamed it on the Nazi Germany for 50 years and even in the last 20 years it’s still been a bone of contention between the two nations so this is perhaps one of the most painful moments of Poland’s Second World War history that the President’s plane was on its way to the memorial service to mark the 70th anniversary of that tragedy.
WERMAN: And Russia today has been observing an official day of mourning as well. Flags are at half mast, TV channels have canceled entertainment programs. Apparently though, a Polish film about the Katy massacre has been screened on prime time Russian television. It just seems another sign that, in terms of dealing with the collective memory of World War II, the tragedy of this crash has unwittingly brought Russia and Poland even closer.
EASTON: I think this is the paradox about this tragedy. Yeah, this is perhaps going to pave the way for continued improvement in relations between the two countries. Yeah, this film you’re talking about, Katy by Poland’s distinguished film director Anje Vida, couldn’t get shown anywhere in Russia for the last two years and now its been shown by Russian state television twice in the last week. So Poles have been very appreciative, I have to say, of the hands on approach that the Russian leadership has taken. Polish TV has been showing again and again this image of Vladimir Putin at the crash site, along with his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk where he was kneeling, laying a wreath amid the debris of the wreckage just hours after the crash. When the Polish Prime Minister stood up, Vladimir Putin went up to him and gave him a hug. Also, he flew back to Smolensk to bid farewell, if you like, to the coffin of the President Kaczynski. He was there, head bowed; he made the sign of the cross. People have really appreciated the fact that he’s personally overseeing the investigation.
WERMAN: The BBC’s Adam Easton speaking with us from just outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw Poland, thank you very much Adam.
EASTON: Thank you.
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