Katyn 1940 – Smolensk 2010

10 kwietnia 2013 @polishnews Świat - World Możliwość komentowania Katyn 1940 – Smolensk 2010 została wyłączona

 

Commemoration of the Fallen Polish Elites on the
73rd anniversary of Katyn Genocide
and the
3rd Anniversary of the Polish Air Force One Crash
in Smolensk, Russia, on April 10, 2010.

Mrs. Ewa Blasik, wife of the late Polish Air Force Commander-in-Chief General Andrzej Blasik, who was killed in Smolensk, is the Honorary Patron of the Commemoration.

Expected attendance from various Polish organizations in Canada, MPs, politicians, veterans, representatives of other ethnic organizations, embassy officials, Polish Canadians from Ottawa and other major cities, as well as the public at large.

Join us in the commemoration of the fallen in Katyn and Smolensk!
April 13, 2013 at 1:00 pm at the
Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada
For more information, please refer to a leaflet attached, our internet site
www.solidarnosc2010.com/ottawa/

Canada officially recognizes April 13th as Katyn Memorial Day.
On that day we commemorate the victims of the Katyn crime, one of the greatest crimes of World War II that has never been adjudicated, punished or even fully disclosed. In April 1940, the Soviet NKVD brutally murdered thousands of Polish citizens in the Katyn forest and other locations throughout the Soviet Union based on the execution order issued on March 5, 1940 by the Soviet Politburo to ‘kill by shooting’ 25,700 Polish citizens. This group included 14,700 prisoners-of-war and 11,000 civilian leaders of the Polish society imprisoned in the aftermath of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland. Mass murders of the Polish citizens took place in the spring of 1940 in many different locations in the Soviet Union. Bodies of the victims were hidden in gigantic death pits in countless Soviet forests. One such place was the infamous Katyn forest captured by the advancing German army just two years after the crime. For half a century only the Katyn forest was known to the outside world while other burial sites remained well concealed. To this day, many forests hiding death pits of the victims of the Katyn crime remain unknown.

By murdering the elite of the Polish society, deporting their families to deserts of Kazakhstan, and repressing the entire patriotic segment of the Polish population under its control, the Soviet Union intended to eliminate all resistance to the Soviet annexation of the eastern half of Poland in the aftermath of the joint Soviet-German invasion of Poland in September 1939. It took historians half a century to admit that Katyn stands as a symbol of many similar Soviet forests hiding monster death pits of the victims of the Katyn execution order implemented in the aftermath of the Soviet-German aggression of Poland in accordance with the secret protocol to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Mass death pits hiding bodies of the Katyn victims were identified in Kuropaty, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Niezyn and other places after 1990.

For five decades, the Soviets denied any responsibility for the Katyn crime and blamed the massacre on the Germans. They finally admitted to the Katyn murders in the turmoil of the demise of the Soviet Union, after two other mass burial sites of the Polish POWs came to light. However while admitting to the Katyn extermination action, they did not apologize to the Polish people. To the contrary, President Gorbachev who decided to admit that the Soviets murdered the Polish officers in Katyn immediately put in place an anti-Katyn policy aimed at justifying the Katyn murders. The Russian Federation, as the Soviet Union successor, hinders the disclosure of Katyn documentation and continues to hide the full truth about the scope and character of the Katyn crime.

On April 10, 2010, an airplane carrying the official Polish delegation for the commemoration of the 70-th anniversary of the Katyn crime crashed in the Smolensk forest near Katyn, killing everybody on board. Among 96 dead were the President of Poland, First Lady, top generals of the Polish Armed Forces who served as NATO commandants, members of the Polish Parliament, top government officials, members of the clergy, famous anti-communist leaders, and families of the victims of the Katyn crime.

For the Polish people, the Smolensk crash is the greatest tragedy since WWII. In January 2011, Russia announced its final report from the investigation of the Smolensk crash and blamed the Polish pilots, Polish generals, and the Polish President for causing the crash. The current Polish Government of Donald Tusk did not object to the Russian conclusions. By the third anniversary of the Smolensk crash, numerous facts came to light that directly contradict the Russian version of events and invalidate the Russian report. What we demand and what we will continue relentlessly to demand is the truth and the full truth about what really happened in the Smolensk forest on April 10, 2010. Resolving the Smolensk ambiguity shall be in the interest of the international community. It is only possible through an independent and transparent investigation with the participation of reputable experts.

On April 13, 2013, at the Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Polish-Canadians will pay homage to Katyn and Smolensk victims, and commemorate their highest sacrifice for Poland, freedom, democracy and justice. We also appeal for support to the Canadian public and our Canadian government in demanding an international, unbiased and transparent inquiry into the circumstances and causes of the Smolensk crash.

Links to the Internet pages on the Smolensk tragedy and Katyn genocide: