A plane carrying the president and other important officials has crashed in Russia. Mr UD tells UD that it was part of a delegation on its way to commemorate Katyn.
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Before he was president, Lech Kaczynski was a professor of law in Warsaw.
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“I fear,” said Mr UD just now, “a lot of historians may have been on board.” He’s having trouble getting to Polish news sites — too much traffic.
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Among those on board, former Deputy Prime Minister Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka:
For her opinions, she has been constantly attacked by right-wing parties and populists. The most spectacular offense, however, came from Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek. In 2002, he called her “a feminist block of concrete that will not change even by means of HCl acid.” The words were repeated by [everyone in the] media. “It did not discourage me at all. Women’s rights issues happily became crucial in EU politics, and more and more Polish politicians see that they are important. If there is a little of my input, I am glad. For sure, I am not going to back off.”
She was trained as an anthropologist, specializing in Mongolian cultures.
April 10th, 2010 at 10:57AM
Aleksander Kwasniewski’s comments sum it up: “It is a damned place,” former president Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine. First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk, now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”
My mother’s cousin has been somewhere in those foggy woods since the spring of 1940, and now Katyn has 96 more victims.
April 10th, 2010 at 11:47AM
Yes. The fact that it’s the same location is stunningly sad.
April 10th, 2010 at 12:11PM
I know I’ll be called heartless but this is a tragedy from a human point of view and not political. The woman you singled out brought more harm to the politics than benefit. And many others, regardless of their political affiliation did so as well. The Polish political scene is rotten.
Certainly there were many great and honorable people on board but it’s usually not them we get to listen about in the news now.
So, I mourn together with the families of the deceased but that’s all. I’m especially angered listening how the today’s accident is being compared to the Katyn genocide and how we lost our elite. BS!