Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Smoleńsk

April 10th marks the anniversary of the 2010 plane crash near the city of Smoleńsk in Russia where all 96 people on board were killed including (then) president of Poland Lech Kaczyński and his wife and many other Polish politicians as well as family members of the Katyn massacre.  They were headed to a Katyn massacre memorial event when the accident occurred. I remember hearing the shocking news 3 years ago. Despite many of the rumors, reports and Russian conspiracy theories that have come out since then, I still believe it was just a terrible and tragic accident and nothing more.

The plane crash near Smoleńsk, while an important event, often dominates the headlines here even 3 years later. For those of us who live in Poland, it sometimes feels like Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk, Smoleńsk….

And that’s all I want to say about it. I don’t want to say more.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've always been wondering why they were all in the same plane. Even to importants buisnessmans are not allowed to fly togheter in the same plane, so how it could happend that a huge part of our governement were in one plane? Hm?

Nina from Krakow

Chris said...

I know I said that I didn't have more to say...

I watched a well-made program about Smolensk on TV last night. It was a co-production with BBC. There were families of a few of the victims describing how they found out about the crash and how they are managing now. One of the widows made an excellent point. She said that she knows that the rest of society has their own problems and that we all can't be concerned with their tragedy all the time. She also pointed out that more often than not, those who keep Smolensk in the headlines have nothing to do with families of the victims. It was a very good point and good to say it out loud.

As I understand, the people travelled in 2 groups to the memorial event, so not everybody was in one plane. I think they flew like that because of the cost.