Claims More Victims
by
Danny Schechter
Poland in Mourning: 96 dead including Poland’s leader in a tragic air crash in Western Russia. They were going to remember the killings of Polish oficers in the Katyn forest, killings by Soviet forces but then blamed on the Nazis. They never got there.
A pause for memory, John Guzlowski, Forest of Death
There are no Great Walls there,
No towers leaning or not leaning
Declaring some king’s success
Or mocking another’s failure,
No gleaming cathedral where you can
Pray for forgiveness or watch
The cycle of shadows play
Through the coolness of the day,
And soon not even the names
Of those who died will be remembered
(Names like Skrzypinski, Chmura,
Or Anthony Milczarek).
Their harsh voices and tearing courage
Are already lost in the wind,
.
But their true monuments
Will always be there, in the dust
And the gray ashes and the mounds
Settling over the bodies over which
No prayers were ever whispered,
No tears shed by a grieving mother
Or a trembling sister.
The Polish leaders have been returned home for burial. The Nation mourns about the new tragedy and the old one. World Leaders send condolences.
Plane crashes with political leaders aboard have not been uncommon. I remember the crash of the plane carrying Mozambique’s President Samora Machel that many believe was sabotaged by South Africa in the mid 80ths. Earlier I did a story on the Crash of “Operation Bablylift in Vietnam at the very end of the war. There have been other more suspicious plane accidents too.
