For some of us who have roots in Eastern Europe, the recent plane crash that astonishingly resulted in the death of the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and leading dignitaries, to the site of unmarked graves of Poles, killed and deposited there in 1940, will bring up the stories that our ancestors told us about life in the Old Country. "Katyn" is a place in the Russian forest where there are unmarked graves - about 20,000 people are in those graves, many intelligencia, priests, doctors, writers and artists.
IT HAS BEEN A STRUGGLE TO GET THE RUSSIANS TO OPEN THEIR FILES ON THE PRISONERS... Perhaps this is where some GENEALOGY ACTIVISM is required!?
Some of these prisoners are OUR ANCESTORS!
Let me say that about a year ago I discovered that a few persons with a surname in my family had been taken to Siberia... Now, I do not know who these persons are or how or if they are related to me, but possibly this ties in with the story I was told about the Russian soldiers taking my grandfather's brother away... A snippet of family story that I was too young to ask my grandfather more questions about.
Attaching to a Seattle Times article by Associated Press Writer
"Killed with President Lech Kaczynski in the plane crash near Smolensk, western Russia, were his wife, Maria Kaczynska, his closest aides, lawmakers, army commanders, church figures, historic figures, plane crew and relatives of the victims of the 1940 massacre of Polish officers in Katyn and in other places. They had been traveling to Katyn to mark the 70th anniversary.
The Soviet secret police killed thousands of Polish military leaders and intellectuals at Katyn and other places at the start of World War II. It was part of a strategy to subdue the country, whose eastern half it occupied starting in 1939, and better control it..." Minika Scislowska
