Eight

KATYN DOES NOT HAPPEN TWICE

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British poet Desmond Graham wrote a poem in 2007, prior to the tragedy of Katyn in Smolensk airport; however, the poem can be read as if it were written for the occasion. Although the airport of the poem is not of Smolensk, coinci- dentally it is also set in springtime:

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The pilot announces „Spring has come All over Europe“

The giant beside me Still prays For safe landing

The weight-lifter Who put down his case Like a glass of champagne Dares not look out

There’s a bundle of wrestlers Clamped to their seats In the back dreading The slightest of shocks

The priest up and down Like a steward assures us If anything happens His route is up

The rest of us Make it to land If at all In deep shock1 144 720$6.$9$/,$86.$6$1'5Nj7$%$*'$1$9,ý,Nj7Ơ

The recorded voices recovered from the black boxes revealed that, just be- fore the tragedy at the Smolensk airport, passengers realized that they were doomed to catastrophe. In the words of Desmond Graham, they landed in deep shock—forever. The Polish President Kaczynski seems to be Kat(cz)ynski, as the Katyn ghost of seventy years prior had been a part of his identity. On the one hand, this death of the Polish elite was meaningless, unexpected, unprec- edented. They died in a catastrophe because of thick fog and low visibility. Lacking a conspiracy theory the tragedy loses its drama, meaning and purpose. From this perspective it has nothing to do with patriotism or martyrdom. Not coincidentally a Belgium cartoon pictured the Polish eagle landing on its head with a mocking comment: “The eagle has landed.”2 Knowing the ostentatious posture of President Kaczynski and his frequently pretentious attitude, such a crash en route to such an event brought a genuine smile to his opponents’ faces. President Kaczynski was apparently notorious for his willingness to make im- pressive landings in spite of warnings of low visibility—for instance, in one case he threatened to give a pilot the sack for not landing in Tbilisi. But the wit- nesses who cite the opposite might be equally in the right: this Polish President ZRXOGDOVRFORVHWKHSODQH¶VZLQGRZEOLQGHUVGXHWRKLVGLVFRPIRUWRIÀ\LQJ From the mystical perspective we may easily suspect destiny—an unavoid- able death in the land of the 1940 massacre of Katyn. In this sense the Polish elite united with the victims existentially and commemorated them by losing own lives. It is as if the seventy year old ghost(s) of the Katyn massacre had taken down the plane and crashed it. Just as the characters die in Shakespeare’s Hamlet because the ghost of Hamlet’s father haunts the castle of Kronborg at Elsinore, similarly the ghost of the past of Katyn brought death to the pas- sengers of the presidential plane. That plane was traveling for the anniversary commemoration of this tragic event. But in Hamlet characters die because of revenge and a battle for power. In the case of Katyn 2010, the victims die merely in their nationalist attempt to commemorate Katyn of 1940. Political insinuation of Russian conspiracy was apparent while watching the exclusive and almost royal funeral of the President in Krakow—the solemnity created out of respect for the President and the First Lady implied a martyr status for the glory of Poland. Symbolically appropriate, during the time of the funeral Europe’s sky was covered with the ash smoke steaming from Iceland’s volcano. Russian Presi- GHQW'PLWULM0HGYHGHYLJQRUHGLWDQGWRRNWKHULVNRIÀ\LQJLQWRDWWHQGWKH funeral, whereas Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel all used the ashy air as an excuse for their absence. It seems like Medvedev had no choice but to arrive, regardless of the circumstances, in order to avoid con- VSLUDF\WKHRU\'LGKLVÀLJKWLPSO\DSHUVRQDOULVNRIKLVOLIH":KDWZDVWKH degree of likelihood that he would crash? Would he have taken the risk if there was a high degree of likelihood? Thus, did Obama, Sarkozy and Merkel use the possible risk only as an excuse to avoid attendance at the funeral ceremony or was the risk indeed quite high? In this case the President of Russia, Dmitrij