The Glory of Poland

Roger Cohen has a wonderful op-ed piece in the New York Times, The Glory of Poland, for those of us trying to make sense out of the recent death of 95 of Polish's top leaders on their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the intentional slaughter of the cream of Poland's intelligentsia at Katyn Forest.  He emphasizes Poland's extraordinary history of reconciliation with the nations that destroyed it again and again in its history -- Germany and, most recently, Russia.  The reason so many of Poland's top government officials were on this plane was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's decision to join the ceremonies.  Cohen writes:

[h]e decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.

Cohen ends: 

For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.

It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.

So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.

Ask the Poles. They know.

For all the Poles out there, if you haven't listen to their national anthem in a while -- such a sprightly, hopeful tune, and such tragic words, here it is (with English subtitles).