Saturday, April 13, 2013 at 1:00 pm
1940 Katyn - 2010 Smolensk Memorial Day on the Parliament Hill in Ottawa |
|
Saturday, April 13, 2013 at 1:00 pm
1940 Katyn - 2010 Smolensk Memorial Day on the Parliament Hill in Ottawa |
|
Saturday, April 13, 2013 at 1:00 pm The Parliament Hill, Ottawa The Honorary Patronage of Ewa Blasik, widow of the late Air Force commander Lt. General Andrzej Blasik 
Commemoration of the Fallen Polish Elites on
73rd anniversary of Katyn
Genocide and 3rd Anniversary of the Crash of the Polish Air Force One in Smolensk, Russia, on April 10, 2010. Mrs. Ewa Blasik, wife of the late Polish Air Force Commander-in-Chief General Andrzej Blasik, who was killed in Smolensk, was the Honorary Patron of the Commemoration. Event was attended by various Polish organizations in Canada, veterans, representatives of other ethnic organizations, Polish Canadians from Ottawa and other major cities, as well as the public at large. Video clips of the Commemoration Ceremony: Publications and photo albums: Inquires, additional information: info@solidarnosc2010.com 
Below, are the addresses by The Hon. Thomas Mulcair, Leader of The Official Opposition and Minister Jason Kenney - Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.  Address by The Hon. Thomas Mulcair, Leader of The Official OppositionDear friends, as you gather to pay tribute to your fallen on Katyn Memorial Day, I would like to offer you sincere condolences on behalf of Canada's New Democrats. Of course, this anniversary has taken on an even more sombre meaning since 2010, when Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others died in a plane crash while travelling to events marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn masacre... Polish people in Canada and around the world have shown remarkable strength in the face of such tragedy. [more ...]  Address by Minister Jason Kenney - Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and MulticulturalismApril 10, 2013 - Minister Kenney has issued the following statement in remembrance of the victims of Katyn and the Smolensk Presidential plane crash: Three years ago today, an airplane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, along with 94 high-ranking Polish civilian and military officials and others tragically crashed in Smolensk, Russia. Today, we mourn their deaths and remember their many contributions to a free and democratic Poland.[more ...] 
April 13, 2013 at 1:00 pm, the Parliament Hill Canada officially recognizes April 13th as Katyn Memorial Day. On that day we commemorate the victims of the Katyn crime, one of the greatest crimes of World War II that has never been adjudicated, punished or even fully disclosed. In April 1940, the Soviet NKVD brutally murdered thousands of Polish citizens in the Katyn forest and other locations throughout the Soviet Union based on the execution order issued on March 5, 1940 by the Soviet Politburo to 'kill by shooting' 25,700 Polish citizens. This group included 14,700 prisoners-of-war and 11,000 civilian leaders of the Polish society imprisoned in the aftermath of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland. Mass murders of the Polish citizens took place in the spring of 1940 in many different locations in the Soviet Union. Bodies of the victims were hidden in gigantic death pits in countless Soviet forests. One such place was the infamous Katyn forest captured by the advancing German army just two years after the crime. For half a century only the Katyn forest was known to the outside world while other burial sites remained well concealed. To this day, many forests hiding death pits of the victims of the Katyn crime remain unknown. By murdering the elite of the Polish society, deporting their families to deserts of Kazakhstan, and repressing the entire patriotic segment of the Polish population under its control, the Soviet Union intended to eliminate all resistance to the Soviet annexation of the eastern half of Poland in the aftermath of the joint Soviet-German invasion of Poland in September 1939. It took historians half a century to admit that Katyn stands as a symbol of many similar Soviet forests hiding monster death pits of the victims of the Katyn execution order implemented in the aftermath of the Soviet-German aggression of Poland in accordance with the secret protocol to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Mass death pits hiding bodies of the Katyn victims were identified in Kuropaty, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Niezyn and other places after 1990. For five decades, the Soviets denied any responsibility for the Katyn crime and blamed the massacre on the Germans. They finally admitted to the Katyn murders in the turmoil of the demise of the Soviet Union, after two other mass burial sites of the Polish POWs came to light. However while admitting to the Katyn extermination action, they did not apologize to the Polish people. To the contrary, President Gorbachev who decided to admit that the Soviets murdered the Polish officers in Katyn immediately put in place an anti-Katyn policy aimed at justifying the Katyn murders. The Russian Federation, as the Soviet Union successor, hinders the disclosure of Katyn documentation and continues to hide the full truth about the scope and character of the Katyn crime. On April 10, 2010, an airplane carrying the official Polish delegation for the commemoration of the 70-th anniversary of the Katyn crime crashed in the Smolensk forest near Katyn, killing everybody on board. Among 96 dead were the President of Poland, First Lady, top generals of the Polish Armed Forces who served as NATO commandants, members of the Polish Parliament, top government officials, members of the clergy, famous anti-communist leaders, and families of the victims of the Katyn crime. For the Polish people, the Smolensk crash is the greatest tragedy since WWII. In January 2011, Russia announced its final report from the investigation of the Smolensk crash and blamed the Polish pilots, Polish generals, and the Polish President for causing the crash. The current Polish Government of Donald Tusk did not object to the Russian conclusions. By the third anniversary of the Smolensk crash, numerous facts came to light that directly contradict the Russian version of events and invalidate the Russian report. What we demand and what we will continue relentlessly to demand is the truth and the full truth about what really happened in the Smolensk forest on April 10, 2010. Resolving the Smolensk ambiguity shall be in the interest of the international community. It is only possible through an independent and transparent investigation with the participation of reputable experts. On April 13, 2013, at the Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Polish-Canadians will pay homage to Katyn and Smolensk victims, and commemorate their highest sacrifice for Poland, freedom, democracy and justice. We also appeal for support to the Canadian public and our Canadian government in demanding an international, unbiased and transparent inquiry into the circumstances and causes of the Smolensk crash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsNkO8TgCec - 1940 Katyn - 2010 Smolensk Memorial Day, Ottawa April 13, 2013 |
|
Additional information is available at the below links
Links to the Internet pages on the Smolensk tragedy and Katyn genocide American and Polish experts forming part of the Parliamentary Group under Antoni Macierewicz have reconstructed the course of events during the last seconds of the flight in which 96 Poles died, including the President, his wife and the supreme commanders of the Polish armed forces. The public hearing did set out results of parallel tests carried out by American and Polish experts. The conclusions reached by the scientists in Poland and the United States working independently from each other are in agreement.
In 1940, over 22,000 Polish officers, prisoners of war, and members of the Polish elite were slain in the Polish forest known as Katyn. Initially, the Soviet Union blamed the Nazis for the massacre. In 1990, the Russian government finally admitted that the Soviet government had been responsible for the Katyn killings. On the seventieth anniversary of the Katyn massacre, 10th of April 2010, tragedy struck again as the plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and ninety-five other high level Polish officials and VIPs crashed in western Russia while en route to the Katyn memorial services. During the late twentieth century, various Russian and American committees investigated the Katyn massacre. In the U.S., the Madden Committee ultimately recommended proceedings against the Soviet Union before the International Court of Justice. [more ....] . Independent Tests Confirm Presence of Explosives, Tomasz Sakiewicz, the Editor in Chief of Poland’s leading opposition newspaper "Gazeta Polska", goes on record: "The Polish president [Lech Kaczynski] was murdered!", What they said about Polish President's Plane Crash..., List of passengers on Polish plane. A new study by a team of experts of the 10 April 2010 plane crash near Smolensk, Russia, in which the Polish president, his wife, nine NATO generals and others were killed, raises pointed questions about the conclusions of the official Russian investigation into the incident, and points to contradictions and discrepancies in the report. [more... "HomelandSecurityNewsWire.com"] The 2010 jet crash that killed Poland's president, first lady and dozens of dignitaries during a politically sensitive visit to Russia couldn't have happened the way official investigations say, a University of Akron engineering professor's analysis shows. Wieslaw Binienda's findings, based on computer modeling software that NASA used to analyze the space shuttle Columbia's destruction, are causing ripples in his native Poland, where there is simmering distrust of the formal rulings that the crash was accidental. more... "cleveland.com"] |