| WARSAW, POLAND. Monday, 12 April 2010. The survivors of Stalin's ethnic cleansing in Eastern Poland, now scattered in a world-wide post-war diaspora, joined the people of Poland on Saturday in grief over the shocking deaths of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and other important national and cultural leaders during their airplane’s approach to iconic Katyn in western Russia.
They mourned the loss of so many who had added their strong voices to reviving the long-suppressed history of the USSR's invasion and occupation of Poland during World War.
The support and encouragement of many of the people who perished aboard the Presidential plane was crucial in helping the Kresy-Siberia Foundation launch its Virtual Museum at www.kresy-siberia.org.
The Kresy-Siberia Foundation is dedicated to researching, remembering and recognising the little-known and poorly understood history of Poland's devastation at the hands of the invading Soviets and Nazis in the Second World War.
Over one million Polish citizens of various faiths and ethnicities (Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish) were either deported from eastern Poland (Kresy) in 1940-41 or otherwise arrested and sent to special Soviet labor camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and eastern Asia. The 1940 murder of more than 20,000 Polish military and civilian leaders by the Soviet secret police in what has come to be known as the Katyn Massacre is a key event in that history. The tragic history of the Polish citizens under Soviet occupation during the war, including those murdered at Katyn and elsewhere, was hushed up by the Allies during the war to protect the reputation of the Soviet Union, an important ally in the war against Nazi Germany.
Foundation President Stefan Wisniowski, based in Australia, addressed the people of Poland in a message that should find resonance with all those still numb at this tragic loss of life and leadership:“In this black day for Poland and for her children around the world, we join with you in mourning the tragic death of President Lech Kaczynski and Mrs Kaczynska and of so many leaders in the Polish nation’s quest for remembrance and identity.
The Kresy-Siberia Foundation has the mission to work in Poland and internationally for the remembrance and recognition of our collective history, especially of the Polish citizens' struggles for the Fatherland in the Kresy (Eastern Borderlands) and in Exile during World War 2.
In the flames of the Presidential plane crash, we lost many of the Foundation’s closest friends and supporters. The last President-in-Exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski, and the Veterans’ Affairs Minister, Janusz Krupski, were both Honorary Patrons of the Foundation; former Marszalek Maciej Plazynski of “Wspolnota Polska” was its first key Sponsor; and Janusz Kurtyka of the Institute of National Remembrance and Andrzej Przewoznik of the Council for the Protection of Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom were inspirational Partners in the Foundation’s mission. All those who also perished with them were similarly patriots working passionately for our Nation’s future and for the memory of its history.
The tragic irony is not lost on us, that all those who perished were drawn to the forest of Katyn to commemorate the patriotic martyrdom of the cream of the Polish nation 70 years ago. Now, the forest of Katyn has again claimed the blood of a new generation of our Nation’s leaders.
As brothers and sisters in the Polish nation, together we will recover from this tragedy just as our forebears have throughout the centuries. But today, we mourn the loss of our most passionate and historically conscious patriots.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Poland and with the families of those who lost their loved ones. May Poland, and all her children and her friends around the world, rally in unity at this tragic blow.”
Poland has not yet perished, while we remain alive”
THE KRESY-SIBERIA FOUNDATION
FUNDACJA KRESY-SYBERIA
WWW.KRESY-SIBERIA.ORG
Stefan Wisniowski, Foundation President (Sydney)
Stefan.Wisniowski@Kresy-Siberia.org | 
