TOWARDS THE TRUTH WHICH LIBERATES
FR. IRENEUSZ SKUBIŚ
In our thoughts, conversations and publications we often commemorate Smolensk of 10 April 2010. Every anniversary of this catastrophe is accompanied by strong emotions and celebrations connected with it always take place in the atmosphere of solemnity and thoughtfulness. We cannot forget what happened two years ago, as well as we cannot forget the tragedy of over 20 thousand Poles murdered by Bolshevik slayers in Katyń and other places of the Soviet Russia. The tragic fate of Poles from 1940 is a wound on a live tissue of our nation, which unhealed, is still bleeding. We have suffered lots of harms from our neighbours and there was a lot of bloodshed.....And we must not blur our history, although some people accuse us of being sufferers plunged in pain and disrespect which we have suffered. But it also belongs to our history and it is more painful when we are still being deluded into belief that the truth is different.
We also had days of glory, we were proud of rich Polish Republic of Both Nations, a big territory but through these bad governments and actions, especially of the Polish nobility, through liberum veto, a defence of wrongly understood freedom, we started living in difficult times of partitions. We must remember about it as well, and our youth should remember about it too. However, after 123 long years of partitions, Poland returned to the map of Europe and it is something which fills everybody with optimism that we managed with everything. However our neighbours do not want to give us our sovereignty but they would like to destroy and humiliate us. It was so in the times of Hitler and Stalin, and also in the communist times when we were under the reign of Kremlin and the Polish United Labour Party was a prolonged arm of the Soviet governments. Bad spirits of the past did not go away but they only took on the colours of new reality and take an advantage of every occasion to attack and destroy.
When we look at the Smolensk catastrophe and, at the same time, we face everything that happened in Katyń and what the contemporary Russia says about it, a heir of many Bolshevik traditions. We receive the judgements from Russian courts with anxiety that they do not want to acknowledge the Katyń crime as genocide. We also analyze what contributed to our defeat that we sometimes start to get lost as a nation. So, the Katyń celebrations are necessary so that we would find our identity. We are also surprised by a fact that there are politicians among us who express their opinions in a disrespectful and offensive way about people who are suffering after the Smolensk catastrophe. Not everything can be explained by politics; there is also something which is called an ordinary human honesty and an inner behavioural manner.
In churches of many Polish cities Holy Masses were celebrated, there were prayers, divine services and meetings commemorating excellent people who had made a great contribution for the nation and who were the victims of the Smolensk catastrophe. It was seen everywhere that the matters of this catastrophe are not simple and they cannot be closed in a category of Russian or Polish reports which are quite converging in some points. Poland must reach to the truth about this tragedy in and sovereign and independent way. It was such a message of the bishop of Drohiczyn Antoni P. Dydycz from the Warsaw Cathedral in which he was trying to analyze circumstances of this accident both in the light of realities and theology which met with a great appreciation of participants of this Holy Mass. For, we must not pass by these events indifferently as they are too painful. Therefore, we cannot forget about Katyń and we often return to it. For, the basis of forgiveness and regaining the inner peace is the truth. So, we must not leave this matter only to journalists who sometimes deride at our national histories and actions and at patriots, for whom everything Polish is valuable, especially that new facts are discovered from time to time and which give a direction to the search for the truth. We can only keep to the road of its search and ask God to help everybody understand it.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 19/2012