URN WITH THE ASHES OF THE LATE GENERAL BŁASIK DEPOSITED AT JASNA GÓRA
(L. D.)
In the Chapel of the Nation Remembrance at Jasna Góra, on 9 May this year, the urn with the ashes of the late General Andrzej Błasik, a pilot and commander of the Air Forces of the Polish Republic and who was killed in the air crash on 10 April 2010, was deposited. Before that, in the Chapel of the Miraculous Image of Our Lady, the Holy Mass in the intention of the killed in the Smoleńsk catastrophe was celebrated by Fr. Cpt. Kamil Szustak, a chaplain of the garrison Tarnowskie Mountains.
The body debris of gen. Błasik were found in mud 5 months after the catastrophe by motorcyclists from the International Katyń Raid, who arrived at the catastrophe spot in order to pay tribute to its casualties. Being wrapped in white-red flag, the box with the body debris was brought by motorcyclists to Poland and given to the Garrison Procurators in Gdynia. After checking the genetic material, it turned out that they belonged to gen. pilot Błasik.
When the Military Procurators informed Ewa Błasik, the widow of gen. pilot Andrzej Błasik about finding other body debris of the late husband, she decided to deposit them at Jasna Góra, which had a particular place in the heart of her husband.
‘I have always been present with him during the most important ceremonies. Together with our children we often arrived in this miraculous place privately. After the tragic events on 10 April 2010, I gave Jasna Gora special votive gifts – souvenirs of my deceased husband. I am extremely honoured that, similarly as bodies of the Presidential Couple at Wawel castle or some bodies of casualties of 10 April 2010, were buried in the Church of the Divine Providence as well as ashes of my deceased husband will be buried in the Chapel of the Nation Remembrance of the Jasna Góra Sanctuary, among urns of soldiers of so many formations from battle fields of the world, uprisings and camps.
Having received them from the state organs and fulfilled all possible formalities, as well as maintaining the military ceremonial, in the assistance of the Honour Company of the Polish Army, I want to deposit them in the most valuable place of our Homeland, in the Heart of the Nation, at Jasna Góra Sanctuary, so that they would remind about dignity of the Uniform of the Polish Soldier and his faithful service to Homeland which is our Mother.
I give them to Mother of our Nation, depositing them on the altar of the Homeland, not only as body debris of gen. pilot of the Polish Army Andrzej Błasik, but also as part of my life, in which I was emotionally related to him with a marriage bond from the year 1986, and part of the recent painful years of history of our Homeland whose truth and facts are blurred by unexplained and mysterious circumstances of the death of 96 most important people responsible for peace and safety of millions of Poles’ – the widow of the late gen. Andrzej Błasik told ‘Niedziela’.
The ceremony was attended by the chief of the Air Forces Inspectorate, division gen. pilot Jan Śliwka with his wife. There was also brigade gen. pilot Tomasz Drewniak, a chief of air armies. They were being accompanied by a big group of generals and officers of Air Forces and cadets from the Polish Air Force Academy in Dęblin.
Before that Ewa Błasik had given particular votives at Jasna Góra – souvenirs after her husband. These are, among the others: the general’s uniform, general’s cap with a rim, without the emblem of the eagle, and Air Force commander’s badges which he was wearing during the catastrophe at Smoleńsk, as well as the general’s saber and a symbolic mace, a miniature of the Polish army flag and a picture with the image of Our Lady of Jasna Góra, which gen. Błasik always had taken with himself when he was flying and kept in his uniform pocket.
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„Niedziela” 20/2015