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Prayers for the Disaster Victims in the Spirit of Polish-Russian Reconciliation
Several hundred residents of the Oświęcim area have gathered at the grave of the Soviet POWs in Brzezinka to pay tribute to the victims of the air disaster on April 10 that claimed the lives of Polish President Lech Kaczyński, his wife Maria, and 94 others. They also paid homage to all Poles murdered in the East during the Second World War, in Katyń and elsewhere, and too Soviet soldiers murdered by the Nazi Germans in Auschwitz.
The names of all the victim’s of Saturday’s disaster were also read out, and candles placed near the grave. The head of the Oświęcim deaconate, Fr. Krzysztof Straub, led the prayers.
The prayers in the spirit of reconciliation between Poles and Russians were an initiative by Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Oświęcim starosta Józef Kała, and Oświęcim wójt Andrzej Bibrzycki.
Alluding to the symbolism of the Katyń Massacre, the murder of Soviet POWs in Auschwitz by the Nazis, and the crash of the presidential aircraft, Cywiński said that “without treating anyone’s death in an instrumental way, it is hard to resist the impression that something positive might come out of this terrible moment. We extend our prayers to all those who died in Katyń, Mednoje, Kharkiv, and other places that have not yet been identified, as well as to those who died here in Auschwitz and those who died in this air disaster.
“This place has a symbolic dimension. The fate of the Polish soldiers murdered in the USSR and the Soviet POWs in Auschwitz was very similar. They were all killed in defienace of all conventions and international law,” added the director of the Museum in Oświęcim.
”Today, in a spirit of reconciliation, we are grateful for the sincere gestures of friendship and sympathy shown to us by Russians in connection with the aviation disaster at Smolensk, and we pray for the crash victims and the martyred victims from both countries. We have also come here to express the solidarity in mourning and sadness of the people of Oświęcim with our whole national community,” said Józef Kała, Oświecim starosta.
See the video: In spirit of Polish-Russian reconciliation
The grave of the Soviet POWs in Brzezinka
It is estimated that at least fifteen thousand POWs were sent to Auschwitz. Twelve thousand of them were entered in the camp records. Almost all of them were killed in the camp. Today, there is a symbolic cemetery at the place where the bodies of Soviet POWs were collected during the period when the Birkenau camp was operational.
