There was no let up in the traffic around the Presidential Palace in Warsaw today.<\/p>\n
People lined up for an entire city block to sign a condolence book.<\/p>\n
They came out again, to light candles and lay flowers.<\/p>\n
An elderly woman, holding one white rose and one red, the colors of the Polish flag, told me she had to do this, because it was a national tragedy. And not only had President Lech Kaczynski served his country, but his mother Jadwiga, now ill and reportedly in the hospital, had been active in the Warsaw Uprising during World War II.\u00a0 Another patriot.<\/p>\n
Down the line, the rabbi of a progressive congregation here, a native New Yorker named Burt Schuman, said he didn\u2019t care how long he had to stay in line.\u00a0 He was going to write in the condolence book.<\/p>\n
He praised President Kaczynski\u2019s efforts to promote reconciliation between Poles and Jews, efforts which really began under the late Polish Pope John Paul II.\u00a0 He said he believes there are 20,000-30,000 Poles of Jewish ancestry here.\u00a0 Schuman claims they are increasingly comfortable asserting their identity.\u00a0 And increasingly diverse and young.<\/p>\n
U.S. Ambassador to Poland Lee Feinstein spoke of Kaczynski having been a good friend of the United States.\u00a0 American and Polish troops, he said, have fought side by side in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just saw President Kaczynski last week. President Kaczynski invited General David Petraeus to come to Warsaw to receive a medal, because the Polish and American troops have fought side by side in Iraq and Afghanistan and President Kaczynski was gracious enough to award a medal to General Petraeus,” he said. ” President Kaczynski to my wife and I, and the First Lady Mrs. Kaczynska, had been so gracious.\u00a0 They are freedom fighters, they were great friends of the United States, they were promoters of strong trans-Atlantic ties, and also promoters of tolerance, and were real models for the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life has not gone back to normal.\u00a0 A Polish friend in Krakow teaches classes on Mondays and Tuesdays.\u00a0 She had intended to continue on this week but decided at the last minute to cancel.\u00a0 She took her students to the Katyn cross in town.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly death can make people closer to people,”\u00a0she said.\u00a0“Suffering is like a fire burning inside.\u00a0 It burns out and prepares a place for something good, love.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meantime, Rabbi Schuman said it\u2019s doubly tragic that this catastrophe happened just 20 years after democracy was established here.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemocratic life, free enterprise, all the benefits of liberal democracy were beginning to flourish in this country, and to lose such a leadership at such a tender stage in Poland\u2019s development is a very, very sad thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schuman said that he is optimistic about Poland\u2019s future.\u00a0 He believes the young generation is the most educated anywhere, and that they are capable of taking Poland forward, to great places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was no let up in the traffic around the Presidential Palace in Warsaw today. People lined up for an entire city block to sign a condolence book. They came out again, to light candles and lay flowers. An elderly woman, holding one white rose and one red, the colors of the Polish flag, told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}