London MEP offers condolences for Polish plane crash tragedy (Enfield Liberal Democrats)

Enfield Liberal Democrats <info@enfieldlibdems.org.uk>

London MEP offers condolences for Polish plane crash tragedy

April 12, 2010 5:00 PM
Originally published by Sarah Ludford MEP

Commenting on this weekend's tragedy of President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and many other senior Polish figures being killed in a plane crash outside Smolensk in Russia on their way to a commemoration of Katyn, Liberal Democrat MEP for London Baroness Sarah Ludford said:

"In this period of mourning, our thoughts and sympathies are especially with the families of President Lech Kaczyński and the 96 others who were killed in the crash. But my condolences also go to all Poles as fellow EU citizens, both those at home and those in the UK, as they struggle to come to terms with the terrible loss of so many important figures of their political, military and religious establishment."

Sarah Ludford has been to the Druzyna Warta Polish Catholic church in Devonia Road in Islington to pay her respects and to sign the book of condolences.

"It is a very sad loss affecting the Polish community in London that Father Bronislaw Gostomski, parish priest at the St Andrew Bobola church in Shepherd's Bush, West London, was one of the passengers killed. London Liberal Democrats, who had links with him thanks to the Liberal Democrat Friends of Poland, will miss him in particular."

"The appalling coincidence is that this tragedy happened at a time and place when the wounds of Stalin's Katyn massace of 20,000 Polish officers were being given a chance to heal on the basis of a Russian acknowledgment of the truth and a joint commemoration. The only solace is that the reaction of the Russian people and leaders in sharing Polish pain and acts such as the showing of Andrzej Wajda's film Katyn on Russian state TV, will assist the process of reconciliation."