Polish president died with 96 others in jet crash

It came as a rude shock to Poles and also for Russians and I when we first heard of this heart-wrenching world news.
On Saturday,the Polish president,Lech Kaczynski and his wife,along with other top levels of Poland's military,political and church elite and dozens of dignitaries flew on an aging Russian airliner to a ceremony commemorating a slaughter that has divided  the two nations for seven decades when they met their demise in Smolesk.
This horrible disaster was attributed to the dense fog shrouding in that vicinity and also the pilot who ignored directions to land elsewhere.
Poles wept bitterly before televisions and lowered the Polish flag to half-staff and taped black ribbons in their windows after hearing that the upper echelons of the establishment lay dead in woods a short drive from the site of the Katyn forest massacre, one of Poland's greatest national traumas.
Thousands of people converged, placed candles and flowers in tears at the presidential palace in central Warsaw. Many called the crash Poland's worst disaster since World War II.

The Poles called for two minutes of mourning across the nation on Saturday and declared a week of mourning while the Russians declared a day of mourning in Russia.

Kaczynski, 60, was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.The president was a conservative and a lifelong skeptic of Russia with many detractors at home and abroad. Condolences from world leaders paid tribute to his patriotism and defense of freedom when Communist rule prevailed in Poland.

                               Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife,Maria