April passed smoothly and we are in May, a lovely month in many ways. This May starts on a wrong foot for us, Polish-Americans and all who favor the truth and beauty of art, I daresay.
Rather sad news coming from New Jersey, precisely from Jersey City, Hudson County, where the most famous monument to the Katyn Forest Massacre has been standing since 1991. Sculpted by master sculptor Andrzej Pitynski and also associated, through a plaque at its foot, with the 911 terrorist attack; so this tall bronze has been a fixture on the Jersey waterfront.
fast forward to April 2018 and the winds of political correctness threaten the monument.
Namely, there are plans to move the monument to storage - this and this articles explain the issue [and do read the comments sections] -
The most telling is this statement :
"I don't think the statue's appropriate for a major metropolitan area," said Mike DeMarco, chair of the Exchange Place Special Improvement District , and a CEO of a development company . - "DeMarco added that the notion that Russians are backstabers is "not exactly a politically correct idea nowadays"
Sad news and time to fight this atrocity!
Audaces Fortuna iuvat - Virgil
These photos may become historic if you do not take action against this erasing of public space monument
ps
April has been traditionally the month when yet another anniversary passed of the secret German genocide of our Polish elites carried during the early months of the German occupation of western and central Polish Republic; the genocide started taking place immediately after September 1, 1939 joint Soviet-German invasion of Poland ( Soviets invaded on September 17 ).
The Nazi Germans gave it the code name Intelligentzaktion - not a bad article on Wiki - it was the first step in enslavement and a total destruction of the Polish Nation envisioned by the German elites and embraced by the Germans of the Third Reich - the genocide was followed by the mass deportations of Poles from western Poland annexed to Germany, and then AB Aktion started etc.
Vast majority of Germans carrying out this genocide have never been tried, mostly due to the fact that the Federal Republic of Germany always refused arrest warrants from the Polish authorities after 1948, and so those henchmen of Hitler et company died out of natural causes, perhaps right now just rotting in Hell. It is very disheartening that all these genocidal actions carried out by the Germans are rather very poorly known or rather relatively unknown outside the university circles and surviving relatives and families of the victims.
http://radiorampa.com/wladze-jersey-city-planuja-usunac-pomnik-katynski/
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dziennik.com/publicystyka/artykul/o-pomniku-katynskim
https://twitter.com/xpilgrim06/status/985623839689334784
https://stopacthr1226.org/stanowisko-prezesa-instytutu-pamieci-narodowej-w-sprawie-pomnika-katynskiego-w-jersey-city/
Polish Flag Day is today- http://www.pna-znp.org/news/news_05012015.php
ReplyDeletethe story continues -
ReplyDeleteThe Polish artist behind the memorial, which features a bound-and-gagged soldier stabbed in the back with a bayoneted rifle, old The Jersey Journal he is "pissed off" that DeMarco has suggested moving the statue permanently. Andrzej Pitynski, reached by phone, said the statue should remain where it is. He then called DeMarco a "schmuck." -
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2018/05/jersey_city_poland_in_war_of_words_over_massacre_s.html#incart_2box_hudson
In a twist, Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis Thursday evening offered to take the Katyn memorial if Jersey City doesn't want it.
"As mayor I would be proud to have it at one of our many of our wonderful parks, maybe at Rutkowski Park which is named in honor of one of Bayonne's most prominent Polish-American leaders," Davis said in a statement from his spokesman.
from a comment in the NJ article - ' Mike DeMarco and like-minded individuals who want to depreciate the Katyn Memorial are invoking a terribly unfair double standard when they decry this statue as being not "appropriate for a major metropolitan area".
ReplyDeleteHe suggests it is unworthy to stand in a park he is planning for Exchange Place.
Yet, 3 short miles away, in the now famous Liberty State Park, stands the Liberation (Holocaust Memorial), another work of art that reminds us of the tragedy and inhumanity of World War II. Both of these statues serve to remind us to value peace and to warn us of the horrors of war when peace is abandoned.
That some would impose different standards on these 2 statues is offensive and disrespectful. Not only to people of Polish descent, but to all who have remembered the brutality and cruelty inflicted by the now defunct Soviet Union. Those who suffered under the Soviet Union include many everyday, ordinary Russians. Mr. DeMarco suggests the statue depicts Russians as "backstabbers". Perhaps he should read The Gulag Archipelago to inform him of the difference between a Russian and the odious, apparatus of The Soviet Union government.'
again from the same commentator -
ReplyDelete''Our hosts here at the JJ have not mentioned that on 5/30/85, near the end of the building of Liberty State Park, the Liberation (Holocaust Memorial) was dedicated. It too concerned massacres that took place in Europe during WWII. Building on that theme, city planners thought the Katyn Memorial served to present a more complete picture of the sacrifices of WWII. The Katyn Memorial was unveiled in 6/91, during the Cold War. The Soviet Union, as fate would have it, dissolved 6 months later, on 12/26/91. Both statues have provided some solace to Americans who lost loved ones at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviet communist regime. Anyway, this is some of the history behind JC's WWII memorials.''
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MgBbxOTVgs - Dr Mira Modelska-Creech & mec. Maria Szonert-Binienda od 1h 30min o pomniku katynskim
ReplyDeleteLista Żydów – oficerów polskich, jeńców wojennych z obozu w Kozielsku zamordowanych w Lesie Katyńskim (3 kwietnia – 12 maja 1940 r.).
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/pkukiz/posts/10214635693800132
http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2018/05/katyn_monument_a_history_lesson_a_dialogue_is_nece.html#incart_river_index
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2018/05/katyn_soldier_inspiring_to_a_child_thanks_for_diff.html