Exhibition in memory of Smolensk accident inaugurated in Moldovan capital

Chisinau, 9 April /MOLDPRES/ - A temporary exhibition titled, Poles’ national mourning following the Smolensk catastrophe, was opened at the National History Museum from Chisinau today.  

Contacted by MOLDPRES, the museum’s deputy director, Mariana Vasilache, said that the exhibition comprised 32 drawing boards with pictures and texts, which show the Smolensk tragedy from April 2010.   

Attending the event were Ambassador of Poland to Moldova Bartłomiej Zdaniuk, the director general of the National History Museum of Moldova, Eugen Sava, personalities from the university sector, Moldovan lawmakers, who commemorated the victims of the Smolensk accident.  

In his speech, Ambassador Bartłomiej Zdaniuk said that the special aircraft TU-154M, onboard of which there were the president of Poland,  Lech Kaczyński and his wife, Maria Kaczyńska, as well as another 94 people, took off in Warsaw for Smolensk, Russia, on 10 April 2010. The Polish delegation was to take part in a commemoration of the massacre committed during the World War II at the Polish Military Cemetery from Katyń. Yet, the plane crashed at the landing.

The participants in the flight to Smolensk were going to the Katyń ceremony, in order to pay homage to the victims of the mass executions from the Katyń Wood, Miednoye, Harkov, Bîkivnea and Kuropaty, made by NKVD in the spring of 1940, at an order by the highest authorities of the Soviet Union.     

The Katyń massacre and the Smoleńsk tragedy are two events which became a symbol of the tragic history of Poland. These events shocked millions of Poles, as well as the international public opinion. 

The exhibition will be open till 29 April.