Official Blog of the Author

Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s leading independent bookstore, will host me at 7:30 p.m. on March 30.  I plan to make a short talk and answer questions.  A favorite stop for authors on national tour, QR has hosted former President Jimmy Carter, former Vice President Al Gore and Duke University basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski.

I’m especially excited about the QR event because it will seem like a homecoming to me.  I began my career at “The Raleigh Times” and later worked the Associated Press Raleigh Bureau.  My first editor, A.C. Snow, plans to attend the QR.  His “Snow Foolin’” column has long been a popular fixture in the Raleigh News & Observer.  I was very fortunate to get my start under his watchful eye.  AC assigned me, like most cub reporters, the menial task of writing obits.  Some comedown since I saw myself at the time as “the next Thomas Wolfe.”

When my “training wheels” finally came off, AC let me write a column called “State Sketch.”   My job was to find human interest in seemingly dull state jobs.  One of my first offerings described a guy who had risen to superintendent of buildings and grounds.  I wrote that his first job in the department placed him on a scaffold four floors up caulking windows.  Seeing a good-looking woman inside one particular office, he climbed through the window and began to romance her.  Less than a year later they were married.  After the column appeared, one of the wags in our newsroom spread the word that when I learned about that guy’s success, I had rushed to the hardware store and bought a caulking gun.

My Polish publisher, Swiat Ksiazki (Bertelsmann/Poland), will issue an updated paperback edition of my book Katyń the week of April 5.  I’ll be in Warsaw that week for interviews and appearances to promote the book.  Interest in the Katyń subject is running very high right now.  The massacre took place 70 years ago, and observances are planned in most large cities in Poland.  Today, the word “Katyń” stands as a powerful symbol of Stalinist repressions, including mass deportations that involved up to two million Poles between Feb. 8, 1940 and June 22, 1941.  Most were sent to Siberia where they perished due to forced labor, starvation and neglect.  Today the few survivors are known and honored as “Siberiaks.”

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Many months ago I proposed a national observance of the 70^th anniversary of Katyń at the Library of Congress.  That idea has now come to fruition: a major conference on the theme “The Path to Reconciliation for Poland and Russia” will take place at the Library on May 5.  An impressive number of prominent public figures have agreed to participate including the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer, and the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington.  The conference is sponsored by the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York which annually awards more than $1 million in scholarships.  The Cold War Studies Center at Harvard is a co-sponsor.  I expect that at least two other prestigious organizations, one of them Russian, will also co-sponsor the event.

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Angel of Hope

Like a giant boulder, Katyń blocks the path to improved relations between the Poles and the Russians.  It won’t be removed, in my opinion, until the Russian government issues a formal apology.  The Germans discovered the crime in 1943, but 47 years passed before then President Mikhail Gorbachev finally admitted that the Poles were murdered by the NKVD, the security service which preceded the KBG.  Notably absent in Gorbachev’s admission was the apology the Poles demand and have every right to expect.  Another 20 years have gone by without the sincere and profound apology needed to jump-start movement toward a new relationship which could greatly benefit both countries. Read more

Link to article in the News and Observer