My Week in Poland and Russia

What a week!  The release in Warsaw of a new Polish edition of my book, a moving award from the Warsaw Police Families Association and then the shock of the terrible plane crash that took the lives of so many prominent Polish leaders including one close friend and many others I had met.  I got back home to Raleigh last night and spent today being interviewed by U.S. and Polish news outlets.  I’ll have an update soon about the coverage, but for now, I’d like to mention highlights of my week long trip to Poland and Russia:

  • I was the only American in the official delegation that Prime Minister Donald Tusk took to his historic meeting in Katyn Forest with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
  • Many television and newspaper accounts had me at the center, just behind Lech Walesa, in photographs of the wreath-laying ceremony just as Mr. Putin and Mr. Tusk walked forward toward the memorial.
  • “Coffee and Tea,” the Today Show of Poland, interviewed me “live” for five minutes last Tuesday morning.  A short time later I was interviewed live for 13 minutes on Polsat-TV, one of Poland’s leading channels.
  • I met for an hour with our new ambassador to Poland, Lee Feinstein, who was a top advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign.  An outstanding author, the ambassador has broad strategic vision for U.S.-Polish relations.  Because Polish-Jewish relations have been often contentious in the past, having a Jewish ambassador in Warsaw will be a very good thing for the Poles and good for us.  I suspect that he was Mrs. Clinton’s first choice for the job.  She couldn’t have made a better pick.
  • During the course of the week I had more than 20 radio and television interviews.
  • Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s leading newspaper, ran a long story on my visit.  As I left on Saturday, I saw that Dziennik Polska, one of Poland’s largest newspapers, ran Chapter 24 of my book in its entirety.  This chapter deals with the U.S. cover-up of Katyn.
  • Amb. Feinstein invited me to speak on Friday to the embassy staff and invited guests.  The exchange was connected on closed circuit television to U.S. Polish consulates in Gdansk, Krakow, Lodz and Wroclaw.
  • And finally, I received a major award on Friday from the Warsaw Association of Police Families.  More than 6,000 policemen, border guards and firefighters were among nearly 22,000 Poles murdered on direct orders from Stalin in 1940.

I was invited to go back to Katyn on the plane that crashed on Saturday.  Details of how that happened are being reported in Tuesday’s edition of the Raleigh News and Observer and possibly Gazeta Wyborcza.  I will post those stories as soon as possible.

Share