Though it seems somewhat mechanical to blog after every catastrophic event--the victims of the West Virginia mine disaster and the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes solicit, in their pain and loss, blog entries just as much--the plane crash in which President Kaczynski of Poland and many others were killed is particularly awful because they were about to participate in an act of reconciliation with respect to the slaughter perpetrated by the Soviets at Katyn. As I dealt with the consequences of the Katyn massacre in my Anthony Powell book (t=due to Powell's references to the event in his fiction), and learned about the continuing trauma felt by Poles in its aftermath, this plane crash is devastatingly sad as it occurred just as some painful memories from the past were about to be at least partially healed.
This article (in German) puts the complicated skein of history and tragedy in context.
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