El Mudo
11-10-2008, 10:09 AM
Polish PM to be exhumed (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7720293.stm)
Gen Wladyslaw Sikorski will be exhumed as part of a inquiry to decide whether his death in a plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943 was an accident or murder.
A British investigation ruled that it was an accident, but some historians in Poland believe Gen Sikorski died as a result of foul play.
In July 1943, the Liberator aircraft he was travelling on together with two British MPs, crashed into the sea just seconds after it took off from Gibraltar.
A British investigation at the time found the plane's controls had jammed. But a separate Polish investigation did not rule out he may been murdered.
The general's death has produced several colourful conspiracy theories despite a lack of evidence.
At the time Gen Sikorski had demanded an investigation into allegations that Poland's then ally, the former Soviet Union, had massacred more than 20,000 Polish officers in the forests of Katyn three years earlier.
Sikorski was in essence, the Polish version of De Gaulle because of his stance as the uniter of the Polish Communist/Anti Communist factions. If he doesn't die, the Warsaw Uprising doesn't become the absolute disaster and tragedy it does, and the Russians don't sit on the other side of the Vistula and watch the Germans wipe the place off the face of the earth. And perhaps Poland doesn't go Communist (much in the way France was able to hold on through De Gaulle).
In any event, this won't change much about what happened, but it could shed light on a LOT of terrible things the Russians did during the war that don't really get much attention and more importantly, shed more light on the horrors of the war that occurred in Poland
Gen Wladyslaw Sikorski will be exhumed as part of a inquiry to decide whether his death in a plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943 was an accident or murder.
A British investigation ruled that it was an accident, but some historians in Poland believe Gen Sikorski died as a result of foul play.
In July 1943, the Liberator aircraft he was travelling on together with two British MPs, crashed into the sea just seconds after it took off from Gibraltar.
A British investigation at the time found the plane's controls had jammed. But a separate Polish investigation did not rule out he may been murdered.
The general's death has produced several colourful conspiracy theories despite a lack of evidence.
At the time Gen Sikorski had demanded an investigation into allegations that Poland's then ally, the former Soviet Union, had massacred more than 20,000 Polish officers in the forests of Katyn three years earlier.
Sikorski was in essence, the Polish version of De Gaulle because of his stance as the uniter of the Polish Communist/Anti Communist factions. If he doesn't die, the Warsaw Uprising doesn't become the absolute disaster and tragedy it does, and the Russians don't sit on the other side of the Vistula and watch the Germans wipe the place off the face of the earth. And perhaps Poland doesn't go Communist (much in the way France was able to hold on through De Gaulle).
In any event, this won't change much about what happened, but it could shed light on a LOT of terrible things the Russians did during the war that don't really get much attention and more importantly, shed more light on the horrors of the war that occurred in Poland