Poland

My cousin posted this segment of an article from the NY times, and I thought it was really one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. I had to copy it here. (Hope you don't mind, Brigham!)

"I have no idea who Roger Cohen is. Some columnist for the nytimes. Married to Frida Baranek with four kids. A foreign correspondent. Whatever.

I know of him now because he wrote an article about the recent plane crash and death of the Polish president and other major leaders near Smolensk. Such a sad coincidence for it to occur in Katyn! Cursed place. Cohen talks about the event and its meaning. He presents the hope that Poland and Russia will be better friends now and describes some poignant moments in their relationship.

And then...Roger Cohen shares four paragraphs of epic depth and and eloquence. Read them and then say, "wow":

Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.

For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.

It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.

So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.

Ask the Poles. They know."