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Copyright © 2006 Alex Balako, All Rights Reserved
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Many people from New Jersey are taking path train at Exchange place and crossing border with New York state on their way to the city, which never sleep. They are passing a strange monument with a soldier killed in the back. It is made in memory of the events taken place very far from New Jersey, in Soviet Union and Poland back in 1939-1940. The monument made to the memory of the Polish soldiers and civilians captured by Red Army, when it crossed the border of the Poland in September 1939. Some 250,000 Polish soldiers had become prisoners of war in Soviet custody. This was a time when in USSR millions of citizens became enemies of the nation and were sent to prison, many hundred thousands were killed. Same happen to Poles. On March 5, 1940 Stalin has signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries". In the period from April to May, 1940 about 22,000 prisoners were executed, from which 4,421 in Katyn forest near Smolensk. Those who died at Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 NCOs, seven chaplains, three landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, and 131 refugees. Also among the dead were 20 university professors; 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about 200 pilots. Many others were sent to Siberia and died there. My panorama is about the geographical border meeting border through time. “Katyn” is a wound that refuses to heal. It created border between nations, border, which is going from past into the future, which is going through my hart together with drops of blood from both nations.
Find more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_Massacre 
Shortcut to this page: http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/wwp_rss/go/n1889
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