WMU professor offers perspective on Polish president’s death

By Fritz Klug
Western Herald

Andrew Targowski couldn’t sleep Friday night.

At 3 a.m., Saturday morning, the Western Michigan University professor went into the television room of his Kalamazoo home and turned on a Polish television news channel. It was 9 a.m.

Warsaw time and the broadcaster was awaiting the landing of a Polish airplane that was carrying President Lech Kaczynski and other political and military leaders.

“They said the plane was running late,” Targowski said. “Then no one knew where it was. I knew it was a tragedy.”

The airplane crashed as it was landing at Smolensk military base. Kaczynski, and all other 95 passengers, died. They included Kaczynski’s wife, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, President of the National Bank of Poland, as well as the commanders of the Polish Air Force, Land Forces, Armed Forces, the Navy, and the Polish Special Forces.

“Everyone wanted to fly with the president,” Targowski said, “and the president wanted his court.”

The exact cause of the crash is still under investigation. In Moscow, Russia’s transport ministry said that Russian and Polish investigators had begun to decipher flight data recorders of the aging Soviet-built Tu-154 airliner that crashed while trying to land in deep fog in Smolensk.

The Smolensk regional government said Russian dispatchers had asked the Polish crew to divert from the military airport there because of the fog and land instead in Moscow or Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus.

Targowski said that while it is tragic, the crash was a result of human error and could have easily been avoided.

“It was ridiculous to put six commanders in one craft,” Targowski said. “This whole case should be studied by military schools on what not to do.”

The trip was being made to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn forest massacre, where 22,000 Polish POWs were killed by Stalin’s secret police.

Polish-Russian relations had been improving recently after being poisoned for decades over the slaying of some 22,000 officers and others in Katyn forest and in other areas. About 4,000 Polish army officers were killed in the forest by Josef Stalin’s NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB, in 1940.

Russia never has formally apologized for the murders, but Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation. Kaczynski wasn’t invited to that event because Putin, as prime minister, had invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk.

“Putin is covering wounds from the past and present,” Targowski said.

Kaczynski, 60, was the first serving Polish leader to die since exiled World War II-era leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski was killed in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943.

In 2008, an airplane carrying lead air force officials crashed under similar circumstances as it tried to land at the 12th Air Base in Mirosławiec, Poland.

“Those officials and pilots should apply to the rules and make wise decisions,” Targowski said.

While the crash is a loss for Poland, Targowski said that good would come out of it. Targowki said that after Pope John Paul passed away in 2005, Poles came together to mourn his death. He said that they could come together again to mourn together.

Targowski was born in Poland in 1937. His parents were a part of the Polish Resistance movement. His father was executed the Nordhausen-Dora concentration camp for sabotaging German V2 bombs.

With his mother, Targowski survived the war. He went on to earn his master’s degree in ’56. He went on to develop a national computerized information system, INFOSTRADA, a precursor to the Information Superhighway in 1990s America.

Targowski was fired from his job in 1974 and began to work in Mexico for the Polish Peace Corps in 1980. He left for America and sought political asylum.

Targowski has taught computer information systems at Western Michigan University since 1980.

A story about Targowski’s life is in this month’s Encore magazine.

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Posted by heraldstaff on Apr 11 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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