Deal struck in Katyn statue row: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
11.05.2018 18:55
An agreement has been reached following a trans-Atlantic spat over a proposal to remove a statue honouring thousands of Poles killed by the Soviets during WWII, according to reports.
The Jersey City monument to the 1940 Katyn MassacreBild: Eleanor Lang/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Public broadcaster Polish Radio's IAR news agency reported that the statue would be moved 60 metres to a “prestigious location” by the Hudson River.
The decision follows talks between Polish-American Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Eric Lubaczewski, Polish consul Maciej Golubiewski and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, IAR reported.
A trans-Atlantic spat was ignited over Fulop's plans to remove the statue in order to redevelop a public square in Jersey City that has been the monument's home for 27 years.
Sculpted by Polish-American artist Andrzej Pitynski and unveiled in June 1991, the monument features a 10-metre-tall bronze figure of a soldier — who has been gagged and bound and impaled by a bayonetted rifle — mounted on top of a granite base containing soil from the Katyn Forest in western Russia where thousands of Poles were murdered by Soviet secret police during World War II.
Around 22,000 Polish prisoners of war were killed with shots to the back of the head in the spring of 1940 on orders from top Soviet authorities in what came to be known as the Katyn Massacre. (vb/pk)
Source: IAR