polish leader offers olive branch at massacre site - custom engraved metal plates

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Dmitry Solovyov KATYN, Russia, 17 Th (Reuters)-
President Lech Kaczynski said on Monday that he wanted a new start to tensions between Poland and Moscow, where he visited the Russian forest, where thousands of Polish officials in 1940
Dressed in black, Kaczynski laid a wreath at the scene of the Second World War massacre in Katyn, western Russia, and said Poland and Russia should not be entangled in past grievances.
"We have a democratic Poland, we have a new Russia --
"There is no more Soviet Union, no more communist dictatorship," Kaczynski said . ".
The massacre in Katyn and two other places.
15,000 Polish officers were shot and thrown into the pit.
Most Poles see their country as a symbol of a crackdown in decades under Soviet control.
Since taking office two years ago, Warsaw has blocked EU partnership talks with Russia over a trade dispute, accusing Moscow of using energy as a political weapon, and angered the Kremlin by inviting the US ambassador to Russia. S.
A missile defense system that Russia opposes.
Kaczynski said during his first visit to Russia that the Kating execution was "an act of genocide," but he pardoned modern
Russia for any remaining responsibility.
We must remember them today. the victims)
We must remember them.
We will remember them.
Historical memory is extremely important.
Both good and bad.
"But that doesn't mean we're just going to live in this memory," he said . "
"Few of Katyn's criminals are still alive.
The people who ruled Russia and Poland today, as far as they were alive at the time, were very young children and took no responsibility for the events that occurred there.
We must therefore live in the future. . .
For the past, we must look at it calmly and balance it, but respect the truth as well.
The Polish president said Warsaw hopes to maintain good relations with all its neighbors.
He's in 1-
1/2 hours at the Katyn memorial, no meetings were held with senior Russian officials.
Local officials on behalf of Russia, Russia and Russia
The Polish honor guard took part in the wreath-
Laying ceremony.
The visit was the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, when Hitler and Stalin split Poland in a short time. lived pact.
Kaczynski, accompanied by his wife, stopped in front of the memorial of Soviet citizens at Katyn's sacrifice.
Then he walked silently around a monument with the names of Polish victims inscribed on it.
He brought soil from another place where Ukrainian Polish soldiers were buried on a large scale, and the Poles blessed these places --
Pope John Paul II died in 2005.
Kaczynski's soil is scattered on the mound of Katyn.
Warsaw has long urged Moscow to bring the perpetrators of the massacre to justice.
Russians have refused to decrypt many of the documents on the killings in government files.