Pomniki smoleńskie w Warszawie – lokalizacje, dzieła, kontrowersje

The national mourning and trauma caused by the tragic crash of the Polish airplane Tu- 154 on landing at the Smoleńsk Sieverny Airport, which claimed the lives of 96 people – all its passengers and crew, has had profound ezects on the political and social azairs of Poland. Countless debates and disagreements concerning the causes and possible consequences of the catastrophe followed. Among them, there has been a heated, politically and socially disruptive discussion concerning monuments which should be erected to commemorate the victims, and where they should be placed in the capital of Poland. The author briemy considers the monument planned at the site of the catastrophe, which was to be erected on the initiative of the Polish and Russian presidents, Bronisław Komorowski and Dmitry Medvedev. Regardless of the well-organised competition that took place at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, and the Jury’s selection of a project of considerable artistic merit, its construction was not approved by the Russians. Two monuments, planned for Warsaw, are presented in the article within a broader theoretical discourse on the nature of commemorative public art, its materials, and expectations of the public. The first monument, designed by Marek Moderau and unveiled on 10th November 2010, is located in Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw, and positioned in the K-II quarter of the cemetery. It consists of a huge block of reinforced concrete clad in white granite, broken into two parts of unequal length (12 and 10 metres), linked with 28 graves of the victims; it also shelters under is massive ‘wing’ 12 urns with ashes of unidentified persons. Reminiscent of a broken plane thrust into the ground, it carries two inscriptions: one listing victims’ names and dates of birth, their military ranks or political and social standing, the other honouring the lives lost on the journey to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyń massacre. The second monument, dedicated to the Victims of the Smolensk Tragedy 2010, was unveiled on 10th April 2018. After an acrimonious dispute between two main political parties, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) and the opposition’s Civic Platform (PO), it was placed on the Marshall Piłsudski Square, one of Warsaw’s most important open public spaces, steeped in history, and hosting over the centuries some of the country’s best known memorials, among them the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Made from black granite, it has a stepped shape prompting associations with the stairs to an aircraft, enriched by a symbolic „reading” proposed by its sculptor Jerzy Kalina, who called his work „the stairway to heaven”. The monument also has a second, underground component, visible through a reinforced glass moor, described as an „exhumation pit”, with a reference to Katyń and to many unknown burial sites of Poles murdered in Soviet Russia. It houses 96 commemoratives „lights” – remectors which are to provide night-time illumination for the monument. The controversies concerning the aesthetic merits and political significance of both monuments continue.