Where is "Anna of Solidarity?"
Details of unconscionable mistreatment, misidentification, and burial of the remains of the “Mother of Solidarity”, Anna Walentynowicz.
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The Poland's Prosecutors' Office is one Grand Factory of lies.

Anna Walentynowicz, The Mother of Solidarity

Anna’s son and grandson share their story about their quest to bring justice for their mother and grandmother, and other victims of the April 10, 2010 crash of the Polish Government Tupolev Tu-154M that disintegrated into thousands of pieces in the skies over Smolensk, Russia.

It is of paramount importance that the world realizes the stature of Anna’s life in perspective to Polish, European and World History. It was neither the fall of the Berlin Wall nor Lech Walesa who started the workers’ strikes that ignited a fatal blow to Communism and incited hope to the millions of Central and East-Europeans who lived under the noose of communism.

It was a demure and humble welder at the Gdansk Shipyard named Anna Walentynowicz who began the Solidarity Revolution that changed the world. If the world thinks that we will forget…think twice.

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESENTATION BY JANUSZ WALENTYNOWICZ AND PIOTR WALENTYNOWICZ

JANUSZ WALENTYNOWICZ (ANNA WALENTYNOWICZ'S SON):

I would like to tell you briefly about our family's predicament; at least, about our part of it. This is simply, only an excerpt of this whole tragedy.

Atypically, I will begin at the end.

I think by doing so, I will help you understand it better. I can categorically, and with utmost certainty, tell you that "Anna of Solidarity" is not buried in her grave. She is not laid to rest in this grave. Our family does not even know where she is buried. We do not know if she is buried at all. Now, let me briefly explain what led to this situation.

In the early afternoon hours of April 13, 2010, I was shown the first of the bodies for identification.

There were four bodies. After viewing them, with some breaks in between, I saw the fourth body. This was the body of my Mom. I identified it with 100% certainty; by her face, scars from surgeries, and unique marks on her body that I knew were there; and their location. Earlier, in addition to me, another family identified my mother as well. She was also identified by the emergency doctor who remembered my Mom from TV, and her photos in the press. As an attending physician, he positively identified her with 100% certainty. There was absolute certainty that it was her. I must emphasize, that I was astonished that my Mom's body did not show any external injuries. Simply, she was lying on this examination table as if she was asleep. I am 100% sure I identified my Mom. I signed the protocol given to me by the Russian investigator. I was certain that I was signing the protocol of inspection and identification of my Mother’s body. Later, it became something completely opposite. However - one thing at a time.

The body was transported to Poland. There was a solemn funeral with military honors and a gun salute. For two years the family went to the grave, laid flowers and lit candles. We were sure that we were visiting our mother’s/grandma’s grave. After nearly two and a half years, the first of the Russian medical identification documents arrived. The Prosecutors' Office summoned us - to be precise, we requested the meeting - to make these documents available to us. We were shown these documents by Madam Prosecutor, Kosior, who was responsible for this part of the investigation. My son and I were at first astonished, and then we became flabbergasted. I asked Madam Prosecutor: “Is the person described in these documents buried at the Strebrzysko cemetery?” Madam Prosecutor said: “Yes.” Unbelievably, this documentation did not concern our mother and grandmother, but somebody entirely different. We immediately filed a request for exhumation. Several days later we found out that the Prosecutors' Office decided to perform the exhumation, and also suggested another exhumation of another body buried in Warsaw. We do not know what criteria were used, as they did not discuss any of this with us. The decision was made - plain and simple.

After the exhumations, it became clear that the remains were of Teresa Walewska-Przyjalkowska, and not our mother who was buried in our grave at Gdansk-Srebrzysko cemetery. I saw her body as well, as she was the first person shown to me for identification in Moscow. I remember her on the examination table. She had uncharacteristically [deformed] feet that I had never seen before. After they opened a disgusting plastic bag - because all bodies were deposited in such repugnant bags - I was shown a headless body. My son and I were horrified. I am not going to hide it. We were expecting to see the remains of my mother. But this body was missing its head. I asked: “What is this?”

As layers of material in which this body was covered were progressively uncovered, it became obvious that it was not my mother. This body had completely different identification marks, different scars. Nothing matched. For these reasons, I emphatically voiced that this is absolutely not my Mother; as this and that specific scar had to be here and here … I explained that to the examiners. The autopsy was led by Professor Barbara Swiatek who gained notoriety for the botched autopsy of Stanislaw Pyjas who was abducted [and murdered by the Polish secret police]. She was the one who led the medical team responsible for the autopsies and examination of our loved ones.

Anna Walentynowicz with the late President Lech Kaczynski

When I told Madam Swiatek that the scars on this body are in wrong places, she raised her voice and told me that I am making it up, because she is the one who is the physician, and knows where all the incisions should be located. Ladies and gentlemen, at that time I was under horrific psychological duress because I was witnessing an autopsy for the first time. It was the first time I saw what I saw. So, it was difficult for me to immediately collect myself and to react with a stronger rebuttal against her denials.

I continued to observe what was taking place in disbelief. The end result is that my son and I notified the authorities that things did not match, and that this is not our loved one. Both the Prosecutors' Office and government pathologists stated that the results [of the autopsy] will be confirmed by DNA examination. They took my DNA sample - if I remember correctly this would have been the third or fourth time by then. These samples were already taken before I went to Moscow, then in Moscow, and yet again during exhumations. After two or three days, we found out that mysteriously the DNA examination matched the documentation. We were sent a new body for the grave.

I do not know what genetic samples they were using in order to have a match, because no one informed us about any of this. Simply put: the DNA matched. Case closed. So, we took this body. What else were we to do? Were we to leave it there? After all this is somebody's loved one. I was thinking: until this is all resolved we will give this body safe haven. So, this is more or less all that concerns these exhumations and how the victims’ bodies were misidentified and swapped. I will once again emphatically state: The remains of "Anna of Solidarity" are somewhere, but we don't know where … We are trying to find her.

The fashion in which we, and not only we, but also Zuzanna Kurtyka, and others, are treated by the Prosecutors' Office will be told by [my son] Piotr. It is he who had the displeasure of frequent contacts with these people.

PIOTR WALENTYNOWICZ (ANNA WALENTYNOWICZ'S GRANDSON):

Ladies and gentlemen, my Dad told you about the exhumations. I will briefly describe to you what this "cooperation" - or lack thereof - with the Prosecutors' Office looked like. The Prosecutors' Office is one “Grand Factory” of lies. In order to tell you about all of these lies, we would have to sit here for a month.

Let me begin by telling you that it was the Prosecutors' Office that organized everything: beginning with cordoning off the cemetery with police, then choosing the institutions that were to conduct the analysis, and then carrying out all investigative functions. Was there cooperation with the Prosecutors' Office, you ask? There was not an iota of cooperation of any type. The Prosecutors' Office rejected each and every one of our requests.

We petitioned for the participation of Dr. Michael Baden [in the autopsies]. I assume you all know of him. The Prosecutors' Office did not have to pay for any of this. However, they rejected him. They stated that they have the best experts and equipment in the world at their disposal. We petitioned for many, many things, even the simplest and most obvious of those. For example, x-rays. They didn't want to do any of this, because a tomograph was to be sufficient enough. Lo and behold, the tomograph they were using broke. So in order to keep us silent, they started to take x-rays. Of course, they never finished, because this "professional" institution ran out of x-ray film. Yes. You better believe it!

I already said it before: Had all of this not concerned such a grave subject of deceased people, it could be funny, albeit a morbid joke. The Prosecutors' Office rejected our request to remove the infamous Mrs. Swiatek from the investigation. They rejected it. Military prosecutors controlled everything, and did everything they could to paralyze our involvement. In addition, they were issuing countless untruthful statements.

Perhaps, because my Dad did not finish his account, I should add, they were assuring us ad nauseam that the analysis from the autopsies to be released, will be so detailed it will put to rest any doubts we may have. I have the results of their findings. Not only does it not explain anything, it further contorts and confuses the issue. It does not even remotely address the issue we are interested in. What can we do? We decided to do everything we could.

If the Prosecutors' Office states that the other body is that of our grandmother, then we petition for access to Russian documentation prepared in Moscow. The earlier documentation, that we have, certainly does not match what we knew about our grandmother. There is one more important thing. Without any kind of consultation, questions, or even minute interest in cooperation, the Prosecutors' Office arbitrarily chose the bodies to be exhumed. As I said earlier, apparently they know my grandmother better than we knew her ourselves. It is an absurdity of course, but it is exactly their Mo, [modus operandi]. We petitioned for the documentation about the individual whom the Prosecutors' Office claim is our relative, to be made available to us. We looked through this documentation. It does not concern our grandmother either.

We filed the necessary paperwork, and requested access to additional documents. Under this pressure, they agreed to provide us with paper work about other female victims of this crash. By doing this however, they inadvertently acknowledged that they did not locate the remains of our grandmother. Had they found her, why would they make these documents available to us? I am glad that the Prosecutors' Office keeps on lying.

As Madam Zuzanna [Kurtyka] said, we do have certain rights in Poland; only a handful. Our problem is that there are people who are, above the law. However, they will not be above the law forever. We will be patient.

We looked at reports concerning other female victims of this crash, and we were astonished. We noticed in some of these reports - I do not remember if there were twenty, or twenty-two of them - references to seemingly unrelated, "Plastic Bag A", "Plastic Bag B", "Plastic Bag C". These bags then become part of a single victim's remains description. It somewhat illustrates this peculiar procedure. But, let us set this aside.

But, let us set this aside. The Military Prosecutors' Office has the gall to state that as far as they know, this issue is closed. All of this, despite the fact that they do not even have the necessary documentation about the individual whom they buried. What else did we do, you may ask?

During this prolonged process of falsifying reality, the Attorney General Andrzej Seremet became part of it. Of course, when it became public knowledge that bodies were swapped, he jovially appeared before the Parliament, held some sort of piece of paper in his hand, and stated that it was the families who were responsible for the bodies being swapped. It was the families that did not properly identify their loved ones. I will set aside the fact that once again the Attorney General told another lie. He said that he was familiar with this issue, and had in-depth knowledge of the documentation. So, I am unable to comprehend what he meant by saying publicly that if I wished, he would give me full-access to the documentation, and then I will change my mind.

Had the Attorney General acquainted himself with this documentation in depth, he would:

- First: Know that I already read this report; as I have signed it. The first page shows who had access to these documents, and when they were viewed. Let me put it to you mildly: the Attorney General did not acquaint himself with any documentation.

- Further more: His "objectivism" was such that he did not even bother to come up with an unoriginal thought of deposing eyewitnesses to testify about this investigatory process. Mr. Seremet decided that it is not necessary. It was us who had to petition for deposition of witnesses, so that their testimonies would become part of the official record.

I would not suggest that the Attorney General is so incompetent that he does not realize that it can be done. After all, it is difficult for me to judge the competence of a man. One would think that if someone serves as Attorney General, then he should have at least rudimentary understanding of the legal process. In my opinion, what we are dealing with is the Attorney General’s well-pronounced aversion to explaining anything at all.

Ladies and gentlemen, all this shows a very sad picture of the mechanism by which the Prosecutors' Office, the Attorney General himself, and the government at large, conducted this investigation. This is the government that handed this investigation away to a foreign nation and is doing all they can to please mother Russia. I would like to add that [Poland's] Prosecutors' Office considers the issue of this crash to be closed. OK. Perhaps they do, but we do not! What should we do next?

The investigation is continuing. Maybe it will go on for one more year, maybe five, maybe longer. Why should we however, wait even one more day to find out about the fate of our grandmother? Perhaps, if I was not clear, I could ask Mr. Minister [Macierewicz] for clarification. It was because his personal engagement, that a meeting of the Parliamentary Justice and Human Rights Committee convened. It is there that we tried to present how the Military Prosecutors' Office treats the victims' families. More accurately, how they are violating our basic rights. While the name "Justice and Human Rights Committee" sounds grand and uplifting, in the context of Polish realities it means absolutely nothing. It is an empty, neo-communist phrase. It has nothing to do with justice or human rights.

During these proceedings of this committee we were instructed and derailed by its Chairwoman - a member of the [far left, neo-communist] SLD - how such a committee functions, and specifically its procedures. However we complied with all of those prerequisites. We said what we had to say, and expected their help. Therefore, she wasted an incredible amount of productive time. Ironically, in the end, the official interpellation from Mr. Minister Macierewicz was rejected.

Paradoxically, this very woman, who pretentiously attempted to hail herself as an expert and authority on procedures, was not able to respond if she could or could not accept this parliamentary interpellation. She lacked a basic understanding. The Vice-Chairman from the Platforma Obywatelska, on the other hand, treated us disgracefully. He made sure that we knew that he is a Representative, and we better come to terms with who the boss is.

We found out that the Justice and Human Rights Committee do exist, but it had a different address. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very abridged account of our difficulties. We will not capitulate however! We will not ...

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