Standing beneath Baltimore's newest and tallest sculpture, the Rev. Zdzislaw J. Peszkowski yesterday remembered the martyrs - the Polish soldiers who were marched into the Katyn forest and shot dead in the back of the head. He recalled a detail: The Soviets stuffed some of the victims' mouths with sawdust to muffle their cries.
"And now," he said, "Baltimore is shouting to everybody, `Never again!'"
Peszkowski, who survived the massacre that killed thousands of his compatriots, was part of an international cast that helped to formally unveil the National Katyn Memorial yesterday a couple of blocks east of the Inner Harbor. Diplomats from Eastern Europe, and a strong turnout of Polish-Americans from greater Baltimore and beyond, gathered in the November chill to contemplate a sculptors' imagery.
FOR THE RECORD - A graphic published in The Sun's editions on Nov. 20 gave a misleading comparsion of the Katyn Memorial with other Baltimore monuments. The other monuments were pictured with their bases. When the Katyn Memorial's base is included in calculations, its height is 56 feet, not 44 feet.
The Sun regrets the error.
They found, in atrocity, a lesson in bravery.
"The cold chills I have aren't from the cold," said Peggy Snyder, a choreographer for a children's Polish folk dance troupe, as she toured the memorial. "This is kind of like closure, and a dedication to the people who came to the call of their country."
Yesterday's ceremony marked the end of a long local effort to commemorate the 1940 massacre at Katyn. Three decades ago, an Army major who had been stationed in Poland began selling soft drinks and sandwiches to raise money for a plaque in East Baltimore's Patterson Park. About a decade ago, a committee was formed to fortify the fund-raising effort. Over time, $1.4 million was collected.
But even as the goal was about to be reached, another snag arose: A dedication ceremony planned for September had to be postponed because rough weather and labor strife delayed the statue's delivery from Poland.
Which only made yesterday's festivities all the more satisfying.
"It's almost like a mission impossible. Nobody thought it could be done," said Stanley Sdanowich, a member of the National Katyn Memorial Committee.
Alfred Wisniewski, the committee chairman, was so overcome with the moment that he could not speak during the ceremonies. He allowed his brother, Stanislaus, to read his statement, which included a message to the dead: "May your dreams now be peaceful ones, because you will always be honored. You will always be remembered."
The statue memorializes a massacre whose history has, for many, been overshadowed. In 1939, Poland was invaded simultaneously by Nazi Germany from the west and Stalin's Red Army from the East. The Soviets captured more than 15,000 Polish officers and transferred them to camps in the Soviet Union.
