Katyn

Builders of what will be the tallest sculpture in Baltimore -- a bronze memorial more than five stories tall to honor thousands of Polish Army officers and intellectuals murdered during World War II -- will break ground for the project today near the Inner Harbor. The National Katyn Memorial Committee, a nonprofit organization led by Polish-American residents of the city, plans to start construction on the abstract sculpture in a circle next to President and Aliceanna streets. The statue will be devoted to the Polish officers who were massacred in Poland's Katyn forest and buried there and in mass graves near Kiev, Ukraine.

Barbara T. Miegon, whose Fells Point business linked immigrants to their native Poland, died Monday of a heart attack at Sinai Hospital.The popular co-host of a Polish radio show, she was 66 and a longtime resident of Northwest Baltimore.Mrs. Miegon had retired recently as president and owner of the B. T. Miegon Agency in the 1700 block of Eastern Ave. The business provided translation, money transfers and other services to Polish immigrants and Polish-Americans with relatives or business in Poland.

THIS IS NOT about the 25-story statue of Columbus, or whomever its Russian sculptor meant to portray, that some would like to see in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.This is about another statue, three stories tall, with a darker Russian connection and a much better chance of being erected, if not in the harbor, a block east of it.Dozens of people have been working for a decade to build the National Katyn Memorial in Baltimore. (If Washington gets to share the Orioles, Baltimore attractions get to claim they are ''national.

A group of local community activists and Polish-Americans is asking state officials to help fund the creation of a bronze sculpture, to be placed in Inner Harbor East in memory of 15,400 military officers and Polish intellectuals killed by Russian soldiers during World War II.Those who were slain by the Soviet NKVD -- the predecessor to the KGB -- in the Katyn Forest in western Russia in May 1940 were some of Poland's most educated doctors, lawyers, soldiers...

More than 400 politicians, community activists and Polish Americans dedicated a round plot of grass yesterday in Inner Harbor east to the memory of 15,400 Polish soldiers and intellectuals killed by Russian soldiers during World War II.At a roundabout at Aliceanna and Felicia streets, under a sunny afternoon sky, the crowd heard descriptions of the killings from Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and about a dozen other dignitaries.Those who were killed in April and May of 1940 in the Katyn Forest of western Russia, were some of Poland's most educated and talented doctors, lawyers, soldiers and clergy.

Baltimore's lame-duck Art Commission didn't like it, but Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke did. And that's what counted.The Polish-American sponsors of the proposed Katyn Memorial near the Inner Harbor have received a long-delayed go-ahead for their sculptor's design, apparently breaking an impasse.Soaring as high as 46 feet above a traffic circle in a waterfront development tract south of Little Italy, the abstract bronze memorial by sculptor Andrzej Pitynski would honor the memory of 15,000 Polish army officers slain by the Soviet secret police in 1940.

Can a house have a spirit? Can concrete, brown shingles, bad wall paneling, and green, knee-deep carpet all possess a soul?In Fells Point, a storefront is wedged in between the Painters Union and the Electrology Center. In a strip of stores that include the Love Zone, Karmic Connection and body hair removal, this storefront at 520 S. Broadway is a curious exception. For now, it's a war memorial. But it has been so much more.Knock, knock."Can we help you?" answers a barefoot, tanned woman with red toenail polish lighting up the green carpet.

KATYN, Russia -- Polish President Lech Walesa led more than 1,000 Poles to a quiet pine forest yesterday, where they dedicated a memorial to the legions of Polish officers who were murdered in Katyn in 1940 by the Soviet secret police.Visiting a country that has been reluctant to deal with its violent past, the Poles spoke forcefully and directly about such things as guilt, truth and responsibility."These victims even now are helping us to know the difference between what is good and what is bad," said Mr. Walesa.

Jewish donors gave $36,500 yesterday -- the largest single gift so far -- to the planners of an Inner Harbor monument to Polish Catholics murdered by the Soviet secret police 54 years ago.Invoking 1,000 years of history shared by Poland's Jews and Catholics and painful memories of World War II, leaders of the Jewish and Polish communities of Baltimore came together to announce the gift to the Katyn Memorial Fund. They vowed never to forget each other's victims of cruelty and oppression."We are reminded today of the highest of all Jewish ideals, reverence for life," said Darrell D. Friedman, president of the Associated Jewish Community Federation, which made the contribution on behalf of a group of its members.

WASHINGTON -- The White House promised yesterday that a presidential envoy would press Vietnam next week for an explanation of a previously secret document suggesting that Hanoi held 1,205 U.S. prisoners of war in 1972, three times more than it admitted then or later.The document, found in January by an American researcher in the archives of the Soviet Communist Party in Moscow, could prove politically explosive if it is authentic, because it suggests that more than 600 American prisoners were killed, died of natural causes or remain in Vietnamese hands.