Poland to exhume WWII commander's remains

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081110/ap_on_re_eu/eu_poland_wwii_general;_ylt=AtC4STvtf2gWXVa73dlx0010bBAF


WARSAW, Poland The body of World War II prime minister and army commander Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski will be exhumed as investigators probe whether he died in an accidental plane crash or was assassinated, a Polish official said Monday.

Sikorski died July 4, 1943, when the British bomber he was in crashed into the sea a few seconds after taking off from Gibraltar.

At the time, Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and Sikorski headed a government-in-exile based in London. For decades, people have held theories he was murdered.

The head of the state-run National Remembrance Institute, Janusz Kurtyka, said investigators will open Sikorski's tomb Nov. 25 at the Roman Catholic Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, where his remains rest among those of Polish kings.

They will be returned Nov. 26 with a Mass in Sikorski's honor.

The investigation will include DNA and toxicology tests, with results expected after about a month, Kurtyka said.

The historical institute has said it was investigating a "communist crime," suggesting its suspicions fall primarily on the Soviet Union, which attacked Poland after forming an alliance with Nazi Germany at the start of the war.

The investigation will also be based on documents and new testimony from people linked to the initial investigations of the crash. A British probe in 1943 blamed the crash on jammed controls, but a separate Polish investigation did not rule out sabotage.

The crash came three months after Joseph Stalin broke diplomatic ties with the Polish government-in-exile following Sikorski's demand that the International Red Cross investigate the Katyn massacre. German forces had discovered in the western Russian village of Katyn the graves of thousands of Polish military officers, intellectuals and priests executions later proven to have been carried out by the Soviets


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