Boost for campaign against relocation of monument to fallen Poles: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
14.08.2018 12:39
A group trying to stop the relocation of a monument to Poles massacred by the Soviets in World War II from its site in Jersey City in the US has won a major victory, a newspaper has reported.
The Jersey City monument to the 1940 Katyn Massacre. Photo: Eleanor Lang/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Jersey Journal said officials have certified the group has submitted enough valid signatures to halt plans to move the statue.
The newspaper described the certification of the petition on the Katyn monument as a “stunning turnaround for the group and a major defeat for Mayor Steve Fulop.”
It added that a plan to move the statue to make way for a new park at Jersey City’s Exchange Place was now on hold.
The newspaper reported that the Jersey City Council now had two options: to vote on September 12 to reverse an ordinance approving the relocation of the statue, or to allow voters to have their say in a referendum.
Criticism from Polish Americans
The monument was at the centre of a transatlantic spat earlier this year.
The city in May said the monument would be put in storage and its home, a site in Exchange Place, would be converted into a park.
The announcement drew fierce criticism from Poland and Polish Americans.
Jersey City's mayor later said the monument would be moved to a "respected" place.
The monument at the centre of the row features a 10-metre-tall bronze figure of a soldier—who has been gagged and bound and impaled by a bayonetted rifle—mounted on top of a granite base containing soil from the Katyn Forest in western Russia where thousands of Poles were murdered by Soviet secret police in 1940 during World War II.
(pk/gs)