I'm making a break in my Czech photo series to dedicate this one to the Poles. They have been hit by a great tragedy with the plane crash on the area of Katyn, which has destroyed part of the current Polish government elite. Those who know nothing about the meaning of Katyn should see the movie Katyn, a 2007 Polish film about the 1940 Katyn massacre, directed by Academy Honorary Award winner Andrzej Wajda. The Katyn massacre, also known as the 'zbrodnia katynska' (Katyn crime), was a mass execution of Polish POW officers and citizens ordered by the Soviet authorities in 1940. The most widely accepted estimate of the number of dead is about 22,000. The victims were murdered in the Katyn forest, Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkiv prisons, and elsewhere. About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the Soviet 1939 invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being 'intelligence agents, gendarmes, spies, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials.' During the German occupation of Poland, the Germans used the massacre for propaganda purposes against the Soviets. However, after the war, when Poland fell under Soviet influence, the truth about the event was suppressed by the Soviet authorities, who maintained an official line throughout the Cold War that the massacre has been committed by the Germans. With the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, the first non-communist Polish government immediately acknowledged that the crime was Soviet. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged Soviet responsibility for the first time. In 1991, Boris Yeltsin made public the documents which had authorised the massacre. The Polish delegation was going to Katyn to honor their deads. This shot shows a detail of the bulbous spire of the the Royal Castle in Warsaw.In its long history the Royal Castle was repeatedly devastated and plundered by Swedish, Brandenburgian, German, and Russian armies. After the devastation of World War II it was rebuilt and reconstructed. Today it is a historical and national monument, and a national museum. Thank you for your kind comments.