Hundreds of Poles gathered in grief at Warsaw's airport Thursday for two state ceremonies honoring 35 more victims of the plane crash in Russia, among them the last man who led Poland's government in exile when the country was ruled by communists.
A military plane traveled from Russia with the body of Ryszard Kaczorowski, whose casket was draped in the white-and-red Polish flag, and laid out on the tarmac flanked by a saber-bearing honor guard. His widow and daughters, dressed in black, wept at his coffin and kissed it.
Kaczorowski, who headed the exile government from London shortly before communism's demise in Poland, was among the 96 people killed in a plane crash last Saturday in western Russia en route to ceremonies to honor Polish victims of the World War II Katyn massacres of Polish officers by the forerunner of the Soviet secret police. He was 90.
His body was driven in a black hearse to lie in state in Warsaw's Belvedere palace until a funeral is held for him on Monday. The exiled leadership was established during the Nazi occupation of Poland and continued to declare itself the rightful government during the decades of communism, until Lech Walesa became Poland's first popularly elected president in 1990.
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