Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Public Administration and Justice Tibor Navracsics paid a visit to Warsaw on Thursday where he spoke at the opening of the Hungarian memorial exhibition dedicated to Polish historian and state secretary Andrzej Przewoznik, who was killed in the 2010 Smolensk air crash.

Before the opening, the Deputy Prime Minister had a bilateral meeting with the Polish Minister of Justice where the parties discussed the Hungarian and Polish judicial reforms.  On Friday, he will deliver a lecture on the new Hungarian Constitution at the Lodz University. In Poland, there is keen “and, after two years, clearly positive interest” in the Hungarian reforms, the Deputy Prime Minister said.

The exhibition entitled Andrzej Przewoznik in our memory. 1963-2010. Katyn held in Budapest as part of the programmes of the 2011 Polish-Hungarian memorial year and in the year of the Hungarian-Polish EU Presidency was initiated and sponsored by the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration and Justice.

Andrzej Przewoznik was Secretary of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites in the rank of state secretary from 1992 until his death in 2010. He researched crimes committed against Polish citizens. He additionally also dealt with the exploration of Hungarian military burial sites in Poland, in recognition of which he was awarded a medal by the Hungarian Ministry of Defence in 2006. The aircraft, which carried on board Polish head of state Lech Kaczynski and his escort to the commemoration held in honour of the almost 22 thousand Polish soldiers and prisoners of war massacred in Katyn in Russia, crashed near Smolensk on 10 April 2010. Ninety-six people, including the Polish President and members of Poland’s political and military leadership, died in the crash.

Navracsics underlined that the Hungarian nation wished to express its gratitude with this exhibition to the Polish people for the efforts of one of their own who “served Hungarian-Polish friendship with his oeuvre as a historian, his determination and his open mind”. He also stressed that the researcher had sealed and reinforced the alliance of the two nations for another thousand years, and the unique nature of his oeuvre lies in the fact that “politics effectively merely played a secondary role (in this)”.

Polish Justice Minister Jaroslaw Gowin thanked Tibor Navracsics in his speech, reiterated that Poland had found a great friend in his person and reassured the entire Hungarian Government that “Hungary’s committed friends live by the River Vistula”.

The audience of more than a hundred that attended the ceremonial opening in the Warsaw History Meeting House (Dom Spotkan z Historia), an establishment that is concerned with the region’s history in the 20th century, including Hungarian and Polish diplomats and academicians and the family members of prominent public figures killed in the Smolensk disaster, were also welcomed by the late researcher’s widow, Lojanta Przewoznik.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)