Why a Wooden Cross Divides Poland, by David Frum

We were hemmed between the buildings on one side of the sidewalk and a police barrier on the other. The wide pavement between was obstructed by gawkers watching a strange performance: a weird seemingly incomprehensible little passion play of stereotyped figures.

What the hell is this? I asked an onlooker wedged against me. I kept asking. He answered, but in Polish, leaving me no wiser.

I had stumbled across the summer's big political conflict in Poland: the site of a wooden cross placed to commemorate the accidental death of Lech Kaczynski, the former president of Poland killed in an air crash near Smolensk in April.

Admirers of the president had laid the cross at the gates of the presidential residence as a symbol of mourning. In the same spirit, admirers of Princess Diana laid flowers at the gate of Kensington Palace in London. But while flowers disintegrate after an interval, wooden crosses do not. The cross stayed in place for weeks. Supporters lit candles, said prayers.

You might expect the crowds to thin as time passed. Quite the opposite.

Feelings for -- and against -- have flared and intensified the battle over a cross that has come to symbolize the divisions in Polish society.

Kaczynski was not a universally admired figure. Younger Poles, urban Poles, highly educated Poles tended to perceive Kaczynski as rustic, embarrassing. Older Poles, rural Poles, tradition-minded Poles were Kaczynski's constituency. Like them, Kaczynski upheld traditional Catholic beliefs and mistrusted free-market economic reforms.

Kaczynski's death confirmed both his supporters and his detractors' views.

Supporters saw a Polish patriot flying to Smolensk to pay tribute to the 22,000 Polish officers murdered in the Katyn Forest in 1940 -- and to extract from Russia belated acknowledgement of its crime.

Detractors saw an egomaniac trying to upstage his own prime minister, who had made the same trip for the same purpose three days earlier. They quietly suspect Kaczynski pressured his pilot to disregard air traffic control and proceed with a landing in unsafe conditions, resulting in the deaths of 95 others.