R.I.P., Mariusz Handzlik
Of the 97 victims of the crash of the Polish presidential airplane outside Smolensk, there were many officials of very high rank, but I would bet that there was not a finer human being among them than Mariusz Handzlik, undersecretary of state in the office of the president. I first met Mariusz in 1993 when he came to the United States as a participant in a program run by James Denton of the National Forum Foundation, later merged into Freedom House. (Denton is now publisher of World Affairs.) The program aimed to help train a new post-Communist elite for the nations of east and central Europe liberated from Soviet occupation.
