embassy events 2008 

Ambassador Participates in Kuklinski Ceremony

29 April 2008

Ambassador Ashe with Mrs. Kuklinska and guests

U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe  participated in a ceremony honoring the late Col. Ryszard Kuklinski and his widow Joanna on Wednesday April 30 at the World Union of Home Army Veterans.  Col. Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński was chief of a planning division of the Polish army and a liaison between the Polish army and the Soviet military.  Kukliński’s father was a member of the resistance during World War II who died in the Sachsenhausen German concentration camp.  After the December 1970 massacre of Polish workers in Gdynia by communist forces, and motivated by the desire to promote the Polish national interest, Kukliński passed top secret Warsaw Pact documents to the the U.S. government between 1971 and 1981.  He later immigrated to the United States with his wife and two sons shortly before the imposition of martial law in December 1981.  On May 23, 1984 Kukliński was sentenced to death, in absentia, by a communist court in Warsaw.  After the fall of communism, the sentence was annulled.  Kukliński visited Poland as a private citizen again in April 1998.  He died in Florida in 2004.  He was buried June 19, 2004 in the honor row of the Powązki military cemetery in Warsaw.