Updated News: There will be a service of memory held at Albany’s Polish Community Center, 225 Washington Ave. Ext., Albany, NY on Friday, April 16th at 7pm. All are invited to attend.

From the Albany Times Union: Stunning news from homeland: Plane crash in which leaders die shakes local Polish community

COLONIE — Saturday’s fatal plane crash jolted members of the Capital Region’s Polish community, some of whom follow politics there and are lamenting the loss of a substantial part of that nation’s leadership.

“I was devastated,” said Wojciech Adamus of Albany, who came to Saturday evening Mass at the Blessed Virgin Mary of Czestochowa Polish National Catholic Church.

Adamus, 63, grew up in Poland. He came to the U.S. in 1984 when the Reagan administration allowed in Poles who had been arrested in crackdowns against the anti-Soviet Solidarity movement.

Adamus has never been back, but has watched Poland develop into a democracy from afar, occasionally watching Polish language broadcasts on friends’ satellite stations.

The Siena College graduate, who worked as a teacher, said that like many emigres he supported President Lech Kaczynski’s hard-line stand against Russia.

He compared Kaczynski’s conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice Party to the Republicans here in the U.S. That party is in an ongoing tug of war with another major party, the Civic Platform.

“I am very sad. I liked his politics,” added the Rev. Adam Czarnecki, the priest at Amsterdam’s Good Shepherd [PNCC] church.

Both men said they wondered why so many top officials would be on the same plane, a Soviet-designed aircraft that was two decades old.

“In every country there is a move to save money,” Adamus said.

From WRGB-TV: Poland Plane Crash Reaction