Hello and welcome to this episode of the witness history podcast from the BBC World

Service with me, Matt Pintus. Today I'm taking you back to one of the biggest tragedies

in Polish history. In 2010, a plane carrying the president and 95 other important government

officials went down in thick fog, killing everyone on board. But this man had an arrow

escape. I was invited to be on that plane by the president. My wife and I received

a barrage of calls from all over the world, in fact, from people who thought that I might

be on the plane. That's Radys Wawczykorski. And on the 10th of April 2010, he was

woken up suddenly in the middle of the night. I always had my phone by my bedside in case

of some disaster. I received a call from the Polish foreign ministry and they put me through

to the ambassador and the ambassador by then was among the wreckage and he told me that

no one could have survived. Of course, it was very horrible thought. I was trying to

ring people who were no longer responding and I the ambassador described to me that he

was standing in the middle of burning wreckage with parts of Bobby's stone about.

As Poland's minister of foreign affairs, it was Radys Waw's responsibility to make sure

everyone who needed to know about the president's death was informed, including political

rivals. And one of them was Jarosław Kaczynski, the president's brother.

I had a dilemma whether to call him because he was, I was the fence minister in his government

but he was a political rival. I took the call during breakfast with my mother and I asked

what do you think? Should I do this on behalf of the government or not and he will learn

in half an hour anyway? And my mother thought that I should do him this courtesy of telling

him in advance. And I told him, look, I have this message from the Polish ambassador on

the spot he thinks nobody could have survived this and the very early initial hypothesis

...