The air charter specialist's Poland office assisted in arrangements for the Warsaw Bombing of Poems event by coordinating a MI-2 helicopter charter to drop one hundred thousand poems printed on bookmarks over the streets of the capital's Old Town.
The poem drop took place without warning and under the cover of night, in a move that mirrored events from more than 60 years ago.
Thousands of residents in Warsaw's Old Town took to the streets to witness the spectacle and catch the bookmarks, whose poems were written in their mother tongues by Chilean and Polish contemporary poets.
Warsaw was the fourth city chosen to host the Bombing of Poems. This year the city commemorates the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII and 65th the anniversary of Warsaw Uprising.
The event has been carried out previously in three different places: the government palace of Chile called La Moneda, bombed by Pinochet on 11 September 1973; the city of Dubrovnik (Croatia), shelled on 6 December 1991 by Serbian and Montenegrin forces; and the city of Guernica (Basque Country, Spain), which suffered the first Nazi air-bombardment on 26 April 1937.
The idea behind the Bombing of Poems is to contrast terrifying acts of war designed to kill and injure civilians and destroy civic morale with the power of peace poems inspiring hope and forgiveness.
The next Bombing of Poems is due to happen in Berlin in 2010 or 2011. Anyone interested in finding out more about the event can contact Cristobal Bianchi at cristobianchi@
A video of the event can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/
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