   #copyright

Katyn massacre

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: World War II

   Mass graves at Katyn war cemetery
   Enlarge
   Mass graves at Katyn war cemetery

   The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre ( Polish:
   zbrodnia katyńska, literally 'Katyń crime'), was a mass execution of
   Polish citizens ordered by Soviet authorities in 1940. Estimates of the
   number of Polish citizens executed at three mass-murder sites in the
   spring of 1940 range from 1,803 and 14,540 to 21,857 and over 28,000 on
   the high end. About 8,000 reserve officers taken prisoner during the
   1939 invasion of Poland were killed, as were many civilians who had
   been arrested for allegedly being " intelligence agents, gendarmes,
   spies, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners and officials." Since
   Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university
   graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were thus able to
   round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, as well as the Jewish,
   Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish
   citizenship.

   The term "Katyn massacre" originally referred to the massacre, at Katyn
   Forest near the village of Gnezdovo (located 12 miles (19 km) west of
   Smolensk, Russia), of Polish military officers confined at the Kozelsk
   prisoner-of-war camp. It is applied now also to the execution of
   prisoners of war held at Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps, and political
   prisoners in West Belarus and West Ukraine, shot on Stalin's orders at
   Katyn Forest, at the NKVD (Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del)
   Smolensk headquarters and at a slaughterhouse in the same city,, as
   well as at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkiv, Moscow, and other Soviet
   cities.

   The 1943 discovery of mass graves at Katyn Forest by Germany, after its
   armed forces had occupied the site in 1941, precipitated a rupture of
   diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish
   government-in-exile in London. The Soviet Union continued to deny
   responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it acknowledged that
   the NKVD secret police had in fact committed the massacres of over
   22,000 Polish soldiers and intelligentsia and the subsequent cover-up.
   The Russian government has admitted Soviet responsibility for the
   massacres, although it does not classify them a war crime or an act of
   genocide, as this would have necessitated the prosecution of surviving
   perpetrators, which is what the Polish government has requested. Since
   "for 50 years, the Soviet Union concealed the truth" some, particularly
   in Russia, continue to believe the original Soviet explanation that it
   had been the Germans who had killed the Poles.

Preparations

   Main gate to Katyn war cemetery
   Enlarge
   Main gate to Katyn war cemetery

   On September 17, 1939 the Red Army invaded the territory of Poland from
   the east. This invasion took place while Poland had already sustained
   serious defeats in the wake of the German attack on the country that
   started on September 1, 1939; thus Soviets moved to safeguard their
   claims in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In the wake of
   the Red Army's quick advance that met little resistance, between
   250,000 and 454,700 Polish soldiers had become prisoners and were
   interned by the Soviets. About 250,000 were set free by the army almost
   on the spot, while 125,000 were delivered to the internal security
   services (the NKVD). The NKVD in turn quickly released 42,400 soldiers.
   The approximately 170,000 released were mostly soldiers of Ukrainian
   and Belorusian ethnicity serving in the Polish army. The 43,000
   soldiers born in West Poland, now under German control, were
   transferred to the Germans. By November 19, 1939, NKVD had about 40,000
   Polish POWs: about 8,500 officers and warrant officers, 6,500 police
   officers and 25,000 soldiers and NCOs who were still being held as
   POWs.

   As early as September 19, 1939, the People's Commissar for Internal
   Affairs and First Rank Commissar of State Security, Lavrenty Beria,
   ordered the NKVD to create a Directorate for Prisoners of War (or USSR
   NKVD Board for Prisoners of War and Internees, headed by State Security
   Captain Pyotr Soprunenko) to manage Polish prisoners. The NKVD took
   custody of Polish prisoners from the Red Army, and proceeded to
   organize a network of reception centers and transit camps and arrange
   rail transport to prisoner-of-war camps in the western USSR. The camps
   were located at Jukhnovo ( Babynino rail station), Yuzhe (Talitsy),
   Kozelsk, Kozelshchyna, Oranki, Ostashkov ( Stolbnyi Island on Seliger
   Lake near Ostashkov), Tyotkino rail station (56 mi/90 km from Putyvl),
   Starobielsk, Vologda ( Zaenikevo rail station) and Gryazovets.

   Kozelsk and Starobielsk were used mainly for military officers, while
   Ostashkov was used mainly for Boy Scouts, gendarmes, police officers
   and prison officers. Prisoners at these camps were not exclusively
   military officers or members of the other groups mentioned, but also
   included Polish intelligentsia. The approximate distribution of men
   throughout the camps was as follows: Kozelsk, 5,000; Ostashkov, 6,570;
   and Starobelsk, 4,000. They totalled 15,570 men.
   Contours of mass graves, fashioned from limestone tablets; symbolic
   gravestones
   Enlarge
   Contours of mass graves, fashioned from limestone tablets; symbolic
   gravestones

   Once at the camps, from October 1939 to February 1940, the Poles were
   subjected to lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation by
   NKVD officers such as Vasily Zarubin. The Poles were encouraged to
   believe they would be released, but the interviews were in effect a
   selection process to determine who would live and who would die.
   According to NKVD reports, the prisoners could not be induced to adopt
   a pro-Soviet attitude. They were declared "hardened and uncompromising
   enemies of Soviet authority."

   On March 5, 1940, pursuant to a note to Joseph Stalin from Lavrenty
   Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo — Stalin, Vyacheslav
   Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas
   Mikoyan and Beria — signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish
   "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" kept at camps and prisons in
   occupied western Ukraine and Belarus.
   Aerial photo (October 13, 1943). Center (circled): mass graves. Top:
   Smolensk-Vitebsk highway. Bottom: NKVD dacha (circled); below it,
   Dnieper River.
   Enlarge
   Aerial photo ( October 13, 1943). Centre (circled): mass graves. Top:
   Smolensk- Vitebsk highway. Bottom: NKVD dacha (circled); below it,
   Dnieper River.

Execution

   In the period from April 3 to May 19, 1940, about 22,000 prisoners were
   executed: 14,700–15,570 from the three camps and about 11,000 prisoners
   in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. A 1956 memo from KGB chief
   Alexander Shelepin to First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev confirmed
   21,257 of these killings at the following sites: Katyn–4,421,
   Starobelsk Camp–3,820, Ostashkov Camp–6,311, other places of
   detention–7,305. Those who died at Katyn included an admiral, two
   generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654
   captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 NCOs, seven chaplains, three
   landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, and 131 refugees. Also
   among the dead were 20 university professors (including Stefan
   Kaczmarz); 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and
   teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about
   200 pilots. In all, the NKVD executed almost half the Polish officer
   corps. Altogether, during the massacre the NKVD murdered 14 Polish
   generals: Leon Billewicz (ret.), Bronisław Bohatyrewicz (ret.), Xawery
   Czernicki (admiral), Stanisław Haller (ret.), Aleksander Kowalewski
   (ret.), Henryk Minkiewicz (ret.), Kazimierz Orlik-Łukoski, Konstanty
   Plisowski (ret.), Rudolf Prich (murdered in Lviv), Franciszek Sikorski
   (ret.), Leonard Skierski (ret.), Piotr Skuratowicz, Mieczysław
   Smorawiński and Alojzy Wir-Konas (promoted posthumously). A mere 395
   prisoners were saved from the slaughter, among them Stanisław
   Swianiewicz. They were taken to the Yukhnov camp and then down to
   Gryazovets. They were the only ones who escaped death.
   Aerial photo of mass graves during April 1943 German exhumations.
   Enlarge
   Aerial photo of mass graves during April 1943 German exhumations.

   Up to 99% of the remaining prisoners were subsequently murdered. People
   from Kozelsk were murdered in the usual mass murder site of Smolensk
   country, called Katyn forest; people from Starobielsk were murdered in
   the inner NKVD prison of Kharkov and the bodies were buried near
   Pyatikhatki; and police officers from Ostashkov were murdered in the
   inner NKVD prison of Kalinin (Tver) and buried in Miednoje (Mednoye).
   Polish currency and military insignia from the mass graves.
   Enlarge
   Polish currency and military insignia from the mass graves.

   Detailed information on the executions in the Kalinin NKVD prison was
   given during the hearing by Dmitrii S. Tokarev, former head of the
   Board of the District NKVD in Kalinin. According to Tokarev, the
   shooting started in the evening and ended at dawn. The first transport
   on April 4, 1940, carried 390 people, and the executioners had a hard
   time killing so many people during one night. The following transports
   were no greater than 250 people. The executions were usually performed
   with German-made Walther-type pistols supplied by Moscow.

   The killings were methodical. After the condemned's personal
   information was checked, he was handcuffed and led to a cell insulated
   with a felt-lined door. The sounds of the murderers were also masked by
   the operation of loud machines (perhaps fans) throughout the night.
   After being taken into the cell, the victim was immediately shot in the
   back of the head. His body was then taken out through the opposite door
   and laid in one of the five or six waiting trucks, whereupon the next
   condemned was taken inside. The procedure went on every night, except
   for the May Day holiday. Near Smolensk, the Poles, with their hands
   tied behind their backs, were led to the graves and shot in the neck.

   After the execution was carried out, there were still more than 22,000
   of the former Polish soldiers in NKVD labor camps. According to Beria's
   report, by November 2, 1940 his department had 2 generals, 39
   lieutenant-colonels and colonels, 222 captains and majors, 691
   lieutenants, 4022 warrant officers and NCOs and 13,321 enlisted men
   captured during the Polish campaign. Plus 3,300 Polish soldiers were
   captured during the annexation of Lithuania, where they were kept
   interned since September 1939.

Discovery

   The question of the Polish prisoners' fate was first raised soon after
   the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, when the Polish
   government-in-exile and the Soviet government signed the
   Sikorski-Mayski Agreement in which they agreed to cooperate against
   Germany, and so that a Polish army on Soviet territory was to be
   formed. When the Polish general Władysław Anders began organizing this
   army, he requested information about the Polish officers. During a
   personal meeting Stalin assured him and Władysław Sikorski, the Prime
   Minister of the Polish government-in-exile, that all the Poles had been
   freed, and the fact that not all can be accounted is due to the fact
   that the Soviets "lost track" of them in Manchuria.

   The fate of the missing prisoners remained unknown until April 1943
   when the German Wehrmacht discovered the mass grave of more than 4,000
   Polish military reserve officers in the forest on Goat Hill near Katyn.
   Joseph Goebbels saw this discovery as an excellent tool to drive a
   wedge between Poland, Western Allies, and the Soviet Union. On April 13
   Berlin Radio broadcast to the world that the German military forces in
   the Katyn forest near Smolensk had uncovered "a ditch ... 28 metres
   long and 16 metres wide [92 ft by 52 ft], in which the bodies of 3,000
   Polish officers were piled up in 12 layers." The broadcast went on to
   charge the Soviets with carrying out the massacre in 1940.

   The Germans assembled and brought in a European commission consisting
   of twelve forensic experts and their staffs. With the exception of a
   Swiss from the University of Geneva, all were from lands then occupied
   by Germany. After the war, all of the experts, save for a Bulgarian and
   a Czech, reaffirmed their 1943 finding of Soviet guilt.

   The Katyn Massacre was beneficial to Nazi Germany, which it used to
   discredit the Soviet Union. Goebbels wrote in his diary on April 14,
   1943: "We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers,
   murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We
   sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where
   they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome.
   The Fuehrer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news
   item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest
   possible use of the propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it
   for a couple weeks" The Germans had succeeded in discrediting the
   Soviet Government in the eyes of the world and briefly raised the
   spectre of a communist monster rampaging across the territories of
   Western civilization; moreover they had forged the unwilling General
   Sikorski into a tool which could threaten to unravel the alliance
   between the Western Allies and Soviet Union.

   The Soviet government immediately denied the German charges and claimed
   that the Polish prisoners of war had been engaged in construction work
   west of Smolensk and consequently were captured and executed by
   invading German units in August 1941. The Soviet response on April 15
   to the German initial broadcast of April 13, prepared by the Soviet
   Information Bureau stated that "[...]Polish prisoners-of-war who in
   1941 were engaged in country construction work west of Smolensk and who
   [...] fell into the hands of the German-Fascist hangmen [...]."

   The Allies were aware that the Nazis had found a mass grave as the
   discovery transpired, via radio transmissions intercepted and decrypted
   by Bletchley Park. Germans and the international commission, which was
   invited by Germany, investigated the Katyn corpses and soon produced
   physical evidence that the massacre took place in early 1940, at a time
   when the area was still under Soviet control.
   Graves of Generals Bronisław Bohatyrewicz (right) and Mieczysław
   Smorawiński, victims of the massacres
   Enlarge
   Graves of Generals Bronisław Bohatyrewicz (right) and Mieczysław
   Smorawiński, victims of the massacres

   In April 1943, when the Polish government in exile insisted on bringing
   this matter to the negotiation table with Soviets and on an
   investigation by the International Red Cross, Stalin accused the Polish
   government in exile of collaborating with Nazi Germany, broke
   diplomatic relations with it, and started a campaign to get the Western
   Allies to recognize the alternative Polish pro-Soviet government in
   Moscow led by Wanda Wasilewska. Sikorski, whose uncompromising stance
   on that issue was beginning to create a rift between the Western Allies
   and the Soviet Union, died suddenly two months later. The cause of his
   death is still disputed.

Actions taken by the Soviet Union

   When in September 1943 Goebbels was informed that the German Army had
   to withdraw from the Katyn area, he entered a prediction in his diary.
   His entry for September 29, 1943 reads: "Unfortunately we have had to
   give up Katyn. The Bolsheviks undoubtedly will soon 'find' that we shot
   12,000 Polish officers. That episode is one that is going to cause us
   quite a little trouble in the future. The Soviets are undoubtedly going
   to make it their business to discover as many mass graves as possible
   and then blame it on us."

   Indeed, having retaken the Katyn area almost immediately after the Red
   Army had recaptured Smolensk, the Soviet Union, led by the NKVD, began
   a cover-up. A cemetery the Germans had permitted the Polish Red Cross
   to build was destroyed and other evidence removed. In January 1944, the
   Soviet Union sent the "Special Commission for Determination and
   Investigation of the Shooting of Polish Prisoners of War by
   German-Fascist Invaders in Katyn Forest," (U.S.S.R. Spetsial'naya
   Kommissiya po Ustanovleniyu i Rassledovaniyu Obstoyatel'stv Rasstrela
   Nemetsko-Fashistskimi Zakhvatchikami v Katynskom Lesu) to investigate
   the incidents again. The so-called "Burdenko Commission", headed by
   Nikolai Burdenko, the President of the Academy of Medical Sciences of
   the USSR, exhumed the bodies again and reached the conclusion that the
   shooting was done in 1941, when the Katyn area was under German
   occupation. No foreign personnel, including the Polish communists, were
   allowed to join the Burdenko Commission, whereas the Nazi German
   investigation had allowed wider access to both international press and
   organizations (like the Red Cross) and even used Polish workers, like
   Józef Mackiewicz.

Response to the massacre by the Western Allies

   The Western Allies had an implicit, if unwilling, hand in the cover-up
   in their endeavour not to antagonise a then ally, the Soviet Union. The
   resulting Polish-Soviet crisis was beginning to threaten the vital
   alliance with the Soviet Union at a time when the Poles' importance to
   the Allies, essential in the first years of the war, was beginning to
   fade due to the entry into the conflict of the military and industrial
   giants, the Soviet Union and the United States. In retrospective review
   of records, it is clear that both British Prime Minister Winston
   Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt were increasingly
   torn between their commitments to their Polish ally, the uncompromising
   stance of Sikorski and the demands by Stalin and his diplomats.
   The picture of exhumations of Polish dead at Katyn Forest (1943) was
   distributed by the Nazi German Ministry of propaganda.
   Enlarge
   The picture of exhumations of Polish dead at Katyn Forest (1943) was
   distributed by the Nazi German Ministry of propaganda.

   In private, Churchill agreed that the atrocity was likely carried out
   by the Soviets. According to the note taken by Count Raczyński,
   Churchill admitted on April 15 during a conversation with General
   Sikorski: "Alas, the German revelations are probably true. The
   Bolsheviks can be very cruel." However at the same time, on April 24
   Churchill assured the Soviets: "We shall certainly oppose vigorously
   any 'investigation' by the International Red Cross or any other body in
   any territory under German authority. Such investigation would be a
   fraud and its conclusions reached by terrorism." Unofficial or
   classified UK documents concluded that Soviet guilt was a "near
   certainty", but the alliance with the Soviets was deemed to be more
   important than moral issues, thus official version supported the Soviet
   version, up to censoring the contradictory accounts. Churchill's own
   post-war account of the Katyn affair is laconic. In his memoirs, he
   quotes the 1944 Soviet inquiry into the massacre, which predictably
   proved that the Germans had committed the crime, and adds, "belief
   seems an act of faith."
   Katyn memorial in Baltimore
   Enlarge
   Katyn memorial in Baltimore

   In the United States, a similar line was taken notwithstanding that two
   official intelligence reports into Katyn massacre were produced that
   contradicted the official position.

   In 1944 Roosevelt assigned Army Captain George Earle, his special
   emissary to the Balkans, to compile information on Katyn which he did
   using contacts in Bulgaria and Romania. He concluded that the Soviet
   Union committed the massacre. After consulting with Elmer Davis, the
   director of the Office of War Information, Roosevelt rejected that
   conclusion, saying that he was convinced of Nazi Germany's
   responsibility, and ordered Earle's report suppressed. When Earle
   formally requested permission to publish his findings, the President
   gave him a written order to desist. Earle was reassigned and spent the
   rest of the war in American Samoa.
   Largest of the Katyn mass graves
   Enlarge
   Largest of the Katyn mass graves

   A further report in 1945 supporting the same conclusion was produced
   and stifled. In 1943 two US POWs – Lt. Col. Donald B. Stewart and Col.
   John H. Van Vliet – had been taken by Nazi Germans to Katyn in 1943 for
   an international news conference. Later, in 1945, Van Vliet wrote a
   report concluding that the Soviets, not the Germans, were responsible.
   He gave the report to Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, Gen. George Marshall's
   assistant chief of staff for intelligence, who destroyed it. During the
   1951–1952 investigation Bissell defended his action before Congress,
   contending that it was not in the US interest to embarrass an ally
   whose forces were still needed to defeat Japan.

Trials

   From December 29, 1945 to January 5, 1946, ten officers of the German
   Wehrmacht – Karl Hermann Strüffling, Heinrich Remmlinger, Ernst Böhm,
   Eduard Sonnenfeld, Herbard Janike, Erwin Skotki, Ernst Geherer, Erich
   Paul Vogel, Franz Wiese, and Arno Dürer – were tried by a Soviet
   military court in Leningrad. They were falsely charged for an alleged
   role in the Katyn massacre. The first seven officers were sentenced to
   death and executed by public hanging on the same day. The other three
   were sentenced to hard labor, Vogel and Wiese to 20 year terms each and
   Dürer to 15 years. Dürer is said to have pleaded guilty at the trial
   and to have returned to Germany later, the fate of the others sentenced
   to hard labor remains unknown.^( dubious—see talk page)

   In 1946, the chief Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Roman A.
   Rudenko, tried to indict Germany for the Katyn killings, stating that
   "one of the most important criminal acts for which the major war
   criminals are responsible was the mass execution of Polish prisoners of
   war shot in the Katyn forest near Smolensk by the German fascist
   invaders", but dropped the matter after the United States and United
   Kingdom refused to support it and German lawyers mounted an
   embarrassing defense.

   More specifically, presented by the Soviet charge the Burdenko report,
   in spite of the reservesof the Anglo-Saxons, was accepted on grounds of
   the article 21 and coded as URSS-54. The German White Book of 1943 was
   accepted on grounds of the article 19 with, as had underlined it the
   president of the court, a potential convincing value; the course of the
   debates would make this adjective pointless. The intransigence of the
   Soviets to reveal Katyn in the bill of indictment was driven by the
   final objective: to quote it in the verdict. To this end, summoning of
   some witnesses was refused.

   However, the problem to be addressed by the court was not to allot the
   responsibility for the massacre to Germany or the Soviet Union, but to
   attribute the crime to at least one of the twenty four dignitaries of
   the nazi state. The task of the charge was thus to establish a link
   between the reproached acts and the defendants. On hearings, however,
   the Soviet prosecutor proved to be unable to name the person in charge
   for the execution of the massacre, as well as the supposed guilty among
   the defendants.

   In spite of this bankruptcy of the charge, Nikitchenko tried to make
   pass in force the Soviet point of view and did not hesitate to claim
   the inadequacy of the statutes of the court. This failed and the name
   of Katyn did not appear in the verdict.

Perception of the massacre in the Cold War

   In 1951–52, in the background of the Korean War, a U.S. Congressional
   investigation chaired by Rep. Ray J. Madden and known as the Madden
   Committee investigated the Katyn massacre. It charged that the Poles
   had been killed by the Soviets and recommended that the Soviets be
   tried before the International World Court of Justice. The committee
   was however less conclusive on the issue of alleged American cover up.

   The question of responsibility remained controversial in the West as
   well as behind the Iron Curtain. For example, in the United Kingdom in
   the late 1970s, plans for a memorial to the victims bearing the date
   1940 (rather than 1941) were condemned as provocative in the political
   climate of the Cold War.

   It has been sometimes speculated that the choice made in 1969 for the
   location of the BSSR's war memorial at the former Belarusian village
   named Khatyn, a site of a 1943 Nazi massacre in which the entire
   village with its whole population was burned, have been made to cause
   confusion with Katyn. The two names are similar or identical in many
   languages.

   In Poland Communist authorities covered up the matter in concord with
   Soviet propaganda, deliberately censoring any sources that might shed
   some light on the Soviet crime. Katyn was a forbidden topic in postwar
   Poland. Not only did government censorship suppress all references to
   it, but even mentioning the atrocity was dangerous. Katyn became erased
   from Poland's official history, but it could not be erased from
   historical memory. In 1981, Polish trade union Solidarity erected a
   memorial with the simple inscription "Katyn, 1940" but it was
   confiscated by the police, to be replaced with an official monument "To
   the Polish soldiers – victims of Hitlerite fascism – reposing in the
   soil of Katyn". Nevertheless, every year on Zaduszki, similar memorial
   crosses were erected at Powązki cemetery and numerous other places in
   Poland, only to be dismantled by the police overnight. The Katyn
   subject remained a political taboo in Poland until the fall of the
   Eastern bloc in 1989.

Revelations

   From the late 1980s, pressure was put not only on the Polish
   government, but on the Soviet one as well. Polish academics tried to
   include Katyn in the agenda of the 1987 joint Polish-Soviet commission
   to investigate censored episodes of the Polish-Russian history. In 1989
   Soviet scholars revealed that Joseph Stalin had indeed ordered the
   massacre, and in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the NKVD had
   executed the Poles and confirmed two other burial sites similar to the
   site at Katyn: Mednoje and Pyatikhatki.
   Monument to the fallen at Katyń at Katowice, Poland. Inscription:
   Katyn, Kharkov, Miednoje and other places of death on the territory of
   former USSR, 1940.
   Enlarge
   Monument to the fallen at Katyń at Katowice, Poland. Inscription:
   Katyn, Kharkov, Miednoje and other places of death on the territory of
   former USSR, 1940.

   On 30 October 1989, Gorbachev allowed a delegation of several hundred
   Poles, organized by a Polish association named Families of Katyń
   Victims, to visit the Katyn memorial. This group included former U.S.
   national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. A mass was held and
   banners hailing the Solidarity movement were laid. One mourner affixed
   a sign reading "NKVD" on the memorial, covering the word "Nazis" in the
   inscription such that it read "In memory of Polish officers murdered by
   the NKVD in 1941." Several visitors scaled the fence of a nearby KGB
   compound and left burning candles on the grounds. Brzezinski commented
   that:

          "It isn't a personal pain which has brought me here, as is the
          case in the majority of these people, but rather recognition of
          the symbolic nature of Katyń. Russians and Poles, tortured to
          death, lie here together. It seems very important to me that the
          truth should be spoken about what took place, for only with the
          truth can the new Soviet leadership distance itself from the
          crimes of Stalin and the NKVD. Only the truth can serve as the
          basis of true friendship between the Soviet and the Polish
          peoples. The truth will make a path for itself. I am convinced
          of this by the very fact that I was able to travel here."

   Brzezinski further stated that "The fact that the Soviet government has
   enabled me to be here – and the Soviets know my views – is symbolic of
   the breach with Stalinism that perestroika represents." His remarks
   were given extensive coverage on Soviet television. At the ceremony he
   placed a bouquet of red roses bearing a handwritten message penned in
   both Polish and English: "For the victims of Stalin and the NKVD.
   Zbigniew Brzezinski."
   Katyn cross in Kraków
   Enlarge
   Katyn cross in Kraków

   On 13 April 1990, the forty-seventh anniversary of the discovery of the
   mass graves, the USSR formally expressed "profound regret" and admitted
   Soviet secret police responsibility. That day is also an International
   Day of Katyn Victims Memorial (Światowy Dzień Pamięci Ofiar Katynia).

   After Poles and Americans discovered further evidence in 1991 and 1992,
   Russian President Boris Yeltsin released and transferred to the new
   Polish president, former Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa, top-secret
   documents from the sealed package no. 1. Among the documents included
   Lavrenty Beria's March 1940 proposal to shoot 25,700 Poles from
   Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobels camps, and from certain prisons of
   Western Ukraine and Belarus with the signature of Stalin (among
   others); an excerpt from the Politburo shooting order of March 5 1940;
   and Aleksandr Shelepin's March 3, 1959 note to Nikita Khrushchev, with
   information about the execution of 21,857 Poles and with the proposal
   to destroy their personal files.
   Russian President Boris Yeltsin visiting Warsaw Powązki cemetery's
   monument of Katyn's victims crime in 1993. Enlarge
   Russian President Boris Yeltsin visiting Warsaw Powązki cemetery's
   monument of Katyn's victims crime in 1993.

   The investigations that indicted the German state rather than the
   Soviet state for the killings are sometimes used to impeach the
   Nuremberg Trials in their entirety, often in support of Holocaust
   denial, or to question the legitimacy and/or wisdom of using the
   criminal law to prohibit Holocaust denial. Still, there are some who
   deny Soviet guilt, call the released documents fakes, and try to prove
   that Poles were shot by Germans in 1941.

   On the opposing sides there are allegations that the massacre was part
   of wider action coordinated by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, or that
   Germans at least knew of Katyn beforehand. The reason for these
   allegations is that Soviet Union and Nazi Germany added on 28
   September, a secret supplementary protocol to the German-Soviet
   Boundary and Friendship Treaty, in which they stated that Both parties
   will tolerate in their territories no Polish agitation which affects
   the territories of the other party. They will suppress in their
   territories all beginnings of such agitation and inform each other
   concerning suitable measures for this purpose, after which in 1939–1940
   a series of conferences by NKVD and Gestapo were organised in the town
   of Zakopane. The aim of these conferences was to coordinate the killing
   and the deportation policy and exchange experience. A University of
   Cambridge professor of history George Watson believes that the fate of
   Polish prisoners was discussed at the conference. This theory surfaces
   in Polish media, where it is also pointed out that similar massacre of
   Polish elites ( AB-Aktion) were taking place in the exact time and with
   similar methods in German occupied Poland.

   In June 1998, Yeltsin and Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski
   agreed to construct memorial complexes at Katyn and Mednoye, the two
   NKVD execution sites on Russian soil. However in September that year
   Russians also raised the issue of Soviet POWs death in the Camps for
   Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919-1924). About
   15,000–20,000 POWs died in those camps due to epidemic (especially
   Spanish flu), however some Russian officials argued that it was 'a
   genocide comparable to Katyń'. Similar claim was raised in 1994; such
   attempts are seen by some, particulary in Poland, as a highly
   provocative Russian attempt to create an 'anti-Katyn' and 'balance the
   historical equation'.

   During Kwaśniewski's visit to Russia in September 2004, Russian
   officials announced that they are willing to transfer all the
   information on the Katyn Massacre to the Polish authorities as soon as
   it is declassified. In March 2005 Russian authorities ended the
   decade-long investigation with no one charged. Russian Chief Military
   Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov put the final Katyn death toll at 14,540
   and declared that the massacre was not a genocide – a war crime – or a
   crime against humanity but a military crime for which the 50-year term
   of limitation has expired and that consequently there is absolutely no
   basis to talk about this in judicial terms. Despite earlier
   declarations, President Vladimir Putin's government refused to allow
   Polish investigators to travel to Moscow in late 2004 and 116 out of
   183 volumes of files gathered during the Russian investigation, as well
   as the decision to put an end to it, were classified.

   Because of that, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance has
   decided to open its own investigation. Prosecution team head Leon
   Kieres said they would try to identify those involved in ordering and
   carrying out the killings. In addition, on March 22, 2005 the Polish
   Sejm unanimously passed an act, requesting the Russian archives to be
   declassified. The Sejm also requested Russia to classify the Katyn
   massacre as genocide: "On the 65th anniversary of the Katyn murder the
   Senate pays tribute to the murdered, best sons of the homeland and
   those who fought for the truth about the murder to come to light, also
   the Russians who fought for the truth, despite harassment and
   persecution" – the resolution said. The resolution stressed that the
   authorities of Russia "seek to diminish the burden of this crime by
   refusing to acknowledge it was genocide and refuse to give access to
   the records of the investigation into the issue, making it difficult to
   determine the whole truth about the murder and its perpetrators."

   Russia and Poland remained divided on the legal qualification of the
   Katyn crime, with the Poles considering it a case of genocide and
   demanding further investigations, as well as complete disclosure of
   Soviet documents.

Katyn in fiction

   The Katyn massacre is a major plot element in many works of fiction,
   for example, in the W.E.B. Griffin novel The Lieutenants which is part
   of the Brotherhood of War series, as well as in the novel and film
   Enigma. Polish poet Jacek Kaczmarski has dedicated one of his sung
   poems to this event. The award-winning Polish film director Andrzej
   Wajda begun work on a film depicting the event in 2006, the production
   title of which is "Post-Mortem: The Katyn story". The film will recount
   the fate of some of the women - mothers, wives and daughters - of the
   Polish officers slaughtered by the Soviets. Some Katyn Forest scenes
   will be re-enacted. The screenplay is based on Andrzej Mularczyk's book
   of the same title. The film is produced by Akson Studio, and planned
   for release in the Autumn of 2007.

Original documents

   Original documents related to the Katyn massacre:

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
