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Katyn massacre

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This article is about the 1940 massacre of Polish officers. For the 1943 massacre of the Belarusian village, see [[:Khatyn massacre.]]
File:KatynPL-mogily.jpg
Mass graves at Katyn war cemetery.

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest Massacre and the Katyn Incident (Template:Lang-pl), was a mass execution of Polish citizens by the order of Soviet authorities in 1940.[1] Estimates of the number of Polish citizens executed at three mass-murder sites in the spring of 1940 range from some 1803 [2] through 14,540[3][4],and through 21,857 [1] to 27,700.[5] Most of those killed were reserve officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Polish September Campaign, but the dead also included many civilians who had been arrested for being "intelligence agents and gendarmes, spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners and officials".[6] Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer,[7] the Soviets were thus able to round up much of the Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian and Belarusian intelligentsias of Polish citizenship.

The term "Katyn massacre" originally referred to the massacre, at Katyn Forest, near the village of Gnezdovo, near Smolensk, Russia, of Polish military officers confined at the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp. The term subsequently came to be applied also to the execution of prisoners of war held at Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps,[4] and political prisoners in West Belarus and West Ukraine,[5] shot on Stalin's orders at Katyn Forest, at the NKVD (Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del) Smolensk headquarters and at an abattoir in that same city,[1] and at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkiv, Moscow and other Soviet cities.[6]

The 1943 discovery of mass graves at Katyn Forest by Germany, after its armed forces had occupied the site in 1941, precipitated a 1943 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 had in fact committed the massacres and the subsequent cover-up.[8] The Russian government has admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres. It does not call them a war crime or an act of genocide, which would have necessitated the prosecution of surviving perpetrators.[3] Some Russians continue to believe the original explanation that was maintained by the Soviet government until 1989, that it had been the Germans who had killed the Poles after invading the Soviet Union in mid-1941.[1]

Preparations

Main gate to Katyn war cemetery.

Between 250,000 [9]and 454,700 [10] Polish soldiers had become prisoners and were interned by the Soviets, following their invasion of Poland, on September 17, 1939, three weeks after Germany and the Soviet Union had signed the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.[11] This was a little over two weeks after the initial invasion of Poland, by Germany, on September 1, 1939.

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[1] (or USSR NKVD Board for Prisoners of War and Internees, headed by State Security Captain Pyotr K. Soprunenko[12]) 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 transfer 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 (90 km from Putyvl), Starobielsk, Vologda (Zaenikevo rail station) and Gryazovets.[12]

Kozelsk and Starobielsk were used mainly for military officers, while Ostashkov was used mainly for boy scouts, gendarmes, police officers and prison officers. Contrary to a widespread misconception, prisoners at these camps were not exclusively military officers (and the above groups) but also included Polish intelligentsia. The approximate distribution of men at the camps was as follows: Kozelsk, 5,000; Ostashkov, 6,570; and Starobelsk, 4,000. They totalled 15,570 men.[4]

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,[13] but the interviews were in effect a selection process to determine who would live and who would die.[1] According to NKVD reports, the prisoners could not be induced to adopt a pro-Soviet attitude.[4] They were declared "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority."[1]

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, and Beria — signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus.[5]

File:Katyn-ZdjLotn1.jpg
Aerial photo (October 13, 1943). Center (circled): mass graves. Top: Smolensk-Vitebsk highway. Bottom: NKVD dacha (circled); below it, Dnieper River.

The crime

In the period from April 3 to May 19 1940 about 22,000 prisoners were executed: 14,700[5]-15,570[4] from the three camps and about 11,000[5] 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.[14] 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 eliminated almost half the Polish officer corps.[1] Altogether, during the massacre the NKVD murdered 14 Polish generals:[15] 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 Lwów), 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,[6] among them Stanisław Swianiewicz.[1] They were taken to the Yukhnov camp and then to Gryazovets. They were the only ones who escaped death.

File:Katyn-ZdjLotn2.jpg
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).

File:Katyn2.gif
Polish currency and military insignia from the mass graves.

Detailed information on the executions in 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.[16]

The killings were methodical. After the condemned's personal information was checked, he was then 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.[citation needed] Near Smolensk, the Poles, with their hands tied behind their backs, were led to the graves and shot in the neck.

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 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, though some of them may have escaped to Manchuria for example.[17]

File:Les mrtvych v Katyne.jpg
German poster depicting executions of Polish military officers by the Soviets, with caption in Slovak: "Forest of the dead at Katyn."

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. Dr. 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, in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in 12 layers".[18] The broadcast went on to charge the Soviets with carrying out the massacre in 1940.

The Katyn Massacre was beneficial to Nazi Germany, which used it to discredit the Soviet Union. Dr. 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"[19] 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 civilisation; 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 construction work west of Smolensk and who [...] fell into the hands of the German-Fascist hangmen[...]".[4]

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.[20]

File:KatynPL-grobyBS.jpg
Graves of Generals Bronisław Bohatyrewicz 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[21][20], Stalin accused the Polish government in exile of collaborating with Nazi Germany, broke diplomatic relations with it,[22] and started a campaign to get the Western Allies to recognize the alternative Polish pro-Soviet government in Moscow led by Wanda Wasilewska.[23] 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.[24][25]

Cover-up

Actions Taken By the Soviet Union

Official papers concerning the mass murder in Katyn. Berlin, 1943

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.".[19]

Indeed, having retaken the Katyn area almost immediately after the Red Army had recaptured Smolensk, Soviet Union, led by the MKVD, began a cover-up. A cemetery the Germans had permitted the Polish Red Cross to build was destroyed and other evidence removed.[1] In January 1944, the Soviet Union sent the "Special Commission for Determination and Investigation of the Shooting of Polish Prizoners 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)[4] 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.[1] [4], 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[26].

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 US 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.

File:Katyn.jpg
German exhumations of Polish dead at Katyn Forest (1943).

In private, British Prime Minister Winston 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."[27]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."[28] Unofficial or classified UK documents concluded that Soviet guilt was a "near certainty", but alliance with the Soviet was deemed to be more important than moral issues, thus official version supported the Soviet version, up to censoring the contradictory accounts.[20]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."[29]

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Katyn memorial in Baltimore

In America, 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.[1]

File:Katyn3.jpg
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.[30] 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[31] . During the 1951–52 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.[1]

Nuremberg Trials

In November 1945, seven officers of the German Wehrmacht, K.H. Strueffling, H. Remlinger, E. Böhom, E. Sommerfeld, H. Jannike, E. Skotki and E. Geherer were tried by a Soviet court. They were falsely charged and condemned to death for their role in the Katyn massacre and were subsequently hanged. Three more were tried on the same charges; E.P. Vogel, F. Wiese, A. Diere. They received sentences of 20 years of hard labor, were turned over to the Soviets and never heard from again.[32][dubious – discuss]

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",[33] but dropped the matter after the United States and the United Kingdom refused to support it and German lawyers mounted an embarrassing defense.[1][34]

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[1] 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.[30]

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.

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 the censorship suppressed 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 feast 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 communism in 1989. [1]

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[1].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[35] and confirmed two other burial sites similar to the site at Katyn: Mednoje and Pyatikhatki.

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.[36] 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."[37]

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."[38] 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."[39]

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.[40] 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[41] [1]. Among the documents included Lavrenty Beria's March 1940 proposal[42] 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 [5] of March 5 1940; and Aleksandr Shelepin's March 3 1959 note[43] to Nikita Khrushchev, with information about the execution of 21,857 Poles and with the proposal to destroy their personal files.

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[44] [45].

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 the Katyn beforehand. The reason for these allegations is that Soviet Union and Nazi Germany added on 28th of September, a secret supplementary protocol[46] 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 [47] and exchange experience. A University of Cambridge professor of history George Watson believes that the fate of Polish prisoners was discussed at the conference[48]. This theory surfaces in Polish media[49], where it is also points out that similar massacre of Polish elites (AB-Aktion) was taking place in the exact time and with similar methods in German occupied Poland.

In June 1998, Yeltsin and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski 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'.[1]

During Polish president Aleksander 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[50]. 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. [3] [3] [35] Despite earlier declarations, President Vladimir Putin's government refused to allow Polish investigators to travel to Moscow in late 2004[51] 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[3] [52] [53].

Because of that, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance has decided to open its own investigation[6] [35] [3]. 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[54]. 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 the Russian Federation "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." [55]

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, and the Russians rejecting that view and considering the matter closed.[56] [55]

Miscellaneous

The massacre is featured in Robert Harris' WWII thriller Enigma.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999-2000, last accessed on 10 December, 2005
  2. ^ BBC International Reports (Former Soviet Union) March 11, 2005 http://www.aiipowmia.com/inter25/in130305katyn.html
  3. ^ a b c d e Mosnews story: Katyn Massacre Was Not Genocide — Russian Military Prosecutor, 11.03.2005 online
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Zawodny, Janusz K., Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre, University of Notre Dame Press, 1962, ISBN 0268008493 partial html online
  5. ^ a b c d e f (or more) Excerpt from the minutes No. 13 of the Politburo of the Central Committee meeting, shooting order of March 5, 1940 online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, original in Russian with English translation
  6. ^ a b c d Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre, Małgorzata Kużniar-Plota, Departamental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, Warsaw 30 November 2004, online (also see the press release online), last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  7. ^ "ustawa z dnia 9 kwietnia 1938 r. o powszechnym obowiązku wojskowym (Act of April 9, 1938, on Compulsory Military Duty)". Dziennik Ustaw. 25 (220). 1938.
  8. ^ BBC News story : Russia to release massacre files, December 16, 2004 online
  9. ^ Молотов на V сессии Верховного Совета 31 октября цифра «примерно 250 тыс.»
  10. ^ Отчёт Украинского и Белорусского фронтов Красной Армии Мельтюхов, с. 367. http://www.usatruth.by.ru/c2.files/t05.html
  11. ^ Encyklopedia PWN 'KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939', last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
  12. ^ a b "The grave unknown elsewhere or any time before ... Katyń - Kharkov - Mednoe", last retrieved on 10 December 2005. Article includes a note that it is based on a special edition of a ""Historic Reference-Book for the Pilgrims to Katyń - Kharkow - Mednoe" by Jędrzej Tucholski
  13. ^ "The Katyn Diary of Leon Gladun", last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document. See entries on 25th Decembert, 1939 and 3rd April, 1940.
  14. ^ "Noncombatant Deaths in WW II", the Holocaust History Project, last accessed on 19 December 2005
  15. ^ Andrzej Leszek Szcześniak, ed. (1989). Katyń; lista ofiar i zaginionych jeńców obozów Kozielsk, Ostaszków, Starobielsk. Warsaw, Alfa. p. 366. ISBN 8370012949., Adam Moszyński, ed. (1989). Lista katyńska; jeńcy obozów Kozielsk, Ostaszków, Starobielsk i zaginieni w Rosji Sowieckiej. Warsaw, Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne. p. 336. ISBN 8385028811., Jędrzej Tucholski (1991). Mord w Katyniu; Kozielsk, Ostaszków, Starobielsk: lista ofiar. Warsaw, Pax. p. 987. ISBN 8321114083., Kazimierz Banaszek (2000). Kawalerowie Orderu Virtuti Militari w mogiłach katyńskich. Wanda Krystyna Roman, Zdzisław Sawicki. Warsaw, Chapter of the Virtuti Militari War Medal & RYTM. p. 351. ISBN 838789379X., Maria Skrzyńska-Pławińska, ed. (1995). Rozstrzelani w Katyniu; alfabetyczny spis 4410 jeńców polskich z Kozielska rozstrzelanych w kwietniu-maju 1940, według źródeł sowieckich, polskich i niemieckich. Stanisław Maria Jankowski. Warsaw, Karta. p. 286. ISBN 8386713119., Maria Skrzyńska-Pławińska, ed. (1996). Rozstrzelani w Charkowie; alfabetyczny spis 3739 jeńców polskich ze Starobielska rozstrzelanych w kwietniu-maju 1940, według źródeł sowieckich i polskich. Ileana Porytskaya. Warsaw, Karta. p. 245. ISBN 8386713127., Maria Skrzyńska-Pławińska, ed. (1997). Rozstrzelani w Twerze; alfabetyczny spis 6314 jeńców polskich z Ostaszkowa rozstrzelanych w kwietniu-maju 1940 i pogrzebanych w Miednoje, według źródeł sowieckich i polskich. Ileana Porytskaya. Warsaw, Karta. p. 344. ISBN 8386713186.
  16. ^ Dmitri Stepanovich Tokariev (1994). Zeznanie Tokariewa. Anatoliy Ablokov, Fryderyk Zbiniewicz. Zeszyty Katyńskie 1426-4064 nr 3: Warsaw, Niezależny Komitet Historyczny Badania Zbrodni Katyńskiej. p. 71.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link), also in Aleksander Gieysztor, Rudolf Germanovich Pikhoya, ed. (1995). Katyń; dokumenty zbrodni. Wojciech Materski, Aleksandra Belerska. Warsaw, Trio. pp. 547 + 567. ISBN 8385660623 + ISBN 8386643803..
  17. ^ Brackman, Roman, The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life, 2001, ISBN 0714650501. Google Books link to page
  18. ^ Engel, David, Facing a Holocaust: The Polish Government-In-Exile and the Jews, 1943-1945, 1993, ISBN 0807820695. Google Books page view
  19. ^ a b Goebbels, Joseph. The Goebbels Diaries (1942-1943). Translated by Louis P. Lochner. Doubleday & Company. 1948
  20. ^ a b c Norman Davies, "Europe: A History", HarperCollins, 1998, ISBN 0060974680, Google Book page view
  21. ^ , The Polish Government official statement on òApril 17, 1943, published in London on April 18online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  22. ^ Soviet Note of April 25, 1943, severing unilaterally Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  23. ^ Martin Dean, "Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44", Palgrave, 1999, ISBN 0312220561 Google Book page view
  24. ^ Paczkowski, Andrzej, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, 2003, ISBN 0271023082. Google Books link to page
  25. ^ Kubit, Jozef Kazimierz, Was General Sikorski a victim of the Katyn massacre?, Polish News
  26. ^ online "I saw it with my own eyes...", last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  27. ^ David Carlton, "Churchill and the Soviet Union ", Manchester University Press, 2000, ISBN 0719041074Google Books page online
  28. ^ Michael Fowler. "Winston S. Churchill. Philosopher and statesman". University Press of America. 1985. ISBN 0819144169[1]
  29. ^ Churchill, Winston, The Hinge of Fate, 1986 (1950), ISBN 0395410584. Google Book Search page view
  30. ^ a b National Archives and Records Administration, documents related to Committee to Investigate and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre (1951-52) online, last accessed on 23 December, 2005. Also, Select Committee of the US Congress final report: "The Katyn Forest Massacre," House Report No. 2505, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session (December 22. 1952) online pdf, unofficial reproduction of the relevant parts.
  31. ^ Van Vliet Report (reconstructed and discussion of), last accessed on 19 December 2005
  32. ^ Montréal Gazette, Canada, November 5, 1990, "Germans Hanged for Katyn" online reproduction and Letter published in Anzeiger der Notverwaltung des Deutschen Ostens, No.5, Sept./Oct. 2005, last accessed on 10 December, 2005
  33. ^ Excerpts of Nuremberg archieves: Nikzor.org - Fifty-Ninth Day: Thursday, 14th February 1946 (Part 7 of 15), Codoh.com KATYN: How the Soviets Manufactured War Crime Documents for the Nuremberg Court, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  34. ^ Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1984, ISBN 0881840327 Google Print - p.454
  35. ^ a b c Yahoo News: Russia says WW2 executions of Poles not genocide March 11, 2005 online
  36. ^ United Press International: Weeping Poles visit Katyn massacre site October 30, 1989
  37. ^ BBC News: Commemoration of Victims of Katyn Massacre, November 1, 1989
  38. ^ Associated Press: Brzezinski: Soviets Should Take Responsibility for Katyn Massacre October 30, 1989
  39. ^ Time Magazine: Judgment On Katyn November 13, 1989
  40. ^ "CHRONOLOGY 1990; The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe." Foreign Affairs, 1990, pp. 212.
  41. ^ Encyklopedia PWN, 'KATYŃ', last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
  42. ^ 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 bearing Stalin's signature (among others). proposal online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, in Russian language
  43. ^ Aleksandr Shelepin's March 3 1959 note to Khrushchev, with information about the execution of 21,857 Poles and with the proposal to destroy their personal files. online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, in Russian language;
  44. ^ The Lies of Katyn by Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine.com, August 8, 2000, last accessed on 23 December, 2005
  45. ^ Associated Press, "Russians still in Denial: Poles Reject Moscow's Statement", September 15,1999, Andrzej Styliński, last accessed on 23 December, 2005
  46. ^ Nazi-Soviet Relations Page: Secret Supplementary Protocol The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
  47. ^ Holocaust of Non-Jewish Poles During WWII, Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski, Courtesy of Polish American Congress, Washington Metropolitan Area Division.
  48. ^ [2] THE KATYN MASSACRE: AN ASSESSMENT OF ITS SIGNIFICANCE AS A PUBLIC AND HISTORICAL ISSUE IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 1940-1993], A Thesis by Louis Robert Coatney
  49. ^ Katyń ... kto wiedział? Mariusz Oleśkiewicz, The SAGA Foundation, 2 maja 2005.
  50. ^ Radio Free Europe, ...DESPITE POLAND'S STATUS AS 'KEY ECONOMIC PARTNER, Newsline Wednesday, 29 September 2004 Volume 8 Number 185, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  51. ^ Ecumenical News International, "Polish priest deplores Russian blocking of massacre enquiry", 8 April 2005, by Jonathan Luxmoore, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  52. ^ Guardian Unlimited, "Russian victory festivities open old wounds in Europe", 29 April 2005, by Ian Traynor, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  53. ^ STATEMENT: ON INVESTIGATION OF THE “KATYN CRIME” IN RUSSIA, Memorial statement, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  54. ^ Warsaw Voice, "Katyn Resolution Adopted", 30 March 2005, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  55. ^ a b Polish government statement: Senate pays tribute to Katyn victims - 3/31/2005, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  56. ^ Polish government statement: IPN launches investigation into Katyn crime - 1/12/2004, last accessed on 02 January, 2006

Further reading

  • Books about the Katyn Forest Massacre
  • Allen Paul (1996). Katyń: Stalin's massacre and the seeds of Polish resurrection. Annapolis, Md., Naval Institute Press. p. 402. ISBN 1557506701.
  • Allen Paul (1991). Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin's Polish Massacre. New York, Scribner Book Company. ISBN 0684192152.
  • Wojciech Materski, ed. (1993). Katyn: documents of genocide; documents and materials from the Soviet archives turned over to Poland on October 14, 1992. Janusz Kazimierz Zawodny, Jan Kolbowski and Mark Canning. Warsaw, Institute of Political Studies Polish Academy of Sciences. p. 105. ISBN 8385479503.
  • Adam Moszyński, Lista katyńska. Jeńcy obozów Kozielsk–Ostaszków–Starobielsk zaginieni w Rosji Sowieckiej (Katyń list: Prisoners of Kozelsk–Ostaszków–Starobielsk camps who disappeared in Soviet Russia), Londyn 1949;
  • George Sanford, "The Katyn Massacre and Polish-Soviet relations 1941-1943," Journal of Contemporary History 41(1):95--111 online
  • Stanisław Swianiewicz, W cieniu Katynia (In the shadow of Katyn), Paryż 1976. English edition by Borealis Pub, 2000, as In the Shadow of Katyn: Stalin's Terror, ISBN 189425516X
  • Jerzy Łojek (Leopold Jerzewski), Dzieje sprawy Katynia (History of the Katyn affair), Warszawa 1980;
  • Janusz K. Zawodny, Katyń, Lublin 1989;
  • A. Basak, Historia pewnej mistyfikacji. Zbrodnia katyńska przed Trybunałem Norymberskim (History of certain mistification: Katyn crime before the Nuremberg Trials) ISSN 01371126 in Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi: XXI, Wrocław 1993, ISBN 832291816X Table of contents online
  • Large list of Katyn related books at Polish Wikipedia article. Another Polish list


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