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at Katyn War Cemetery ]] and Bronisław Bohatyrewicz ]] The Katyn massacre, also known as the '''Katyn Forest massacre''' (, literally 'Katyń crime'), was a mass 2005 , English translation of Polish document). Polish POWs and prisoners were murdered in Katyn forest, Kalinin ( Tver ) and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere.Data combined from Shelepin's letter to Khrushchev and Soviet data from 03.12.1941 UPVI note in ''Katyn. 1940–2000'', Moscow, "Ves' mir", 2001, pp. 384, 385) About 8,000 of the victims were Officer s Taken Prisoner during the 1939 Invasion Of Poland , the rest being Polish citizens who had been arrested for allegedly being " Intelligence Agent s, Gendarmes , Spies , Saboteurs , Landowner s, factory owners and officials." Since Poland's Conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a Reserve officer,1 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 2005 , original in Russian with English translation 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 . PRELUDE poster in Ukrainian showing a Red Army soldier capturing a Polish Army officer]] On 2005 , Polish language In the wake of the Red Army 's quick advance that met little resistance, between 250,000Молотов на V сессии Верховного Совета 31 октября цифра «примерно 250 тыс.» and 454,700Отчёт Украинского и Белорусского фронтов Красной Армии Мельтюхов, с. 367. 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 Belarusian 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 POW s: about 8,500 officers and warrant officers, 6,500 police officers and 25,000 soldiers and NCOs who were still being held as POWs.''Катынь. Пленники необъявленной войны''. сб.док. М., МФ "Демократия": 1999, сс.20–21, 208–210. As early as 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 ) 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 Camp s 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 Officer s, while Ostashkov was used mainly for Boy Scout s, Gendarme s, Police Officer s 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. 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 2005 , English translation of Polish document. See the entries on 25 December, 1939 and 3 April 1940 . 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 . EXECUTIONS Since to First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev contains incomplete information about the personal files of 21,857 murdered POWs and prisoners. Of them 4,421 were from Kozielsk, 3,820 from Starobielsk, 6,311 from Ostashkov and 7,305 - from Belarusian and Ukrainian prisons. Shelepin's data for prisons should be considered a minimum, because his data for POWs is incomplete (he mentions 14,552 personal files for POWs, while at least 15,131 POWs "sent to UNKVD" are mentioned in contemporary documents). Those who died at Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 (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 and Józef Czapski . They were taken to the Yukhnov camp and then down to Gryazovets. They were the only ones who escaped death. 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 Starobilsk were murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kharkiv and the bodies were buried near Piatykhatky ; and police officers from Ostashkov were murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kalinin (Tver) and buried in Miednoje (''Mednoye''). 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.9, also in 10. 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 murders 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. Additional 3,300 Polish soldiers were captured during the annexation of Lithuania , where they were kept Interned since September 1939.Beria's letter №4713/б of November 2 1940 published in Новая и новейшая история, №2, 1993 3 000 - 4 000 Polish inmates of Ukrainian prisons were probably buried in Bykivnia , the ones from Belarus prisons in Kurapaty . Janina Lewandowska was the only woman executed at Katyn. DISCOVERY s of Polish dead at Katyn Forest (1943) was distributed by the Nazi German Ministry Of Propaganda ]] Currency and Military Insignia from the mass graves]] The question of the Polish prisoners' fate was first raised soon after the , ''The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life'', 2001, ISBN 0-7146-5050-1. Google Books link to page The fate of the missing prisoners remained unknown until April 1943 when the German Wehrmacht (actually Rudolf Christoph Freiherr Von Gersdorff ) discovered the mass grave of 4,243 Polish military reserve officers in the forest on Goat Hill near Katyn.Assembly of Captive European Nations, First Session, September 20, 1954-February 11, 1955, Organization, Resolutions, Reports, Debate; p118 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 by 52 ft , in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in 12 layers."'' Engel, David , ''Facing a Holocaust: The Polish Government-In-Exile and the Jews, 1943–1945'', 1993, ISBN 0-8078-2069-5. Google Books page view 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.'' Bauer, Eddy . The Marshall Cavendish Illustrated Encyclopedia of World War II. Marshall Cavendish. 1985 The Katyn Massacre was beneficial to Nazi Germany, which used it to discredit the Soviet Union. Goebbels wrote in his diary on , 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"'' Goebbels, Joseph . The Goebbels Diaries (1942–1943). Translated by Louis P. Lochner. Doubleday & Company. 1948 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 ''" 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 ", HarperCollins, 1998, ISBN 0-06-097468-0, Google Book page view 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,, The Polish Government official statement on ò Soviet actions 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 2005 , English translation of Polish document Thus, the 'medico-legal experts,' as they were called, 'found out' that all the shootings were done by the 'German-Fascist' invaders. The conclusions of the commission list a number of things, from gold watches to briefs and icons allegedly found attached to the dead bodies, and the items were said to have dates from November 1940 to June 1941, thus 'rebutting' the 'Fascist lies' of the Poles being shot by the Soviets. The report can be found in pro-Soviet publication ''Supplement to Russia at war weekly'' (1944); it is also printed in Dr.Joachim Hoffmann's book ''Stalin's Annihilation War 1941–1945'' (original: ''Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941–1945'') Western response 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. In private, Churchill agreed that the atrocity was likely carried out by the Soviets. According to the notes taken by , who was arrested by the Special Branch and imprisoned. In the United States , a similar line was taken, notwithstanding that two official intelligence reports into the Katyn massacre were produced that contradicted the official position. In 1944 Roosevelt assigned Navy Lieutenant Commander 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 had 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 . A further report in 1945, supporting the same conclusion, was produced and stifled. In 1943, two US POWs – Lt. Col. 2005 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 . Soviet-run trials From 2006 In 1946, the chief Soviet prosecutor at the 2006 but dropped the matter after the United States and United Kingdom refused to support it and German lawyers mounted an embarrassing defense. Robert E. Conot , ''Justice at Nuremberg'', Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1984, ISBN 0-88184-032-7 Google Print – p.454 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.As precisely described by ) were successively indicated as well as the supposed guilty among the defendants.The question of Dr. Latermeer, lawyer of Seyss-Inquart, ''To which defendant has to be charged the murder?'', was refused to be answered. 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. Cold War views 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 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 2005 , 12 The two names are similar or identical in many languages. 13. 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 . , Poland. Inscription: Katyn, Kharkіv, Miednoje and other places of death on the territory of former USSR, 1940.]] On 1989 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 1989 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."CHRONOLOGY 1990; The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe." '' Foreign Affairs '', 1990, pp. 212. 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 2005 , in Russian language; to Nikita Khrushchev , with information about the execution of 21,857 Poles and with the proposal to destroy their personal files. visiting Warsaw The investigations that indicted the German state rather than the Soviet state for the killings are sometimes used to impeach the 1999 , Andrzej Styliński , last accessed on 23 December 2005 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 , 2 maja 2005. 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 of that year the Russians also raised the issue of Soviet POW deaths in the Camps For Russian Prisoners And Internees In Poland (1919-1924) . About 15,000–20,000 POWs died in those camps due to epidemics (especially Spanish Flu ); however, some Russian officials argued that it was 'a genocide comparable to Katyń'. A similar claim was raised in 1994; such attempts are seen by some, particularly in Poland, as a highly provocative Russian attempt to create an 'anti-Katyn' and 'balance the historical equation'. George Sanford , ''Katyn And The Soviet Massacre Of 1940: Truth, Justice And Memory'', Routledge, 2005, ISBN 0-415-33873-5, Google Print, p.8 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 statement, last accessed on 2 January 2006 Because of that, the Polish 2006 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.Polish government statement: IPN launches investigation into Katyn crime – 1/12/2004 , last accessed on 2 January 2006 ART The Katyn massacre is a major plot element in many works of culture, 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. {Link without Title} The Academy Award winner, Polish film director ''. {Link without Title} 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 Authenticated copies of Soviet documents related to the Katyn massacre: Image:1940-03-05 politbiuro.png Image:1940-03-05 beria1.png Image:1940-03-05 beria2.png Image:1940-03-05 beria3.png Image:1940-03-05 beria4.png SEE ALSO
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