The government of Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in April 1943. Omissions? Congress. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. [79] In 1981, Polish trade union Solidarity erected a memorial with the simple inscription "Katyn, 1940". It concluded that the Poles had been killed by the Soviet NKVD and recommended that the Soviets be tried before the International Court of Justice. Only the truth can serve as the basis of true friendship between the Soviet and the Polish peoples. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov announced the investigation was able to confirm the deaths of 1,803 out of 14,542 Polish citizens who had been sentenced to death while in three Soviet camps. The Katyn Forest Massacre: The History of the Notorious Slaughter of Polish Prisoners by the Soviets During World War II: Charles River Editors, Scott Clem, Charles River Editors: Amazon.fr: Livres Katyn remained a political taboo in the Polish People's Republic until the fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1989. [22][54] Its members included prominent Soviet figures such as the writer Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, but no foreign personnel were allowed to join the commission. 7. [22], In the Soviet Union during the 1950s, the head of KGB, Alexander Shelepin, proposed and carried out the destruction of many documents related to the Katyn massacre to minimize the chance the truth would be revealed. In the … Ivan Serov reported to Lavrentiy Beria on 3 December that "in all, 1,057 former officers of the Polish Army had been arrested". Józef Mackiewicz has published several texts about the crime. [53], When Joseph Goebbels was informed in September 1943 that the German Army had to withdraw from the Katyn area, he wrote a prediction in his diary. Not only did government censorship suppress all references to it, but even mentioning the atrocity was dangerous. Three lines of evidence were cited. [113], On 10 April 2010, an aircraft carrying Polish President Lech Kaczyński with his wife and 87 other politicians and high-ranking army officers crashed in Smolensk, killing all 96 aboard the aircraft. His superior, Major General Clayton Lawrence Bissell, General George Marshall's assistant chief of staff for intelligence, destroyed the report. Subscribe 605. [32] The executioners used German weapons rather than the standard Soviet revolvers, as the latter were said to offer too much recoil, which made shooting painful after the first dozen executions. The massacre is of note for a number of reasons, but primarily due to the struggle over the attribution of culpability for several decades afterwards. [62] Churchill's own post-war account of the Katyn affair gives little further insight. Stalin, in response, accused the Polish government of collaborating with Nazi Germany and broke off diplomatic relations with it. Nevertheless, every year on the day of Zaduszki, similar memorial crosses were erected at Powązki Cemetery and numerous other places in Poland, only to be dismantled by the police. The prisoners assumed they would be released soon, but the interviews were in effect a selection process to determine who would live and who would die. 1 History; 2 Wartime effects of Germany revealing the Katyn massacre; 3 Katyn at the Nuremberg trials; 4 See also; 5 External links. [74] It was not the purpose of the court to determine whether Germany or the Soviet Union was responsible for the crime, but rather to attribute the crime to at least one of the defendants, which the court was unable to do. [54][55] As none of the documents found on the dead had dates later than April 1940, the Soviet secret police planted false evidence to place the apparent time of the massacre in mid-1941, when the German military had controlled the area. [55] Some regarded the inclusion of Melby and Harriman as a Soviet attempt to lend official weight to their propaganda. Alderman, S. S., "Negotiating the Nuremberg Trial Agreements, 1945", in Raymond Dennett and Joseph E. Johnson, edd., CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (, Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946), territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees, Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees, Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes perpetrated by the German-Fascist invaders, National Archives and Records Administration, Censorship in the Polish People's Republic, camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919–24), Polish prisoners and internees in Soviet Russia, Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Learn how and when to remove this template message, World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre", "A State against Its People: Violence, Repression and Terror in the Soviet Union", "Ustawa z dnia 9 kwietnia 1938 r. o powszechnym obowiązku wojskowym (Act of 9 April 1938, on Compulsory Military Duty)", "The grave unknown elsewhere or any time before ... Katyń – Kharkiv – Mednoe", "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", "ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ: Заключение комиссии экспертов Главной военной прокуратуры по уголовному делу № 159 о расстреле польских военнопленных из Козельского, Осташковского и Старобельского спецлагерей НКВД в апреле—мае 1940 г", "Katyn massacre: how the truth prevailed", "Odkryto grzebień z nazwiskami Polaków pochowanych w Bykowni", "Forgotten document found hidden in Minsk archive could reveal secrets of 'Belarusian List' – an NKVD death list of nearly 4,000 murdered Poles", "Jedyna kobieta — ofiara Katynia (The only woman victim of Katyn)", "Special Edition of Kombatant Bulletin on the occasion of the Year of General Sikorski. The first news of a massacre at Katyn Wood came in April 1943 when the Germans found a mass grave of 4,500 Polish soldiers in German-occupied Russia. For this he was spared execution and was given 15 years of hard labor. [3] Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. His entry for 29 September 1943 reads: "Unfortunately we have had to give up Katyn. ), Aleksander Kowalewski (ret. [22] Altogether, during the massacre, the NKVD executed 14 Polish generals:[28] Leon Billewicz (ret. Information about the photos used in this site. Jeffery tried to inform the British government about the Katyn massacre, but was as a result released from the Army. Donald B. Stewart and Col. John H. Van Vliet—to Katyn for an international news conference. This group included former U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Kazimierz Józef Stanisław Białkowski (-1928).jpg 343 × 417; 14 KB. [54] The Burdenko Commission's conclusions would be consistently cited by Soviet sources until the official admission of guilt by the Soviet government on 13 April 1990. 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. About 16,000 to 20,000 POWs died in those camps due to communicable diseases. ), Henryk Minkiewicz (ret. On 5 March 1940, Stalin approved, together with Voroshilov, Mikoyan and Molotov, a proposal from Beria that lead to the assassination of 21,857 Poles. It was confiscated by the police and replaced with an official monument with the inscription: "To the Polish soldiers—victims of Hitlerite fascism—reposing in the soil of Katyn". After Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union concluded their Nonaggression Pact of 1939 and Germany invaded Poland from the west, Soviet forces occupied the eastern half of Poland. Collier. [42], In 1942, with the territory around Smolensk under German occupation, captive Polish railroad workers heard from the locals about a mass grave of Polish soldiers at Kozelsk near Katyn; finding one of the graves, they reported it to the Polish Underground State. Russians and Poles, tortured to death, lie here together. The Katyn Forest MassacreUnravelling One of the Many Secrets of the Second World War 3. ), Xawery Czernicki (admiral), Stanisław Haller (ret. The truth will make a path for itself. This committee unanimously recommends that the House of Representatives approve the committee’s findings and adopt a resolution: 1. The discovery of the massacre precipitated the severance of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London. 4. Secondly, none of the numerous Polish artifacts, such as letters, diaries, photographs and identification tags pulled from the graves, were dated later than the spring of 1940. [22] In 1950, Van Vliet recreated his wartime report. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Russians responded to the German claims that Russia’s secret police did it, by claiming that the massacre was carried out by the Germans themselves. Several visitors scaled the fence of a nearby KGB compound and left burning candles on the grounds. The Soviet government officially accepts blame for the Katyn Massacre of World War II, when nearly 5,000 Polish military officers were murdered and buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest. The Polish general Władysław Anders began organizing this army, and soon he requested information about the missing Polish officers. In an interview with a Polish newspaper, Vladimir Putin called Katyn a "political crime". An examination of the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the Katyn forest … As a consequence of this occupation, tens of thousands of Polish military personnel fell into Soviet hands and were interned in prison camps inside the Soviet Union. [115] The catastrophe has also had major echoes in the international and particularly the Russian press, prompting a rebroadcast of Katyń on Russian television. Later, in 1945, Van Vliet submitted a report concluding the Soviets were responsible for the massacre. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. The Bolsheviks undoubtedly will soon 'find' that we shot 12,000 Polish officers. [1] According to Soviet documents declassified in 1990, 21,857 Polish internees and prisoners were executed after 3 April 1940: 14,552 prisoners of war (most or all of them from the three camps) and 7,305 prisoners in western parts of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs. Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}54°46′20″N 31°47′24″E / 54.77222°N 31.79000°E / 54.77222; 31.79000. [40][41][better source needed] Józef Czapski investigated the fate of Polish officers between 1941 and 1942. 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". Lech Kaczynski to another commemoration ceremony crashed near Smolensk and the Katyn site, killing Kaczynski, his wife, the head of the national security bureau, the president of the national bank, the army chief of staff, and a number of other Polish government officials. Three days later, on April 10, a plane carrying Polish Pres. Later, recreational areas of NKVD/KGB were established there. [1][12][21] In December, a wave of arrests resulted in the imprisonment of additional Polish officers. [106], Archive searches are continuing in Belarus state archives for one of execution lists containing names of 3870 officers whose identifies and exact place of execution (presumably Bykivnia and Kuropaty, as mentioned above) were not yet established. Truth about Katyn Forest Massacre In 1940-Dr William Pierce. Maurycy Broch.JPG 178 × 212; 5 KB. New Revelations on the Katyn Forest Massacre: Roosevelt Knew. The Katyn Forest MassacreUnravelling One of the Many Secrets of the Second World War 2. 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 killed by the NKVD in 1941." Savenkov declared the massacre was not a genocide, that Soviet officials who had been found guilty of the crime were dead and that, consequently, "there is absolutely no basis to talk about this in judicial terms". On 14 April 1943, Goebbels wrote in his diary: "We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, killed by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. [22] They were taken to the Yukhnov camp or Pavlishtchev Bor and then to Gryazovets. I gave instructions to make the widest possible use of the propaganda material. [119], The Communist Party of the Russian Federation and a number of other pro-Soviet Russian politicians and commentators claim that the story of Soviet guilt is a conspiracy and that the documents released in 1990 were forgeries. The largest camps were at Kozelsk (Optina Monastery), Ostashkov (Stolobny Island on Lake Seliger near Ostashkov), and Starobelsk. [76][77] The two names are similar or identical in many languages, and were often confused. [116] The Polish President was to deliver a speech at the formal commemorations. However, the Jersey City monument commemorating the 1940 Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish POW officers held by the Soviet Army after its 1939 invasion of Poland, is being chall... by Dr. Lucja Cannon   Protecting historical landmarks symbolizing freedom and horrors of genocide should be above reproach. The Katyn Massacre left a deep scar in Polish-Soviet relations during the remainder of the war and afterward. [103] On 6 December 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed commitment to uncovering the whole truth about the massacre, stating "Russia has recently taken a number of unprecedented steps towards clearing up the legacy of the past. 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