The Massacre at Katyn

We know officially, now after many years of silence who was responsible for the shooting of those Polish officers.

A Movie of this is available here, free to watch.

Apparently Stalin himslef ordered the execution, and did it on paper. His staff asked him what to do with all these Poles. He simply took a paper and wrote "Liquidate". They looked at it in confusion and did not know what to make of it, but none dared ask him to clarify.
Next they got to work...
The poles were put on a train, and told they were being sent home,.. they could not be happier. Then, into the forest and shot in the neck all 15,000.

-Why exactly was this done? Why was it necessary to liquidate the cream of the Polish army? The shooting took place in 1940, when the other half of Poland was taken by Russia.
Did the Poles not consider themselves allies of Russians? Were they not 'Slavic Brothers'?
In what way did these Polish army men endanger the USSR or it's interests?
There are other clues that the Russians did not care about their Polish friends, like when they stopped all help and assistance to the Polish home guard in 1944.
But thinking back,.. there were many Poles who fought FOR the Red Army, in the Airforce for example, flying Yaks, or as regular army units... "Polish People's army"... Had they known what happened at Katyin, maybe they would have had second toughts.

This short movie provides more then words could describe, and brings back ugly images of an almost forgotten event.

Movie of the Katyn massacre's discovery.

This post has been edited by Der Maresal on October 05, 2004 12:04 am

The discovery was used by German propaganda and was presented on radio on 13 April 1943, when the Germans announced that 10,000 Polish officers were shot by the Soviets in spring of 1940. The number is an exageration, used of course by the Germans to cause friction among the Allies. The Poles discovered that the Germans new of this long before 1943, but they delayed the announcement in order to adjust the number according to the number of those interred in the Soviet prison camps.

During April-June 1943, a Polish Red Cross comission exhumed bodies and researched the area. They concluded that Katyn was used as common place of execution for both Polish and Soviet citizens. Some of the bodies were even 15 years old. However, 4,200 bodies were identified as Polish prisoners, most of them from the Kozielsk camp in 1940.

The Poles never considered themselves allied to the Soviet regime, nor to the Russians for that matter...
Yes, it is indeed true that many Poles fought alongside the Red Army, but this must be set against the scenario where they found themselves after their nation defeat and partition... The number of Communists or of those who simply might have showed sympathy towards leftist ideals was relatively small.
Besides, the history of the relationship between these two Slavic nations is very complex. The Poles once also opressed the Russians, when Poland was a big player in the European political scene in the XVIIth century. And Maresal, there was always a big difference separating the two "Slavic brothers": religion. The Poles were always very proud of their Roman Catholic faith, as it provided them with a very strong, specifically national feature, something of paramount importance to define "Polishness" against both their Protestant neighbours to the west and north, and their big Orthodox "brother" to the east...

As for the grim story of the Katyn, Dragos is right: the forest was the last sight grasped not only by almost 5000 Polish POW's (officers, in most of the cases positively identified), but also by a lot of unfortunate Soviet citizens, of which some were executed not much after the Russian Civil War, by the mid-Twenties.

You already answered Yourself. Because they was officers, cream of polish army, intelligence. Occupant generally dont like this kind of people..

17 september 1939- red army crossed polish border. USSR did attack Poland. They had alliance with Germany (Ribbentrop-Molotow pact). Before 1939 Poland had with Russia non-agression pact (with Germany too..), nothing more was possible.
And as for 'slavic brothers'- remember, that before ww1 Poland was not exist, and Russia was one of invaders, and in years 1919-1920 Poland was in war with bolsheviks...

"Polish People Army" was under Stalin control. As later all Poland. They knew official russian version- in Katyn Germans killed polish officers, not Russians

When Europe was still under German control, the Germans created a team of doctors to study the bodies found at Katyn. It was an international team. One doctor was Romanian.

In September 1944, when the Russian troops passed through Romania, NKVD arrested this Romanian doctor as a top priority. The doctor was taken to Soviet Union, and never ever seen again.

This post has been edited by Florin on October 13, 2004 02:57 am

What Florin says is not true and I want to add some;
I have some friends,bouth doctors.The wife,Dr Marta,a pediatrician,is the dauther of the Romanian doctor who was sent to Katin.He had a polish origin,and was the head of the Pathology institute in Buc.
The Doctor(that I cannot tell the name ,but I can ask his dauther)disquaised himself and left Buc.His family was arested and sent to jail for a few years.
He left Romania after 3-4 years of hiding and got to the US.
The family never knew anything about him since.
In 78-or 79 dr Marta got a "visit" from a guy dresed in a cheap suit ,who told her that he's from the "Securitate"and told her that her father died .
The horible thing is that he realy died in 1990! aged 92.
If you are interested for more details I can call anytime his dauther.

It was indeed a terrible tragedy, the massacre of Katyn for Poland. What I would like to know is how many Polish Officer were exactly killed? I have read from various sources from 20 000 to 5000 so how many exactly?

Regards

According to Wikipedia: "In the period from April 3 to May 19, 1940 a total of 14,552 prisoners were murdered: 4421 from the Kozielsk camp, 6311 from the Ostashkov camp and 3982 from the Starobielsk camp - in the Katyń Forest, Kalinin (Tver today) and Kharkov.
A mere 395 prisoners were saved from the slaughter."

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_Massacre

Col. Dénes