Katyn Massacre, 1940

Discussion in 'The Eastern Front' started by laufer, Mar 14, 2005.

  1. laufer

    laufer Senior Member

    Stalin's order to shoot the Polish POWs in 1940

    Katyn forest, near Smolensk in Russia, place of the mass graves of over 4,300 Polish officers discovered by the German army in March of 1943. These were the bodies of the officers who became POWs as result of the Soviet Union's invasion and occupation of the Polish Eastern provinces between 1939-1941. Katyn forest has been one of many locations where Polish POWs were executed in 1940. The grave locations of the remaining 10,000 officers and 11,000 others considered to be a threat to Soviet Union remain unknown.
    The Polish government-in-exile requested investigation of the site by the International Red Cross. This request prompted the Soviet Union to break off its diplomatic relations with London's Poles in the early spring of 1943.

    Until the 1990s, the Soviet Union was categorically denying its implication in the crime and blamed the German army as the culprits. However, the documents which were made available after the demise of the Soviet Union clearly indicate the Soviet Union's involvement:

    The following are the excerpt from the minutes Nr. 13 of the Politburo of the Central Committee meeting on the 5th of March, 1940 – resolution P13/144 regarding the matter submitted for consideration by the NKVD/USSR.

    * * *

    Strictly Confidential

    All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). CENTRAL COMMITTEE

    I. To instruct the NKVD of the USSR that:

    1/ the cases of 14 700 people - former Polish Army officers, government officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence agents, military policemen, homesteaders and jailers remaining in the camps for prisoners of war,

    2/ and also the cases of 11 000 people - members of various counter-revolutionary spy and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish Army officers, government officials and fugitives arrested and remaining in prisons in the western districts of Ukraine and Byelorussia - be considered in a special manner with the obligatory sentence of capital punishment - execution by firing squad.

    II. The consideration of the cases to be carried out without the convicts being summoned and without revealing the charges; with no statements concerning the conclusion of the investigation and the bills of indictment given to them. To be carried out in the following manner:

    a/ people remaining in the camps for prisoners of war - on the basis of information provided by the Administration of Prisoners-of-War Affairs NKVD of the USSR,

    b/ people arrested - on the basis of case information provided by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and NKVD of the Byelorussian SSR.

    III. The responsibility for consideration of the cases and passing of the resolution to be laid on three comrades: Merkulov, Kobulov and Bashtakov (Head, 1st Special Division of the NKVD of the USSR).

    The Secretary of the Central Committee

    J. Stalin
     
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  2. marek_pk

    marek_pk Senior Member

    Katyn Families’ chaplain dies in Poland - Thenews.pl


    Katyn Families chaplain dies in Poland

    Created: Monday, October 8. 2007
    Survivor of the Katyn Massacres of 1940 Father Zdzisław Peszkowski (89), the chaplain of the Katyn Families Association, has died. On 4 June 2007 he took part in the ceremony of laying the cornerstone for the Polish officers’ cemetery in Katyn, commemorations of over 20,000 Poles who perished at the hands of the Soviet NKVD.

    In 1939, Zdzisław Peszkowski witnessed the Soviet invasion of Poland. As a Polish Army soldier, he was imprisoned and sent to a Soviet PoW camp in Kozielsk where he managed to avoid an execution.

    Then he joined the Polish Home Army formed in the Soviet Union, which later broke through to the Middle East and eventually Western Europe. Peszkowski was ordained a priest after the war. For many years father Peszkowski promoted the idea of remembrance of the Katyń crimes and all of the Poles murdered in the East. He also extended pastoral assistance to the families of Katyń victims.

    In 1995, in a speech given during a roll-call for the dead at the Unknown Soldier’s Grave in Warsaw, he expressed words of forgiveness to those who made and followed the orders to execute Polish officers.

    On 4 June 2007 he took part in the ceremony of laying the cornerstone for the Polish officers’ cemetery in Katyń.
    In the Katyń Families’ appeal to the world, he expressed the wish that the tragedy experienced by Poland would serve as a warning against hatred towards mankind.

    He also appealed for revealing the truth about the Katyń crime.
    Father Peszkowski held the post of the Katyń Families’ chaplain until his death.
     
  3. marek_pk

    marek_pk Senior Member

  4. chipmunk wallah

    chipmunk wallah Senior Member

    HHmm,lets see.....film 4 at about 1am probably :(
    Still have not seen this film,it certainly seems to have caused a stir in Polska though.
    Has Wajda topped his trilogey with it? Still cant beat Kanal though I bet.
     
  5. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    Ukraine exposes Katyn executioners - TheNews.pl :: News from Poland

    In a week where Polish and Russian parliaments throw angry resolutions at each other over historical interpretations of WW II, Poland has received documents from Ukraine containing the names of NKVD officers responsible for the 1940 Katyn massacre.

    The documents - handed over by Ukraine’s secret service to the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw - shed light on the Katyn executioners - who they were and why they killed 350 Poles in the Roviensky oblast’ in 1939 and 1940.

    The killings were just part of the slaughter of over 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD.

    The documents show that the aim of the NKVD massacre was to ‘decapitate’ Polish society by murdering a whole class of intellectuals, officers, landowners and others. Consequently, the NKVD functionaries were ordered to arrest and execute “officers, landowners or agents of noble Poland,” say the documents, dating from 1956.

    Battle of parliaments

    The development comes a day after the Lower House of the Russian parliament condemned a bill to commemorate the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939 passed by the Polish parliament.

    The polish bill condemns the invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939, with the Katyn massacre described as a “war crime” with “characteristics of genocide”.

    In protest, the foreign commission of the Russian Duma sent a letter to the Polish government saying that: “It is blasphemy to see only Stalinist repressions against Polish soldiers but to forget about the deeds of Soviet soldiers who saved Poles from annihilation.”

    The Duma expressed its “deep disappointment at [the Polish] attempt to compare Nazi Germany with the Soviet Union.”

    The Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the nationalistic Liberal Democratic Party of Russia demand that, apart from the letter, the Duma passes its own resolution in response to Poland’s 17 September bill.

    The documents handed to Poland by the Ukrainian secret services, however, point to the deliberate attempt by the Soviet Union to deprive Poland of a whole class of people.

    As such, Katyn falls under a UN convention of 1948 which describes genocide as: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
     
  6. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    Peter,
    It looks like this will escalate Politically.

    Regards
    Tom
     
  7. Steve G

    Steve G Senior Member

    Tom; I think that was a truly masterful piece of understatement! :huh:
     
  8. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Just ordered this Polish film on DVD

    http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/10333668/Katyn/Product.html

    Katyn is the story of Polish army officers murdered by the Russia secret police in the Katyn forest during the Second World War and the families who, unaware of the crime, were still waiting for their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers to return. It is a film about the continuing struggle over History and memory, and an uncompromising exploration of the Russian cover up of the massacre that prevented the Polish people from commemorating those that had been killed.
     
  9. Pike

    Pike Senior Member

    Iv'e read a bit on the investigation by the Germans,and there efforts to convince the world they were innocent of these massacres at Katyn.

    The Germans brought in British POWs to view some of the evidence which was carefully laid out on tables,and some of the dead Polish officers while having been buried with their hands tied behind their backs,also had diaries in their pockets which left no doubt who had commited the murders.

    Strangely the Russians wanted to bring in the crimes at Katyn as evidence at Nuremberg.
     
  10. James Daly

    James Daly Senior Member

    I think it says a lot about the two totalitarian regimes that it took a long time for world opinion to work out exactly who had done it, given Germany and Soviet Russia were both perfectly capable of doing such a thing.
     
  11. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

  12. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Strangely the Russians wanted to bring in the crimes at Katyn as evidence at Nuremberg.

    Perhaps not all Soviets were aware of who had done what at Katyin...

    A couple of NKVD units, their bosses up the feeding chain, and that was it.
     
  13. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    All part of the Soviet policy to ensure that Poland would have a compliant government on its western borders,a policy reinforced from time to time,postwar, by internal force and went on until the fall of communnism.

    From September 1 1939,Poland was the victim of aggression from both its giant neighbours,whereas Russia tried to eliminate its military cadre and political leadership where it could,Hitler unleashed his thugs against the Polish intellectual class as its first priority of genocide.

    Seems that the problem has now been revisited for the present Polish Government is asking the USA to have US troops in Poland after Russia carried out nuclear war exercises on its border with Poland.
     
  14. TiredOldSoldier

    TiredOldSoldier Senior Member

    I remember I had a Polish schoolmate in the mid 70s and she was convinced the nazis had done it.
     
  15. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Pity they got the Soviet flag wrong on the cover.

    [​IMG]
     
  16. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Four engined bombers too that look like Lancasters !
     
  17. marek_pk

    marek_pk Senior Member

  18. James Daly

    James Daly Senior Member

    of course the waters would have been muddied by the Soviet dominance over Poland until 1989... he who controls the present controls the past...
     
  19. DoctorD

    DoctorD WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    A Katyn Memorial is sited on Cannock Chase, Staffs - just about a quarter-mile from the CWGC and German Cemeteriesy, that I laid a RBL wreath at today at the Anglo-German Reconcilliation Service held by the Anglo-German Remembrance Day Association. This was attended by the German Deputy-Ambassador and Military Attache and the Deputy Lord Lieutenant. If anybody is intrested just post me a PM. I'll take a photo of the Katyn Memorial next time I'm there, unless preempted by another.
     
  20. Varasc

    Varasc Senior Member

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