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The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Template:Lang-pl, literally 'Katyń atrocity'), was a mass execution of Polish citizens ordered by Soviet authorities in 1940. At least 21,768 Polish POWs and prisoners were murdered in Katyn forest, Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere. About 8,000 of the victims were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 invasion of Poland, the rest being Polish citizens who had been arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, spies, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners and officials." Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were thus able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, as well as the Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship.

The term "Katyn massacre" originally referred to the massacre, at Katyn Forest near villages of Katyn and Gnezdovo (about 12 miles (19 km) west of Smolensk, Russia), of Polish military officers confined at the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp. It is applied now also to the execution of prisoners of war held at Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps, and political prisoners in West Belarus and West Ukraine, 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 Germany, after its armed forces had occupied the site in 1941, precipitated a 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 secret police had in fact committed the massacres of over 22,000 Polish soldiers and intelligentsia and the subsequent cover-up. The Russian government has admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres, although it does not classify them as war crimes or as acts of genocide, as this would have necessitated the prosecution of surviving perpetrators, which is what the Polish government has requested. It also does not classify the dead as the victims of Stalinist repressions, in effect barring their formal posthumous rehabilitation. Since "for 50 years, the Soviet Union concealed the truth" some, particularly in Russia, continue to believe the original Soviet explanation that it had been the Germans who had killed the Poles.

Preparations

On September 17 1939 the Red Army invaded the territory of Poland from the east. This invasion took place while Poland had already sustained serious defeats in the wake of the German attack on the country that started on September 1 1939; thus Soviets moved to safeguard their claims in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In the wake of the Red Army's quick advance that met little resistance, between 250,000 and 454,700 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 Belorusian 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 POWs: about 8,500 officers and warrant officers, 6,500 police officers and 25,000 soldiers and NCOs who were still being held as POWs.

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 (or USSR NKVD Board for Prisoners of War and Internees, headed by State Security Captain Pyotr Soprunenko) 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 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 (56 mi/90 km from Putyvl), Starobielsk, Vologda (Zaenikevo rail station) and Gryazovets.

Kozelsk and Starobielsk were used mainly for military officers, while Ostashkov was used mainly for Boy Scouts, gendarmes, police officers 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 Vasily Zarubin. The Poles were encouraged to believe they would be released, 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 April 3, 1940, at least 22,436 POWs and prisoners were executed: 15,131 POWs (most of them from the three camps) and at least 7,305 prisoners in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine . A 1956 memo from KGB chief Alexander Shelepin to First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev contains an incomplete information about the personal files of 21,857 of murdered POWs and prisoners. Of them 4,421 were from Kozielsk, 3,820 from Starobielsk, 6,311 from Ostashkov and 7,305 - from Belorussian 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 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 executed almost half the Polish officer corps. Altogether, during the massacre the NKVD murdered 14 Polish generals: 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 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 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).

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.

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 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. 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.

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 so 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, and the fact that not all can be accounted is due to the fact that the Soviets "lost track" of them in Manchuria.

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 more than 4,000 Polish military reserve officers in the forest on Goat Hill near Katyn. 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." 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.

The Katyn Massacre was beneficial to Nazi Germany, which used it to discredit the Soviet Union. 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" 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 "Polish 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 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.

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, Stalin accused the Polish government in exile of collaborating with Nazi Germany, broke diplomatic relations with it, and started a campaign to get the Western Allies to recognize the alternative Polish pro-Soviet government in Moscow led by Wanda Wasilewska. 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.

Actions taken by the Soviet Union

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 Smolensk, the Soviet Union, led by the NKVD, began a cover-up. A cemetery the Germans had permitted the Polish Red Cross to build was destroyed and other evidence removed. In January 1944, the Soviet Union sent the "Special Commission for Determination and Investigation of the Shooting of Polish Prisoners 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 Lesu) led (at least nominally) by Alexey Tolstoy 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, even the Polish communists, were allowed to join the Burdenko Commission, whereas the Nazi German investigation had allowed wider access to both international press and organizations (like the Red Cross, with experts from Finland, Denmark, Slovakia etc) and even used Polish workers, like Józef Mackiewicz. Thus, the 'medico-legal experts,' as they were called, 'found out' that all the shootings were done by the 'German-Fascist' invaders. The communist authorities didn't spare their fantasies while inventing 'proofs': the conclusions of the commission list, for example, a number of things, from gold watches to briefs and icons allegedly found attached to the dead bodies - and all the items were said to have dates from November 1940 to June 1941, thus 'rebuting' the 'Fascist lies' of the Poles being shot by the Soviets. This report is interesting to mention, since it carries the typical footprints of Soviet propaganda industry, and even reaching the extremes this time. 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)

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 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 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." 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." Unofficial or classified UK documents concluded that Soviet guilt was a "near certainty", but the alliance with the Soviets was deemed to be more important than moral issues, thus the official version supported the Soviet version, up to censoring the contradictory accounts. 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."

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. Donald B. Stewart and Col. John H. Van Vliet – had been taken by Germans to Katyn in 1943 for an international news conference. 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. 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 trials

From December 29 1945 to January 5 1946, ten officers of the German Wehrmacht – Karl Hermann Strüffling, Heinrich Remmlinger, Ernst Böhm, Eduard Sonnenfeld, Herbard Janike, Erwin Skotki, Ernst Geherer, Erich Paul Vogel, Franz Wiese, and Arno Dürer – were tried by a Soviet military court in Leningrad. In what is now widely considered a show trial, they were falsely charged for an alleged role in the Katyn massacre. The first seven officers were sentenced to death and executed by public hanging on the same day. The other three were sentenced to hard labor, Vogel and Wiese to 20 year terms each and Dürer to 15 years. Dürer is said to have pleaded guilty at the trial and to have returned to Germany later, the fate of the others sentenced to hard labor remains unknown.

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

More specifically, presented by the Soviet charge the Burdenko report, in spite of the reservesof the Anglo-Saxons, was accepted on grounds of the article 21 and coded as URSS-54. The German White Book of 1943 was accepted on grounds of the article 19 with, as had underlined it the president of the court, a potential convincing value; the course of the debates would make this adjective pointless. The intransigence of the Soviets to reveal Katyn in the bill of indictment was driven by the final objective: to quote it in the verdict. To this end, summoning of some witnesses was refused.

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. The task of the charge was thus to establish a link between the reproached acts and the defendants. On hearings, however, the Soviet prosecutor proved to be unable to name the person in charge for the execution of the massacre, as well as the supposed guilty among the defendants.

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.

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 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.

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 BSSR's war memorial at the former Belarusian village named Khatyn, a site of a 1943 Nazi massacre in which the entire village with its whole population was burned, have been made to cause confusion with Katyn. The two names are similar or identical in many languages.

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 Joseph Stalin had indeed ordered the massacre, and in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the NKVD had executed the Poles 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. 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 perestroika represents." 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."

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. 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. Among the documents included Lavrenty 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 with the signature of Stalin (among others); an excerpt from the Politburo shooting order of March 5 1940; and Aleksandr Shelepin's March 3 1959 note 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.

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 28 September, a secret supplementary protocol 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 and exchange experience. A University of Cambridge professor of history George Watson believes that the fate of Polish prisoners was discussed at the conference. This theory surfaces in Polish media, 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 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'. 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'.

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 declassified. 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. Despite earlier declarations, President Vladimir Putin's government refused to allow Polish investigators to travel to Moscow in late 2004 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.

Because of that, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance has decided to open its own investigation. 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. The Sejm also requested Russia to classify the Katyn massacre as the crime of 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 Russia "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." Russian authorities insist that killing of militarians can not be classified as 'genocide' by international definitions .

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.

Katyn in fiction

The Katyn massacre is a major plot element in many works of fiction, 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. The Academy Award winner, Polish film director Andrzej Wajda , whose father, captain Jakub Wajda, was murdered in Katyn, began working on a film depicting the event in 2006, the production title of which is "Post-Mortem: The Katyn story". 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 original documents related to the Katyn massacre:

See also

• Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion
• NKVD massacres of prisoners
• Litene, notorious for murder of the Latvian Army officers by NKVD in June 1941.

References

1. ^ Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999–2000, last accessed on 10 December 2005 Cite error: The named reference "Fischer" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
2. ^ 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, (Internet Archive) (also see the press release online), last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
3. 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)
4. "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. {{cite journal}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
5. ^ Zawodny, Janusz K., Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre, University of Notre Dame Press, 1962, ISBN 0-268-00849-3 partial html online
6. ^ 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
7. BBC News story : Russia to release massacre files, December 16 2004 online
8. ^ Mosnews story: Katyn Massacre Was Not Genocide — Russian Military Prosecutor, 11.03.2005 online
9. Encyklopedia PWN 'KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939', last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
10. Молотов на V сессии Верховного Совета 31 октября цифра «примерно 250 тыс.»
11. Отчёт Украинского и Белорусского фронтов Красной Армии Мельтюхов, с. 367. http://www.usatruth.by.ru/c2.files/t05.html
12. Катынь. Пленники необъявленной войны. сб.док. М., МФ "Демократия": 1999, сс.20-21, 208-210.
13. ^ "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
14. "The Katyn Diary of Leon Gladun", last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document. See the entries on 25 Decembert, 1939 and 3 April 1940.
15. 03.12.1941 UPVI note in Katyn. 1940-2000, Moscow, "Ves' mir", 2001, pp. 384, 385)
16. Shelepin's memo to Khrushchev
17. Andrzej Leszek Szcześniak, ed. (1989). Katyń; lista ofiar i zaginionych jeńców obozów Kozielsk, Ostaszków, Starobielsk. Warsaw, Alfa. p. 366. ISBN 83-7001-294-9., Adam Moszyński, ed. (1989). Lista katyńska; jeńcy obozów Kozielsk, Ostaszków, Starobielsk i zaginieni w Rosji Sowieckiej. Warsaw, Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne. p. 336. ISBN 83-85028-81-1., Jędrzej Tucholski (1991). Mord w Katyniu; Kozielsk, Ostaszków, Starobielsk: lista ofiar. Warsaw, Pax. p. 987. ISBN 83-211-1408-3., 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 83-87893-79-X., 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 83-86713-11-9., 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 83-86713-12-7., 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 83-86713-18-6.
18. 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 83-85660-62-3 + ISBN 83-86643-80-3..
19. Beria's letter №4713/б of November 2 1940 published in Новая и новейшая история, №2, 1993
20. Template:Pl icon Various authors. Biuletyn „Kombatant” nr specjalny (148) czerwiec 2003 Special Edition of Kombatant Bulletin No.148 6/2003 on the occasion of the Year of General Sikorski. Official publication of the Polish government Agency of Combatants and Repressed
21. Ромуальд Святек, "Катынский лес", Военно-исторический журнал, 1991, №9, ISSN 0042-9058
22. Brackman, Roman, The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life, 2001, ISBN 0-7146-5050-1. Google Books link to page
23. 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
24. Bauer, Eddy. The Marshall Cavendish Illustrated Encyclopedia of World War II. Marshall Cavendish. 1985
25. ^ Goebbels, Joseph. The Goebbels Diaries (1942–1943). Translated by Louis P. Lochner. Doubleday & Company. 1948
26. ^ Norman Davies, "Europe: A History", HarperCollins, 1998, ISBN 0-06-097468-0, Google Book page view
27. , 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
28. Soviet Note of April 25 1943, severing unilaterally Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
29. Martin Dean, "Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44", Palgrave, 1999, ISBN 0-312-22056-1 Google Book page view
30. Paczkowski, Andrzej, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, 2003, ISBN 0-271-02308-2. Google Books link to page
31. Kubit, Jozef Kazimierz, Was General Sikorski a victim of the Katyn massacre?, Polish News
32. online "I saw it with my own eyes...", last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
33. David Carlton, "Churchill and the Soviet Union", Manchester University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-7190-4107-4Google Books page online
34. Michael Fowler. "Winston S. Churchill. Philosopher and statesman". University Press of America. 1985. ISBN 0-8191-4416-9
35. Churchill, Winston, The Hinge of Fate, 1986 (1950), ISBN 0-395-41058-4. Google Book Search page view
36. ^ 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.
37. Van Vliet Report (reconstructed and discussion of), last accessed on 19 December 2005
38. Axis History Factbook "Axis History Factbook". Retrieved 16 November 2006. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
39. 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 16 November 2006
40. Excerpts of Nuremberg archieves: Nikzor.org – Fifty-Ninth Day: Thursday, 14 February 1946 (Part 7 of 15), Codoh.com KATYN: How the Soviets Manufactured War Crime Documents for the Nuremberg Court, last accessed on 2 January 2006
41. Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1984, ISBN 0-88184-032-7 Google Print – p.454
42. According to the formula of Annette Wieviorka, these reserves can be interpreted like a tacit consent of the Soviet culpability, "Le procès de Nuremberg", Editions Ouest-France, 1995, p. 92
43. Article 21: The Court will not require that the proof of a publicly known fact be provided, but will hold them for asset. It will also consider as authentic proofs the documents and official reports of the United Nations governments, including those drawn up by the commissions established in the various Allied countries, for the investigations into the war crimes as well as the official reports of the hearings and the decisions of the military courts or other courts of any of the United Nations.
44. Article 19: The Court will not be bound by the technical rules related to the management of the evidence. It will adopt and apply as much as possible an expeditious and nonformal procedure, and will admit any means which it estimates of a convincing value.
45. Procès des grands criminels de guerre devant le Tribunal Militaire International de Nuremberg, Tristan Mage, 1993-98, XVII, p.277-380 for the two sessions consecrated to the Katyn masacre
46. Three German officers present in 1943 were accepted by the court (on six asked by defense), while prof. Neville, teaching the forensic medicine in Geneva and member of the International Commission of 1943 have been refused. The charge correlatively obtained the presentation of three witnesses, inclyding prof. Markov, Bulgarian and member of this same commission, "pesuaded" by the Soviets with the known means of pressure, as well as the president of the Soviet Commission, Burdenko, which was also the president of the medical Academy of Science of the USSR.
47. As precisely described by Iona Nikitchenko, one of the judges and a military magistrate having been involved in Stalin's show trials, "the fact that the Nazis chiefs are criminals was already established . The role of this court is thus limited to determine the precise culpability of each one ". in: Nuremberg Trials, Leo Kahn, Bellantine, N.Y., 1972, p.26.
48. A commander of the regiment 537, its successor and police force (the SD) were successively indicated
49. The question of Dr. Latermeer, lawyer of Seyss-Inquart, To which defendant has to be charged the murder?, was refused to be answered.
50. Template:En iconVitali Silitski, A Partisan Reality Show", Transitions Online, 11 May 2005, ISSN 1214–1615 Parameter error in {{issn}}: Invalid ISSN.
51. Template:En icon Louis Robert Coatney (1993). The Katyn Massacre (A Master of Arts Thesis). Macomb: Western Illinois University.
52. ^ Yahoo News: Russia says WW2 executions of Poles not genocide March 11 2005 online
53. United Press International: Weeping Poles visit Katyn massacre site October 30 1989
54. BBC News: Commemoration of Victims of Katyn Massacre, November 1 1989
55. Associated Press: Brzezinski: Soviets Should Take Responsibility for Katyn Massacre October 30 1989
56. Time: Judgment On Katyn November 13 1989
57. "CHRONOLOGY 1990; The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe." Foreign Affairs, 1990, pp. 212.
58. Encyklopedia PWN, 'KATYŃ', last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
59. 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
60. 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;
61. Вечер "Катынь – боль не только Польши, но и России" http://www.hro.org/editions/repr/2005/11/28.php портал "Права человека в России"
62. The Lies of Katyn by Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine.com, August 8 2000, last accessed on 23 December 2005
63. Associated Press, "Russians still in Denial: Poles Reject Moscow's Statement", September 15 1999, Andrzej Styliński, last accessed on 23 December 2005
64. Nazi-Soviet Relations Page: Secret Supplementary Protocol The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
65. Holocaust of Non-Jewish Poles During WWII, Dr. Jan Moor-Jankowski, Courtesy of Polish American Congress, Washington Metropolitan Area Division.
66. 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
67. Katyń ... kto wiedział? Mariusz Oleśkiewicz, The SAGA Foundation, 2 maja 2005.
68. George Sanford, Katyn And The Soviet Massacre Of 1940: Truth, Justice And Memory, Routledge, 2005, ISBN 0-415-33873-5, Google Print, p.8
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71. Guardian Unlimited, "Russian victory festivities open old wounds in Europe", 29 April 2005, by Ian Traynor, last accessed on 2 January 2006
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74. ^ Polish government statement: Senate pays tribute to Katyn victims – 3/31/2005, last accessed on 2 January 2006
75. Polish government statement: IPN launches investigation into Katyn crime – 1/12/2004, last accessed on 2 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 1-55750-670-1.
• Allen Paul (1991). Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin's Polish Massacre. New York, Scribner Book Company. ISBN 0-684-19215-2.
• 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 83-85479-50-3.
• 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 1-894255-16-X
• 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 0137-1126 in Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi: XXI, Wrocław 1993, ISBN 83-229-1816-X Table of contents online
• Komorowski, Eugenjusz Andrei, and Gilmore, Joseph L. (1974). Night Never Ending. Avon Books. Largely discredited book purporting to be the eyewitness story of the sole survivor of the massacre.
• Large list of Katyn related books at Polish Misplaced Pages article.

External links

• Russia and the Katyn Forest Massacre BBC International Reports (Former Soviet Union) March 11 2005
• Rare footage of NKVD mass graves in Poland and Ukraine (video)
• Official site of the Memorial of Katyn
• Original of Katyn order
• Katyn massacre victim list
• Polish deaths at Soviet hands – website about Katyn forest massacre
• Pictures taken during the 1943 exhumation
• British reactions to the Katyn Massacre, 1943–2003 by Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane
• The Katyn Massacre: A Special Operations Executive perspective
• Katyn in Nuremberg
• Historians Have Yet to Face Up to the Implications of the Katyn Massacre by Adam Scrupski
• Katyn Forest Massacre: Articles and links
• The Lies of Katyn
• Stalin's Killing Field by Benjamin B. Fischer
• Template:Pl icon Ferdynand Goetel w Katyniu – story of one of the Polish members of the 1943 International Commission

54°46′N 31°47′E / 54.767°N 31.783°E / 54.767; 31.783

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• Political repression in the Soviet Union
• Genocide
• History of Poland (1939–1945)
• Massacres in the Soviet Union
• Polish-Soviet relations
• Prisoners of war massacres
• People executed by the Soviet Union
• Soviet World War II crimes