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File:Katyn.jpg
Photo taken in 1943, during the Nazi German exhumations of the Polish dead from the Katyn forest sites.

The Katyń massacre, also known as the Katyn Incident and Katyn Forest Massacre, was a mass execution of Polish citizens by the Soviet Union during World War II [1]. Estimates of the number of Polish citizens that were executed in three mass murder sites in the spring of 1940 range from approximately 14,540 [2] [3] through 21,857 [4] to 25,700[5]. Most of the killed were reserve officers taken prisoner during the course of the Polish September Campaign of 1939, but the dead also included many civilians[6]. Since Poland's conscription system required every university graduate to become a reserve officer[7], the Soviets were thus able to round up much of the Polish, Jewish and Belarusian intelligentsia.

Initially the expression referred to the massacre of the Polish military officers confined at the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp in Katyn Forest near the village of Gnezdovo, a short distance from Smolensk, Soviet Union. More recently the phrase also became associated with the murder of other Polish citizens - prisoners of war (POWs) from Kozelsk, Starobielsk (Starobelsk) and Ostashkov camps[8] and political prisoners from West Belarusian and West Ukrainian prisons[9], shot on Stalin's orders in Katyn forest, NKVD (Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del) headquarters in Smolensk and at an abattoir in the same city[10] and the prisons of Kalinin (Tver), Kharkov, Moscow and other Soviet cities[11].

The discovery of one of the mass graves by Nazi Germany in 1943, after its armed forces occupied the site in 1941, precipitated the severance of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London in 1943.

The Soviet Union denied the accusations until 1990, when the USSR acknowledged that NKVD was responsible for the massacre and coverup[12]. Although the Russian authorities have admitted the Soviet role in the massacre, there is some resentment in Russia over the issue, reflected in the refusal by the Russian government to call the massacre a war crime or an act of genocide, which would necessitate the prosecution of surviving perpetrators [13]. Some Russians continue to believe the version propagated by the Soviet government until 1989, in which it was the Germans who killed the Poles after invading the Soviet Union in mid-1941[14].

The massacre

Preparations

Katyn war cemetery, main gate

Approximately 250,000 Polish soldiers had become prisoners of war following the invasion and defeat of Poland by the Nazis on September 1st, 1939, joined by the Soviet Union on the September 17th - three weeks after the signing of their secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or Hitler-Stalin Pact[15].

As early as September 19, 1939, People's Commissar for Internal Affairs and First Rank Commissar of the State Security Lavrentii Pavlovich Beria ordered NKVD to create a Directorate of Prisoners of War[16] (or Board of the NKVD of the USSR for Prisoners of War and the Interned headed by State Security Captain, Pyotr K. Soprunenko[17]) for the management of Polish prisoners. NKVD took custody of Polish prisoners from the Red Army and began organizing a network of reception centers and transfer camps and arranging rail transport to the prisoner-of-war camps in western USSR. The camps were: Jukhnovo (rail station of Babynino), Yuzhe (Talitsy), Kozelsk, Kozelshchyna, Oranki, Ostashkov (Stolbnyi Island on Seliger Lake near Ostashkov), Putyvli (rail station of Tetkino), Starobielsk, Vologod (rail station of Zaenikevo) and Gryazovets^ . Kozelsk and Starobielsk were used mainly for officers, while Ostashkov was mainly used for scouts, gendarmes, policemen and jailers. Contrary to a widespread misconception, only about 8,000 out of about 15,000 POWs in these camps were officers as the prisoners included significant numbers of Polish intelligentsia in addition to policemen, reservists, and active military officers[citation needed]. The approximate distribution of the men in the camps was as follows: Kozelsk, 5,000; Ostashkov, 6,570; and Starobelsk, 4,000. These added up to a total of 15,570.[18]

Countours of mass graves are covered with limestone tablets, symbolic gravestones

Once in camps, from October to February, the Poles were subjected to lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation. The Poles were encouraged to believe they would be released[19], but the interviews were in effect a selection process to determine who would live and who would die.[20]. However according to the NKVD evaluation, the prisoners could not be induced to adopt pro-Soviet attitudes[21]. They were declared "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority"[22] and on March 5, 1940, according to a note to Stalin prepared by Lavrenty Beria, members of Soviet politburo – Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Voroshilov, and Beria – signed an order of execution of 25,700 Polish "nationalist and counterrevolutionary" activists kept in camps and prisons of the occupied Western parts of Ukraine and Belarus[23].

File:Katyn-ZdjLotn1.jpg
Aerial photo of the mass murder site of October 13, 1943

Execution

In the period from April 3 to May 19 1940 about 22,000 POWs and prisoners were murdered: 14,700[24]-15,570[25] from the three camps and about 11,000[26] prisoners in Western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. A 1956 memo from KGB chief Alexander Shelepin to First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev confirmed 21,257 of these killings at the following sites: Katyn - 4,421, Starobelsk Camp - 3,820, Ostashkov Camp - 6,311, other places of detention - 7,305[27]. 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 eliminated almost half the Polish officer corps[28]. Altogether, during the massacre the NKVD murdered 14 Polish generals[29]: 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 Lwów), 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[30]. They were taken to the Yukhnov camp and then to Gryazovets. They were the only ones who escaped death.

File:Katyn-ZdjLotn2.jpg
Aerial photo of the mass graves during the German exhumation of April of 1943

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).

File:Katyn2.gif
Polish money and military badges found in the mass graves

Detailed information on the executions in 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[31].

The killings were methodical. After the condemned's personal information was checked, he was then 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.

Discovery

File:KatynPL-mogily.jpg
Mass graves at the Katyn war cemetery

The fate of Polish POWs was first raised soon after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, when the Polish government-in-exile (located in London) and the Soviet government agreed to cooperate against Germany, and a Polish army on Soviet territory was to be formed. When Polish general Władysław Anders began organizing this army, he requested information about the Polish officers. Stalin assured him and Sikorski during a personal meeting that all the Poles had been freed, though some of them may have escaped (for example, to Manchuria).[32]

The fate of the missing prisoners remained a mystery until April 1943 when the German Wehrmacht discovered the mass grave of more than 4,000 Polish military reserve officers in the forest on Goat Hill near Katyn. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, saw this discovery as an excellent tool to drive a wedge between Poland, Western Allies, and the Soviet Union. On April 13 Berlin Radio announced this find to the world: "A great pit was found, 28 metres long and 16 metres wide, filled with twelve layers of bodies of Polish officers, numbering about 3,000. They were clad in full military uniform, and while many of them had their hands tied, all of them had wounds in the back of their necks caused by pistol shots. The identification of the bodies will not cause great difficulties because of the mummifying property of the soil and because the Bolsheviks had left on the bodies the identity documents of the victims. It has already been ascertained that among the murdered is General Smorawiński from Lublin."[33]

The Soviet government immediately denied the German charges and claimed that the Poles, war prisoners, 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 construction work west of Smolensk and who [...] fell into the hands of the German-Fascist hangmen...".[34]

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. Both German and an ensuing International Red Cross investigations of the Katyń corpses soon produced physical evidence that the massacre took place in early 1940, at a time when the area was still under Soviet control.[35]

File:KatynPL-grobyBS.jpg
Symbolic graves of generals Bronisław Bohatyrewicz and Mieczysław Smorawiński, both murdered in the massacre

In April 1943, when Polish Government in Exile led by General Władysław Sikorski insisted on bringing this matter to the negotiation table with Soviets and on an investigation by the International Red Cross[36]. Stalin used the Katyń Massacre "unsupported allegations" as the pretext to withdraw recognition of Sikorski's government in Britain on April 26, accuse it of collaborating with Nazi Germany[37], and start a campaign to get the Western Allies to recognize the Soviet puppet Polish government led by Wanda Wasilewska. Sikorski, whose uncompromising stance on that issue was beginning to create a rift between Western Allies and Soviets, died suddenly two months later. The cause of his death is still disputed.[38]

Cover up

The Katyń Massacre was beneficial to Nazi Germany, whose propaganda machine used it to discredit the Soviet Union. Dr. Goebbels wrote in his diary: "Foreign commentators marvel at the extraordinary cleverness with which we have been able to convert the Katyn incident into a highly political question." 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 civilisation; 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.[39]

To the Western Allies, the Katyń Massacre and the resulting Polish-Soviet crisis were 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. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt were increasingly torn between their commitments to their Polish ally, the uncompromising stance of Sikorski and the demands - often bordering on political blackmail - by Stalin and his diplomats, whose policies were evident in the comments of Soviet ambassador to London, Ivan Maisky, who told Churchill that Poland's fate was sealed as "a country of 20 millions next door to a country of 200 millions." [40]

When in April 1943 Goebbles was informed that the German Army had to withdraw from the Katyń area, he entered a prediction in his diary: "Unfortunately we have had to give up Katyn. The Bolsheviks undoubtedly will soon 'find' that we shot 12,000 Polish officers.".[41] And indeed - having retaken the Katyń area almost immediately after the Red Army had recaptured Smolensk, Soviet Union begun the cover-up, with NKVD destroying a cemetery the Germans had permitted the Polish Red Cross to build and removing other evidence. In January 1944, the Soviet Union sent the "Special Commission for Determination and Investigation of the Shooting of Polish Prizoners of War by German-Fascist Invaders in Katyn Forest," to investigate the incidents again. The 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 Katyń area was under German occupation. No foreign personnel, including the Polish communists, were allowed to join Burdenko Commission.[42] [43] This forms a sharp contrast with the German investigation, which allowed wider access to both international press and organizations (like the Red Cross) and even used Polish workers, like Józef Mackiewicz[44].

In private, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed that the atrocity was likely carried out by the Soviets. According to the note 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 Russians: "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." Churchill's own post-war account of the Katyn affair is laconic. In his memoirs, he quotes the 1944 Russian inquiry into the massacre, which predictably proved that the Germans had committed the crime, and adds, "belief seems an act of faith."[45]

Katyń was a controversial issue for US politicians. Two US POWS were brought by Germans to Katyń in 1943 for an international news conference. The ranking officer was Col. John H. Van Vliet who in 1945 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[46]. 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.[47]

In 1944 Roosevelt assigned Army Captain George Earle, his special emissary to the Balkans, to compile information on Katyn. Earle did so, using contacts in just Bulgaria and Romania. Earle, too, concluded that the Soviet Union was guilty. 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.[48]

File:Katyn3.jpg
Biggest of the mass graves at Katyn

In November 1945, seven officers of the German Wehrmacht, K.H. Strueffling, H. Remlinger, E. Böhom, E. Sommerfeld, H. Jannike, E. Skotki and E. Geherer were tried by a court of the victorious allies: the Americans, the English, the French and the Russians. They were condemned to death for their role in the Katyń massacre and were subsequently hanged. Three more were tried on the same charges; E.P. Vogel, F. Wiese, A. Diere. They received sentences of 20 years of hard labor, were turned over to the Russians and never heard of again.[49]

In 1946, the chief Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials 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 Katyń forest near Smolensk by the German fascist invaders",[50] but dropped the matter after the United States and the United Kingdom refused to support it and German lawyers mounted an embarrassing defense.[51]

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 Katyń massacre. It charged that the Poles had been killed by the Soviets[52] 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.[53]

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.

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. Katyń was a forbidden topic in postwar Poland. Not only the censorship suppressed all references to it, but even mentioning the atrocity was dangerous. Katyń 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 offical monument "To the Polish soldiers--victims of Hitlerite fascism--reposing in the soil of Katyn". Nevertheless, every year on Zaduszki feast similar memorial crosses were erected at Powązki cemetery and numerous other places in Poland, only to be dismantled by the police overnight. The Katyń subject remained a political taboo in Poland until the fall of communism in 1989. [54]

The truth surfaces

From the late 1980s pressure was being put not only on the Polish government, but on the Soviet one as well. Polish academics tried to include Katyń in the agenda of the 1987 joint Polish-Soviet commission to investigate consered episodes of the Polish-Russian history[55].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[56], and confirmed two other burial sites similar to the site at Katyń: Mednoje and Pyatikhatki. After further evidence was discovered by Poles and Americans in 1991 and 1992 in 1992 the Russian 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[57] [58]. Among them was Lavrenty Beria's March 1940 proposal[59] 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 [60] of March 5 1940; and Aleksandr Shelepin's March 3 1959 note[61] 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[62] [63].

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 the Katyn beforehand. The reason for these allegations is that Soviet Union and Nazi Germany added on 28th of September, a secret supplementary protocol[64] to the German Russian 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 town of Zakopane. The aim of these conferences was to coordinate the killing and the deportation policy [65] and exchange experience.A Cambridge University history professor George Watson believes that the fate of Polish prisoners was discussed at the conference[66]. This theory surfaces in Polish media[67], where it is also pointed out that similiar massacre of Polish elites (AB-Aktion) was taking place in the exact time and with similar methods in German occupied Poland.

In June 1998, Yeltsin and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski agreed that memorial complexes under construction 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'.[68]

During Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski's visit to Russia in September of 2004, Russian officials announced that they are willing to transfer all the information on the Katyń Massacre to the Polish authorities as soon as it is declassified[69]. 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 and that there is absolutely no basis to talk about this in judicial terms.[70] [71] Despite earlier declarations, President Vladimir Putin's government refused to allow Polish investigators to travel to Moscow in late 2004[72] 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[73] [74] [75].

Because of that, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance has decided to open its own investigation[76] [77] [78]. 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[79]. The Sejm also requested Russia to classify the Katyń massacre as 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 the Russian Federation "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." [80]

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 Russian documents, and the Russians rejecting that view and considering the matter closed.[81] [82]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Mosnews story: Katyn Massacre Was Not Genocide — Russian Military Prosecutor, 11.03.2005 online
  2. ^ BBC News story : Russia to release massacre files, December 16, 2004 online
  3. ^ Yahoo News: Russia says WW2 executions of Poles not genocide March 11, 2005 online
  4. ^ Template:Journal reference
  5. ^ Encyklopedia PWN 'KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939', last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
  6. ^ Encyklopedia PWN, 'KATYŃ', last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
  7. ^ Irving, David, Accident -- The Death of General Sikorski, 1967, ISBN 0718304209. pdf online
  8. ^ Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999-2000.
  9. ^ Zawodny, Janusz K., Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre, University of Notre Dame Press, 1962, ISBN 0268008493 partial html online
  10. ^ {{cite book}}: Empty citation (help), also in . ISBN 8385660623 + ISBN 8386643803. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Editor= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Others= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help).
  11. ^ See: . ISBN 8370012949. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Editor= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help), . ISBN 8385028811. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Editor= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help), . ISBN 8321114083. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help), . ISBN 838789379X. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Others= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help), . ISBN 8386713119. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Editor= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Others= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help), . ISBN 8386713127. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Editor= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Others= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help), . ISBN 8386713186. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Editor= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Others= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Pages= ignored (|pages= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, an excerpt from the minutes No. 13 of the Politburo of the Central Committee meeting;
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, Beria's March 1940 proposal;
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, Aleksandr Shelepin's March 3 1959 note to Khrushchev;
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre
  • ^ See #References, Books and articles, "The grave unknown elsewhere or any time before"
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, "The Katyn Diary of Leon Gladun"
  • ^ See #References, Books and articles, "Noncombatant Deaths in WW II"
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, The Polish Government official statement on April 17, 1943
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, Copy of the Soviet Note of April 25, 1943
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, "I saw it with my own eyes..."
  • ^ See #References, Books and articles, Van Vliet Report
  • ^ See #References, News, "Germans Hanged for Katyn"
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, "Committee to Investigate and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre (1951-52)..."
  • ^ See #References, Books and articles, "The Lies of Katyn"
  • ^ Russians still in Denial: Poles Reject Moscow's Statement
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, Excerpts of Nuremberg archieves
  • ^ See #References, News, "Polish priest deplores Russian blocking of massacre enquiry"
  • ^ See #References, News, "Russian victory festivities open old wounds in Europe"
  • ^ See #References, Books and articles, Memorial statement
  • ^ See #References, News, "It was Genocide"
  • ^ See #References, News, "Katyn Resolution Adopted"
  • ^ See #References, News, ...DESPITE POLAND'S STATUS AS 'KEY ECONOMIC PARTNER
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, Senate pays tribute to Katyn victims
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, IPN launches investigation into Katyn crime
  • ^ See #References, Primary sources, Nazi-Soviet Relations Page:Secret Supplementary Protocol
  • ^ See #References, Books and articles, Holocaust of Non-Jewish Poles During WWII
  • ^ See #References, Books and articles, THE KATYN MASSACRE: AN ASSESSMENT.
  • ^ See #References, News, Katyń ... kto wiedział?

References

Primary sources:
  • Template:Journal reference last accessed on 19 December 2005, in Polish language
  • an 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;
  • 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). proposal online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, in Russian language;
  • 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;
  • 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, online (also see the press release online), last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  • "The Katyn Diary of Leon Gladun", last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document. See entries on 25th Decembert, 1939 and 3rd April, 1940.
  • The Polish Government official statement on April 17, 1943, published in London on April 18, to the Germans announced (April 13, 1943) of the discovery of several enormous pits, filled with the corpses of murdered Polish officers, in the Katyn Forestonline, last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  • Copy of the Soviet Note of April 25, 1943, severing unilaterally Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations. online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  • online "I saw it with my own eyes...", last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  • 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
  • Excerpts of Nuremberg archieves: Nikzor.org - Fifty-Ninth Day: Thursday, 14th February 1946 (Part 7 of 15), Codoh.com KATYN: How the Soviets Manufactured War Crime Documents for the Nuremberg Court, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  • Polish government statement: Senate pays tribute to Katyn victims - 3/31/2005, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  • Polish government statement: IPN launches investigation into Katyn crime - 1/12/2004, last accessed on 02 January, 2006
  • Nazi-Soviet Relations Page: Secret Supplementary Protocol The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
Books and articles
News

Further reading

  • Books about the Katyń Forest Massacre
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  • 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;
  • Stanisław Swianiewicz, W cieniu Katynia (In the shadow of Katyń), Paryż 1976. English edition by Borealis Pub, 2000, as In the Shadow of Katyn: Stalin's Terror, ISBN 189425516X
  • J. Łojek (L. Jerzewski), Dzieje sprawy Katynia (History of the Katyń affair), Warszawa 1980;
  • Janusz K. Zawodny, Katyń, Lublin 1989;
  • A. Basak, Historia pewnej mistyfikacji. Zbrodnia katyńska przed Trybunałem Norymberskim (History of certain mistification: Katyń crime before the Nuremberg Trials) ISSN 01371126 in Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi: XXI, Wrocław 1993, ISBN 832291816X Table of contents online
  • Large list of Katyn related books at Polish Wikipedia article. Another Polish list

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