In the spring of 1940, on the orders of the highest russian authorities, nearly 15 1000 Polish officers and about 7.2 1000 Polish civilian citizens were murdered. The planet heard about this crime on 13 April 1943, erstwhile German radio reported the discovery of remains of Polish prisoners of war in the Katyń Forest. On the anniversary of this event we celebrate the Day of Memory of the Victims of Katyń Crime.
"Ze Smolenska reports that the local population indicated to the German authorities the location of secret mass executions carried out by Bolsheviks, where 10,000 Polish officers were murdered. The German authorities [...] found a gap 28 m long and 16 m wide, in which there were 12 layers of dead Polish officers in the number of 3,000" – the announcement of the German Radio Berlin was given on 13 April 1943 in the afternoon.
The Germans informed about the discovery in the Katyń Forest under Smolensk of the first graves of Polish citizens taken prisoner after the ZSRS aggression on our country on September 17, 1939.
Three years earlier, on 5 March 1940, the Political Office of the Central Committee of the WKP(b) at the request of Lavrientiy Beria, the national commissioner of the Interior, decided to destruct Polish prisoners of war from camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov and Poles held in prisons of NKVD of Western Belarus and Ukraine. According to Beria, in a note to Joseph Stalin: “All are hardened enemies of russian power, full of hatred for the russian system. [...] Everyone is just waiting for freedom to be able to actively engage in the fight against russian power.”
Mass executions of Polish prisoners of war began on 3 April 1940. “The prisoners were transported to Katyń, Kharkiv and Kalinina, where they were shot in the back of the head and buried in collective death pits,” says Dr. Janusz Drabiński, a historian dealing with Russian themes and the period of planet War II. In this way, NKVD officers murdered nearly 15,000 officers of the Polish Army, the Border defender Corps and police officers. About 7.2 1000 Polish citizens held in russian prisons were besides shot.
The fact about the destiny of Polish prisoners of war was discovered by Polish forced workers working for the Todt Organization, which built military facilities for Germans close Katyń. "They learned about the graves of the murdered prisoners at the turn of 1941 and 1942 from local residents. Then the cognition reached the Germans,” says the historian. The first exhumation work in the Katyń Forest was conducted by the German commission under the direction of the medical examiner Prof. Gerhard Buhtz since the end of March 1943. After medical, criminological and interrogation tests of local residents, experts announced that the remains of Polish officers murdered in the spring of 1940, erstwhile the area was in the hands of the Soviets, lay in the graves. “The Katyn crime was decided to usage German propaganda to break up the Allied Alliance between the USSR and Western countries,” explains Dr. Dr. Dr. Drabiński. To this end, the 3rd Reich authorities asked the global Committee of the Red Cross to set up a commission to analyse graves discovered in Katyn. The same conclusion was besides made by the Polish Government in London to the MKCK.
Moscow reacted sharply to this information. She immediately accused the 3rd Reich of murdering Poles, claiming that the prisoners were killed in the summertime of 1941, erstwhile the area was taken over by Germany. At the same time, russian authorities protested the appointment of the MKCK committee, and the disclosure of the execution gave Moscow an excuse to break diplomatic relations with the Polish government in exile from 25 to 26 April 1943.
The Germans so commissioned an investigation in Katyn of the method Commission of the Polish Red Cross headed by the Secretary-General Kazimierz Skarżyński. They worked in the Katyń Forest from April to June 1943. At that time more than 4,000 bodies were exhumed and confirmed that officers were murdered in the spring of 1940. “This was established on the basis of letters and newspapers found at the remains, dates of which ended at the turn of April and May 1940 and the age of pines increasing on graves,” explains the historian.
The same conclusion was reached by a 12-member global Medical Commission appointed by the Germans, which arrived at the scene on 28 April. Experts in forensic medicine and criminology from countries occupied by the 3rd Reich and neutral Switzerland, headed by Dr. Ference Orsós, manager of the Institute of Judicial medicine in Budapest, unanimously stated that executions on Polish prisoners were carried out in March and April 1940.
Despite this, for another half a century the Kremlin blamed the Nazis for the Katyn genocide. This version was confirmed by the russian commission of Nikolai Burdenko. After Smolensk's re-occupation in September 1943 by the Red Army, by means of forged and planted evidence and evidence of false witnesses, The Soviets ruled that the crimes on Polish officers were committed by Germany in the fall of 1941. This lie was duplicated for decades besides by the authorities of the People's Poland.
The fact about the perpetrators of genocide was not officially confirmed until April 13, 1990. At the time, after political change in Russia, its authorities officially admitted that the execution in Poles was 1 of the dense crimes of Stalinism. 2 years later, Russia's president Boris Jelcyn submitted copies of the most crucial papers concerning the Katyn case to the Polish side. To this day, however, a large proportion of crucial sources concerning this genocide are hidden in the archives of the Russian Federation.
In order to celebrate the memory of everyone murdered by the NKVD in Katyn, Kharkiv and Mednoje, and in another places the Polish Sejm in a resolution adopted by the acclamation in 2007 established on 13 April the Day of Memory of the Victims of Katyn Crime. This date refers to the minute erstwhile Germans announced information about the discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war.
