Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2023!

We are pleased to share with you great news. Libra Institute, Inc. has just published a very important documentary entitled: The Katyń Operation 1939-1941; The struggle of American Polonia for Katyń Justice 2010-2020. 

In recognition of the significant contribution to the advancement of justice for the Katyn genocide by the participants and laureates of the Polonia Institute 2020 Competition on the History of Poland, Libra Institute is pleased to publish six award-winning papers from the 2020 Competition on the international significance of the denial of justice to the victims of Katyn. Congratulations to all authors whose essays on Katyn are published in the Katyn Operation 1939-1941!

Libra Institute, Inc.

https://www.librainstitute.org/

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Essay by Brian Gaydos

In 1939 Poland was set upon by its two aggressive neighbors, Germany and the Soviet Union. At this point in history, Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were working in concert as defined by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to bring an end to both the Polish political state and ethnic nation. The truth of Germany’s crimes is well researched and has been accessible for quite some time; however, the same cannot be said of the Soviet Union’s. The archives of the USSR and Russian Federation have consistently been tight-lipped on Soviet crimes.

One of the starkest examples of this cover-up is the Katyn Massacre, the execution of roughly 22,000 Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals, and others in 1940 (Wasilewski). The purpose of this essay is to examine the numerous investigations of the Katyn Massacre, their conclusions, how this information was handled, and the consequences of each.

Following the joint invasion of Poland in 1939, the Soviet Union found itself in possession of “around a quarter of a million” Polish prisoners (Sanford 24). The Polish were considered a “national and class opponent” by Soviets, so “[t]he main aim of Soviet policy[ ]was to destroy Polish political, social and cultural influence” (Sanford 8, 24). As the Red Army was overwhelmed by the number of Polish prisoners of war taken, their custody was transferred to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (abbr. NKVD), which sent many lower-ranking soldiers back to their homes (Cienciala 26). In October 1939, it was decided to separate the captured officers, policemen, intelligence agents, etc. to three separate camps called Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov, but some also remained in smaller NKVD prisons in Ukraine and Belarus (Cienciala 27).

On March 5th, 1940, Stalin personally approved a genocidal order to kill all these men and the one woman held by the NKVD (Wolsza, Cienciala 29). The estimated 21,875 prisoners from the camps were moved to Smolensk, Kharkiv, and Kalinin and executed by night from April through June, by roughly 125 trusted NKVD agents (Parrish, Wolsza). These Poles were then buried “in nameless graves in Bykivnia, Katyn, Mednoye and Piatykhatky” (Wolsza).

In July 1941, German forces took the land near Smolensk (including Katyn). Lieutenant Friedrich Ahrens’s 537th Signals Regiment was stationed in former NKVD buildings in the forest (Cienciala 215). Remains of Polish soldiers were found in early 1943, and orders were sent to “establish the circumstances and the numbers of those killed” in March (Sanford 128). On April 13th, Radio Berlin made the discovery of the graves known internationally following smaller internal publications the days before (Cienciala 216). Of course, the Soviets denied the German accusation and told a weak story to blame Germany until the Katyn forest could be reclaimed and a stronger defense prepared (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Depending on which story the Western Allies supported, the Allies would either be united against Germany while ignoring the blood on Stalin’s hands or the Allies would be divided with clear consciences in the West.

Naturally, the London-based Government of the Republic of Poland in exile made a request for the International Red Cross (IRC) to investigate the German discovery of mass graves in Katyn and pressed the Soviet government to release internal records related to Polish prisoners in the USSR (Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Unfortunately, the German government made the same request to the IRC at almost the same time (Sanford 129). This seemingly trivial coincidence snowballed into a critical problem for the Poles. This coincidence raised Allied suspicion of German-Polish collaboration and led to British and American support of the Soviet defense (Cienciala 217).

Allegedly as a result of Polish support for this investigation and baseless Soviet claims of Polish cooperation with Germany, the Soviet Union broke ties with the Polish government-in-exile on April 25th (Wasilewski). However, considering the fact that Stalin told Polish Communist leader Wanda Wasilewska months earlier in January 1943 that “he expected a breakdown in Soviet-Polish relations,” it is more accurate to say that the Katyn Massacre was an opportune time to execute an existing plan to end relations (Cienciala 214). Due to the pressure of their allies and the fact that the Soviets would never cooperate with an impartial investigation, the IRC inquiry was dropped after the IRC had already taken preparatory steps to investigate (Żelazko). Despite the harsh consequences Poland faced for seeking the truth, investigations into the massacre followed.

Between the unfortunate incident with the IRC and the Soviet reclaiming of the Katyn Forest, two important investigations took place. The first investigation was carried out by a subgroup of the Polish Red Cross (PRC) called the PRC Technical Commission, and the second by a group called the International Katyn Commission. The PRC started investigating earlier than the International Commission, but their investigation lasted longer and did not end until after the International Commission’s investigation had started and ended (Sanford 131). The PRC’s team was made up of Polish medical experts including the PRC’s secretary-general Kazimierz Skarżyński (Cienciala 222). These Polish experts are often dismissed by historical revisionists as Nazi collaborators, but this could not be further from the truth; Skarżyński himself was an informant “to the Polish underground commissioner for civilian warfare in Warsaw” (which was occupied by Germany), to underground organizations like to the Home Army and to the Polish government-in-exile (Cienciala 222). Furthermore, despite the similar conclusions drawn by the German and Polish investigators, “[t]hey refused[ ]to support German propaganda or to get involved in anti-Soviet activity” (Sanford 131). The International Commission was comprised of medical, forensics, criminology, and forestry experts from across Europe. Its findings are also frequently dismissed as Nazi propaganda as its members were all from German-occupied or allied states (except for Switzerland’s Dr. François Naville), but this view is erroneous
(International 1).

At least three members of the PRC Technical Commission remained in Katyn to aid in exhumations while the International Commission was present, and they likely performed the gruesome exhumations alongside one another (Cienciala 222). These Polish workers would have served as a check against falsification of evidence by the German-backed investigators. Furthermore, in the early 1950s – well after the Nazis lost power– the International Commission’s Italian, Danish, Swiss, Hungarian, and Croatian representatives all confirmed: “the voluntary nature of their testimony, the absence of German pressure, and the unanimous nature of their conclusions that the Poles had been killed in Spring 1940” (Sanford 143). Another important note is that the International Commission was unrelated to the IRC despite the similar name the Germans gave to add legitimacy to the former. Even the International Commission’s own Dr. Helge Tramsen of Denmark informed a British intelligence agent that “he had been misled into believing that it was a fully independent Red Cross inquiry” (Sanford 131).

Both investigations drew similar conclusions, but each had unique methods that combine to support the integrity of their findings. As the International Commission was at least partially aimed at proving the Germans could not have committed this crime, their investigation focused more on pinpointing when the massacre took place. First, the properly fitted winter clothing, the dated documents, and the lack of insects remain on the bodies of the Polish victims indicated that they had been killed while the temperatures were low (International 2). Historical revisionists often note that the documents may have been tampered with in secret, but this is not possible due to the state in which the bodies were found. “Iron hooks, pickaxes, and spades” were needed to separate the decomposing bodies conjoined by thickened bodily fluids, and the personal effects of the victims formed “solid lump[s] stuck together with fatty body wax” rendering falsification impossible (Sanford 133, Cienciala 223).

Interviews with locals also informed the commission that “large railway transports of Polish officers were unloaded almost daily at the Gniesdowa railway station near Katyn” in March and April 1943 who were “never seen again” (International 1). Chief Forester determined the scrawny pines above the mass graves “were probably planted at [the] spot about three years [prior],” and Dr. Orsós of Hungary determined the time of death of the victims by examining their skulls (International 2). Based upon Orsós’s investigations of executions in Hungary in the 1920s, he was able to determine that the bodies had been decaying for at least three years due to the development of “multi-layered volcanic limestone incrustation on the top side of the loamy homogenized brain mash below” (Wolsza, International 2). The PRC also performed similar work but is most noted for the work it did preserving the documents found on the Poles, going so far as to disobey German leadership to do so (Cienciala 223).

These documents aided in the identification of many victims and, when combined with modern identifications, disproved German propaganda blaming a “‘Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy’” for the massacre by showing that somewhere between 700 and 900 of the victims were Jewish Poles (Fischer). The PRC never released an official report on their findings, but member Dr. Marian Wodziński personally released one in 1989 that agreed with the International Commission’s findings (Sanford 131, Cienciala 247). Following these inquiries, the Soviets recaptured the Smolensk region and the Soviet disinformation campaign began in earnest.

When the Red Army was again on Katyn’s doorstep on September 22nd, 1943, it was proposed that a special NKVD committee carry out “‘preparatory steps to expose the German provocation’” (Wasilewski). Three days later, the Red Army had retaken Smolensk and the coverup operation began (Żelazko).

On the 27th, Surgeon General of the Red Army Nikolai Burdenko requested to investigate the Katyn graves, but this request was denied for more than three months while “The Special Committee Composed of Representatives of Relevant Bodies” “investigated” (Wasilewski). This committee was led by Vsevolod Merkulov and Sergei Kruglov, overseers of the Katyn Massacre and the operations of Kozelsk, Starobelsk, and Ostashkov prison camps respectively, and their involvement with the massacre proved a strong motivator to hide their crimes (Cienciala 227).

The closest thing to evidence of German guilt in the Katyn Massacre was that the bullets used were manufactured in Germany in 1930 and 1931 (Furr 30). This fact is commonly used by historical revisionists like Professor Grover Furr to imply German guilt for the massacre, but this view ignores the fact that this kind of ammunition was exported in large quantities from Germany to the USSR in the 1930s (Furr 38, 39). As Germans did not commit this crime, there was not any genuine evidence of German guilt, so the NKVD placed forged documents dated after May 1940 to make it appear that the victims had been alive after the International Commission claimed they were killed (Cienciala 227).

To supplement this “evidence” the NKVD threatened the prison laborers working at the Katyn graves with the “death penalty for the crime of ‘cooperating with the enemy’” to create testimony alleging German misconduct (Cienciala 227). The locals who had worked with the International and Polish commissions were also threatened to recant their statements and those who resisted were isolated or “‘liquidated’” (Wasilewski). Some witnesses, like the International Commission’s Parfion Kisielow, were recorded and used in Soviet Propaganda (Wasilewski). The most important result from this investigation were seventeen carefully “‘verified’” statements that were gathered from witnesses to be used in Dr. Burdenko’s upcoming investigation (Cienciala 227). This poor excuse for an investigation concluded on January 10th, 1944 (Wasilewski).

Two days after the coverup’s conclusion, Dr. Burdenko was finally allowed to begin his investigation with the “Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices” (translations vary) that is more commonly called the Burdenko Commission (Furr 20). As could be inferred from the name, the commission’s conclusions were prepared for the team before their investigation began (Wasilewski). The Burdenko Commission’s basis was formed in the supposition that the medical evidence cited in the International Commission’s report was fabricated by the Germans before they revealed the graves (Cienciala 228). As such and with the previously mentioned forged documents, the commission dismissed the 1940 date for execution and proposed that the German Lieutenant Friedrich Ahrens’s 537th Signals (incorrectly listed as sappers) Regiment killed Polish prisoners who had been working near Katyn “between September and December 1941” during the German invasion (Żelazko). There are two key problems with this claim: first is that no remains of Russian civilians killed around the same time as the Poles were found in Katyn, and second is the fact that Polish prisoners were often executed en masse before Soviet retreats (Cienciala 228, Kochanski 129).

To bolster their claims, the Soviets invited a group of American, British, Polish, and French journalists to visit the Katyn graves. They received only a “weak, shoddy and unconvincing” presentation (Sanford 139). This group wholly lacked the technical knowledge of forensics or criminology to make meaningful statements, but the daughter of the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Kathleen Harriman, was convinced and subsequently “used by Roosevelt and the State Department” to support the indefensible stance the United States and the United Kingdom took to protect their Russian ally (Sanford 139). This investigation is worthless for determining the truth of Katyn but is important due to the long-held support it received.

Questioning the Katyn Massacre was not permitted in communist Poland after hostilities ceased and one most peculiar case of persecution must be looked at. A Polish lawyer named Dr. Roman Martini, an “independent character” with a history of prosecuting Gestapo crimes was tasked by Poland’s communist government in 1945 with interviewing Poles related to the Katyn Massacre and its investigations (Cienciala 232, Sanford 207). The people subjected to this investigation hid and fled the country to avoid arrest, but it came to an end with Dr. Martini’s mysterious death the same year (Komaniecka). A young couple was charged with murdering Martini in his apartment and claimed to have killed him for seducing the young fiancée, but this story is highly suspect (Sanford 207). It is believed that Dr. Martini found the truth about Katyn during his investigation and was then killed by the far-reaching arm of the NKVD and their Polish allies to silence him (Cienciala 233). A report, allegedly written by Dr. Martini, that blamed the Soviets for the Katyn Massacre surfaced after his death, but this document is an undoubted forgery as it includes several impossible claims (Sanford 207).

Following this abruptly ended investigation, the International Military Tribunal’s Nuremberg trials the following year were the next notable discussion of Katyn. The Nuremberg trials were established in such a way that the Big Three could select certain topics to be blacklisted from the discussion; however, the Soviet Union did not blacklist Katyn, instead opting to charge Germany with the crime (Cienciala 230). Soviet prosecutor General Roman Rudenko claimed that Article 21 of the International Military Tribunal charter (“The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge”) confirmed the Burdenko report as fact upon its admission into evidence (United Nations 5, Cienciala 235).

Due to strong opposition from the Western Allies, an agreement to allow three defense and prosecution witnesses to testify was reached (Żelazko). Perhaps to maintain the united appearance of the Big Three, “[t]he Tribunal did not refer to material evidence possessed by the Polish [government-in-exile]” even though it contained information from “crucial witnesses such as Professor Świaniewicz,” one of the few intended victims of the Katyn Massacre who was not killed (Żelazko, Sanford 140). The Soviet witnesses were the International Commission’s Bulgarian forensics expert Dr. Anton Markov, a Burdenko Commission forensics expert, and the deputy mayor of Smolensk (Cienciala 232). None of the testimony itself is that valuable, but the circumstances surrounding Dr. Markov’s is of special interest. Bulgaria fell into Soviet hands and Markov was branded “a ‘foe of the people” for his work (Żelazko). He was imprisoned for several months until he denounced the International Commission in a Bulgarian trial for his freedom and at the Nuremberg trials where he gave the same testimony, strongly suggesting he was under duress (Sanford 131). The German defense consisted of Friedrich Ahrens and two other officers who worked with and above him (Sanford 140). The German witnesses left no doubt that the 537th Signals Regiment could not be responsible for the massacre by proving that they were in Smolensk “from December 1941” onwards, later than the Soviet story allowed for (Komaniecka). The strong testimonies given by the German witnesses and the weakness of the Soviet story saw the Katyn Massacre left off the final list of crimes committed by the Third Reich (Cienciala 232). The fact that Ahrens was not charged with committing the Katyn Massacre dealt a huge blow to the credibility of the Soviet fabrication, but nevertheless, it persisted.

The beginning of the end of official recognition of the Soviet lie came in the early 1950s with the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre’s investigation. This bipartisan congressional committee – commonly called the Madden Committee after its chairman Ray Madden – was formed of congressmen with “constituencies containing high percentages of Polish Americans,” and was tasked with investigating the massacre and the American handling of information related to it (Sanford 142).

After examining virtually every available report on the Katyn Massacre, they concluded that “there does not exist a scintilla of proof, or even any remote circumstantial evidence, that this mass murder took place[] later than the spring of 1940 [when t]he Poles were… prisoners of the Soviets and the Katyn Forest area was under Soviet occupation” (United States 2). As to which organization carried out the murders, the “committee unanimously [found], beyond any question of reasonable doubt, that the Soviet NKVD[] committed the mass murders of the Polish officers and intellectual leaders in the Katyn Forest” (the United States 37). This firm confirmation of the truth was a pleasant change from the previous American backing of the Soviet lie and allowed the committee to focus on their investigation of American policy.

One report from Colonel John H. Van Vliet, an American POW who visited Katyn, was “either removed or purposely destroyed in Army intelligence,” and two more reports critical of the Soviet Union by “Colonel Henry Szymanski, U.S. liaison officer with the Polish Army 2nd Corps and George Earle, Roosevelt’s special emissary in the Balkans and Turkey” were also “suppressed” in Army Intelligence (Cienciala 238, United States 7, Cienciala 239). However, most shocking was the behavior of the Office of War Information and Federal Communications Commission which went “beyond the scope of their official Government responsibilities on this matter of Katyn” to “usurp” the Office of Censorship’s duties by launching a “program of silencing Polish radio commentators” to defend the Soviet reputation (United States 9, 11). The British Foreign Office claimed the American investigation had “an obvious political bias and ha[d] not been drawn up in an exclusively judicial fashion,” so they held their official stance on the evidence as inconclusive (Sanford 143). While the investigation could reasonably be tied to anti-communist sentiments in the United States, the bottom line is that the supposed anti-Soviet bias arose from the fact that the evidence could only point towards Soviet guilt. It was also recommended the US delegates of the United Nations “present the Katyn case,” but this plan was stopped due to Soviet power within the UN and to help end the Korean War (United States 12, Cienciala 239).

In the decades between 1952’s Madden Committee report and the 1990s partial revelation of facts regarding Katyn, multiple Soviet leaders are rumored to have privately made remarks admitting Soviet guilt for the Katyn Massacre to powerful Soviets and Poles, but such claims are unverifiable. What is known with certainty is that the Soviet Union continued to publicly blame the Germans and worked to obscure the truth in multiple ways, including building and publicizing a large memorial to the victims of a much smaller but legitimately German massacre in a Belorussian village somewhat near Katyn called Khatyn (Cienciala 241).

In the 1970s, members of the Polish diaspora in the United Kingdom worked to build a monument to the victims of the Katyn Massacre despite the sustained refusal of the UK government to acknowledge the truth of the matter. This large memorial obelisk was unveiled in September of 1976 after fighting official and unofficial resistance from both the British and Soviet governments for several years (Sanford 186). Katyn largely fell from the public conscience outside of Poland following this struggle; however, dedicated groups of Poles who had lost loved ones in the massacre prevented it from being forgotten.

The importance of the Katyn Massacre to the Polish people, the repeated failures of the Soviet government to provide adequate answers, the growing strength of the Solidarity Movement, and Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost policies created the perfect storm to reveal the truth. In 1985, the Prime Minister of Poland, Wojciech Jaruzelski, asked Mikhail Gorbachev to jointly reach a “resolution of the Katyn problem” while Gorbachev visited Poland shortly after taking office (Cienciala 245). This was put on hold while Gorbachev learned the ropes of his new position, but on April 21st, 1987, the creation of a joint committee of Polish and Soviet party historians “to explain the problems of the shared history of both countries” was announced (Żelazko). In 1988, the first time in nearly 45 years, “discussion of Stalinist crimes… enjoyed official toleration” instead of persecution in Poland (Cienciala 245). Unsurprisingly, the revelations of Stalin-era crimes hurt Soviet-Polish relations but forced Soviet leadership to tolerate more Polish freedom “in a last-ditch effort… to rescue Polish-Soviet relations” (Sanford 197). Unfortunately, the Soviet historians were not allowed to stop towing the party line and stalled the investigation into 1989 claiming they had “no sources to determine guilt” (Żelazko).

Meanwhile, the Poles continued working on this subject and prepared “a devastating critique that deprived [the Burdenko Commission’s report] of any credibility” (Cienciala 247). This critique combined with the newly published report by Dr. Wodziński on the PRC investigation and the new policy of tolerating questioning on Katyn allowed the Polish government to “‘[place] blame for Katyn directly on the Russians’” through spokesman Jerzy Urban for the first time in February and March of 1989 (Cienciala 248). While this was happening, the Soviet government developed a new party line in the USSR, while the Solidarity movement’s election victory ushered in the end of communism in Poland (Cienciala 248). Following the 1989 elections, Jaruzelski, now the president, made his upcoming April visit to Moscow dependent on Soviet acknowledgment of responsibility for the Katyn Massacre (Cienciala 251).

In February of 1990, it was discovered that Soviet historians who accessed some Soviet archives through universities had discovered documents proving NKVD responsibility for the Katyn Massacre (Cienciala 250). This information was given to President Jaruzelski to assure his visit (Cienciala 252). It was decided to save the Soviet Union from embarrassment by announcing the truth before the historians could, but historian Natalia Lebedeva released a statement that “seemed to confirm that the NKVD had to be blamed for the Katyn Massacre” about one month before the official government admission (Żelazko).

On April 13th, 1990, President Gorbachev personally gave President Jaruzelski “NKVD dispatch lists for the prisoners who were executed in spring 1940” and the Soviet news agency TASS announced that the NKVD leaders Lavrenty Beria and Vsevolod Merkulov were personally responsible for the deaths “of the approximately 15,000 prisoners from Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk camps” (Cienciala 252).

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Russian Federation, hopes were high that the democratic state would see more transparency, and at first, it appeared that way. In October of 1992, chief Russian Archivist Rudolf Pikhoya gave the democratically elected Polish President Lech Wałęsa a packet of key documents that disclosed the full scale of the Katyn Massacre, after his request earlier in the year for related documents (Komaniecka). The documents included the Katyn execution order from March 5, 1940, signed by Joseph Stalin. From examining the contents of the files, it became “clear that all Soviet Party leaders after Stalin [had] reviewed the contents” which had been “sealed [in] packets in Section 6 of the Central Committee’s General Department” (Cienciala 255). These documents expounded upon the verifiable facts on the Katyn Massacre at the time, but more work was still needed. The Russian and Polish team of historians scoured Russian archives following the revelation, but they were never able to find documents detailing “the Troika protocols (death sentences) and their implementation, nor documents showing where the prisoners jailed in Belarus and Ukraine had been shot and buried” (Cienciala 257).

The original 1990 investigation continued for more than a decade, but there were no more breakthroughs near the scale of those in 1992, and it came to an official end in 2005 with an outrageous claim from its Russian head Aleksandr Savenkov that “there was no evidence that genocide had been committed.” (Cienciala 259). Over time, the Polish groups who had successfully pressured governments to investigate Katyn lost their momentum, so there has been little motivation for the Russian government to search their archives further (Sanford 203). Quite on the contrary, it has become Russian policy in more recent years to wage a quiet and organized “‘information war’ against the West” by publishing claims wholly at odds with historical fact (Gera). The Soviet Union’s role in the Second World War has become “a linchpin of Russia’s national identity” and many “bristle” when the heinous acts committed under Stalin’s barbarous rule are questioned or brought to light. As such, it is unlikely the Russian Federation will attempt to reveal any more information on the massacre without drastic leadership changes.

It has now been 80 years since this most awful crime was committed, and its impact is still coming to light. First and foremost, the unknown burial locations of many victims of the Katyn Massacre have left Polish soldiers with undignified burials that are at odds with their religions’ standards. Perhaps even more importantly, this disgraceful act has left the families of these patriots lacking a place to mourn and honor their loved ones. Out of respect for these men and women and their families, it is only right that these burial sites be located, and the remains respectfully marked and buried. As all the perpetrators of the massacre are now dead, they cannot be prosecuted for their crimes, but the Russian government should give an apology for Russian obstructions to the investigation of Katyn, if not for the massacre itself. Financial compensation to the families of victims would not be an unreasonable request to the Russian government, but the different Russian and Polish views on the massacre would greatly complicate this possibility. A large donation to a memorial fund would be a much more achievable goal and could even help to slightly relax Russian-Polish tensions.

Russian-Polish relations have been strained for hundreds of years, so it would be inaccurate to attribute all Russian-Polish conflict solely to Katyn, but the Katyn Massacre continues to play an important role in their relations (Sanford 5). Most obviously, the execution of nearly 22,000 soldiers and half a century spent lying about it will not be forgotten by the victims’ nation, and such antagonism will accordingly be on the mind of any Pole dealing with the Russian state. Much less obvious is the impact that killing a generation of leadership has had. The officers killed in the Katyn Massacre were not just military leaders; these were well-educated lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, and more that would have been Poland’s political and educational leaders as post-war Poland recovered from occupation (Cienciala 213). Instead, communist leaders were installed that maintained the Soviet stranglehold on Poland that benefited Soviet-Polish relations in the short-term, but the Polish people did not forget the decades of Soviet repression when the hold weakened. This caused the Polish state to become the fiercely anti-communist country that it is today, much to Russian dismay.

Lastly, on a global scale, allowing this genocidal massacre to go unpunished is an affront to international law and human decency. Soviet and Russian obstruction consistently prevented international organizations from investigating the massacre to draw objectively impartial conclusions on it, thus allowing the Soviet lie to live longer on than its original propagator.

This obstruction and promotion of falsehoods have allowed historical revisionists to dismiss truths about Katyn as Nazi propaganda and set the terrible precedent that genocidal acts can be tolerable and hidden.

For the sake of every single lost Pole and for the victims of other genocides, the memory and truth of the Katyn Massacre must be kept alive for as long as humanity endures. 

Works Cited

“79th Anniversary of Soviet Invasion of Poland.” #Poland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 17 Sept. 2018, poland.pl/history/history-poland/79th-anniversary-soviet-invasion-poland/. Cienciala, Anna M., et al.

Katyn: a Crime without Punishment. Yale University Press, 2007. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Katyn Massacre.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 28 Apr. 2017, www.britannica.com/event/Katyn-Massacre.

Fischer, Benjamin B. “The Katyn Controversy: Stalin’s Killing Field.” Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 14 Apr. 2007, 11:27 AM, www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art6.html.

Furr, Grover. The Mystery of the Katyn Massacre: The Evidence, The Solution. Erythros Press and Media, LLC, 2018.

Gera, Vanessa. “Putin Article Blaming Poland for WW2 Carnage Stirs Outrage in Warsaw.” Newsmax, Newsmax Media, Inc. Newsmax Media, Inc., 21 June 2020, www.newsmax.com/newsfront/putin-poland-betrayed-people/2020/06/21/id/973305/.

“International Katyn Commission Findings. Der Massenmord in Walde Von Katyn Ein Tatsachenbericht.” Katyn Documents: International Commission, International Katyn Commission, www.warsawuprising.com/doc/katyn_documents1.htm.

Kochanski, Halik. The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War. Harvard University Press, 2014.

Komaniecka, Monika, et al. “Katyn Massacre – Basic Facts.” Translated by Iwona Ewa Waldzińska, #Poland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 Apr. 2018, poland.pl/history/history-poland/katyn-massacre-basic-facts/.

Parrish, Michael. Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953. Praeger, 1996.

Sanford, George. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940 Truth, Justice and Memory. Routledge, 2005.

United Nations. “Nuremberg Charter.” England, London, 8 Aug. 1945.

United States, Congress, Madden, Ray J. The Katyn Forest Massacre: Final Report of the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre, Government Printing Office, 1952, pp. I-37.

Wasilewski, Witold. “The Birth and Persistence of the Katyn Lie.” Case Western Reserve International Law, 22 Mar. 2013, www.thefreelibrary.com/The+birth+and+persistence+of+the+Katyn+lie.-a0352231740.

Wolsza, Tadeusz. “The Katyn Massacre: Its Chronology, Scale, Victims and Unpunished Perpetrators.” Polish History, Muzeum Historii Polski, 13 Apr. 2020, polishhistory.pl/the-katyn-massacre-its-chronology-scale-victims-and-unpunished-perpetrators/.

Żelazko, Joanna. “The Katyn Massacre – the Way to the Truth.” Warsaw Institute, Warsaw Institute, 5 July 2019, warsawinstitute.org/katyn-massacre-way-truth/.

The post The Overlooked Extermination by B. Gaydos appeared first on Polonia Institute.

80-Year Tragedy for the Victims and Their Families

By Meredith Boyum

The subject that demands mentioning first and far foremost – the victims of the Katyn Genocide of World War II. 21,857 Poles were coldly executed by the Soviet Union in secret internment camps. Many of their bodies were discovered in a mass grave in the Katyn forest of Russia, giving the tragedy its symbolic name, but many more perished in other Soviet camps.

Sadly, the humanity of this devastating loss has been often overlooked in the tangled political aftermath of their deaths. A moral responsibility to justice was displaced by political motivations throughout the 1900s and continues today. Military forces thoughtlessly took their lives for the sake of conquest. Their tragedy was used by Hitler’s Germany for anti-Russian propaganda, and the lies of the Russian Government defiled their memory to evade punishment. This essay seeks not to give a sterile account of history and politics, but to present an empathetic, comprehensive truth about what happened to these innocent civilians in 1940 and why it has been challenging to bring justice to those responsible.

The cruelty towards Polish people in camps was not an isolated, unfortunate side effect of war. It was a calculated tactic. In 1939, Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin and German Dictator Adolf Hitler conspired to form the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, creating a ten-year non-aggression agreement between the two countries. More significantly, this pact detailed a carving out of eastern European territory, which would effectively “split” Poland between Germany and Russia. The two countries invaded Poland just days apart, occupying the entire nation, and commencing the second World War. Poles taken prisoner by the Soviets were strategically chosen to dissolve Polish stability and stifle any possibility of an uprising. Among those taken were military officers, police, professors, priests, thought leaders, artists, and intellectuals. Parallel to what was happening to Jews and others in Germany, this was a mass kidnapping of civilians. Kuznia-Plota (2004) states:

The selection of persons for extermination was also characterized by the fact that they formed part of the intellectual elite of the Polish Nation which, under the appropriate conditions, could assume leadership. The physical elimination of these people was meant to prevent the rebirth of Polish statehood based on their intellectual potential. Therefore, the decision of elimination was taken with the intention to destroy the strength of the Polish Nation and liquidate its elites.

Once imprisoned, Russian officers transported Poles to one of three camps. Kozielsk, Ostashkov, or Starobielsk. Many of the prisoners believed that they would eventually be released. Some were even allowed to send postcards to loved ones. On the fifth of March, 1940, the NKVD voted upon and ordered their deaths. Stalin signed off on the decision. The Soviet Union deemed all 21,857 innocent civilians, enemies of the Communist state, sentenced to execution. The Poles were transported to prisons and killed, each by a single bullet in the back of the head.

The families of these prisoners were left devastated, confused, and, worst of all, wholly silenced about their pain. Anyone who dared speak up about Soviet cruelties would either be repressed or imprisoned. Soviet efforts to thwart whistleblowers effectively influenced the narrative to outside nations, but not to most Poles, who were forced into collective silence about a terrible injustice inflicted upon their communities. Dr. Sebastian Legarski (2020) said about the time, “Society had no doubt that the ones responsible for the crime in Katyn were the Soviets.” Those families were denied a fundamental human right to mourn and memorialize their loved ones truthfully. Krystna Kryszkowiak recalls:

Mother told me to write that father died in the war… I wasn’t supposed to write about Ostashkov. She was worried that I would reveal something and be persecuted. So I wasn’t persecuted because I never told the whole truth because I knew what I was supposed to say.

In the summer of 1941, Hitler broke the non-aggression agreement by powerfully invading and occupying Russia. German troops stationed there stumbled upon the eight mass graves in Katyn. The Germans’ concern with investigating the mass killing was driven by politically motivated opportunism. Hitler wanted to use the discovery as propaganda to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its allies. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, genuinely responsible for the killings, committed its efforts to pin the crime on the Germans. Germans ordered an investigation by the International Red Cross, which operated under the name The Katyn Commission. During this, they found evidence that the killings occurred in the spring of 1940.

Joseph Stalin, facing the discovery of his war crimes, needed to discredit German findings. He starkly denied any involvement and warned against the lack of credibility in German results. He tasked Nikolay Burdenko with leading the Russian Secret Police (NKVD) in conducting their investigation. Their goal was to construct a false narrative. Since German troops didn’t invade Russia until months after the killings occurred, the evidence needed to suggest that the fallen Poles had instead been executed in 1941 by the hands of German invaders. This investigation became known as The Burdenko Commission. Paul R. Gregory and Maciej Siekierski (2008) describe the situation:

Burdenko’s report had a veneer of credibility: more than a hundred witnesses were interviewed, bodies exhumed, and documents examined. The war thus ended with two competing versions of the truth. 

Stalin had succeeded in his goal: obfuscate the truth enough to avoid a consequence.

Driving even more distance between the Soviets and Katyn blame, the Katyn massacre was then presented by the Soviet Union as one of the many criminal charges to be addressed during the Nuremberg Trials of 1945. The trials were an unprecedented, multi-nation, post-war scrutinization of crimes against humanity committed by Germany during the Second World War. The Burdenko Report, compiled under false pretenses, was cited as evidence of the German culpability of Katyn. It is worth noting that though Germany was innocent of the particular atrocity known as Katyn, many other Jewish and non-Jewish Poles were killed in German-occupied Poland and as prisoners of war. The death toll at German hands during World War II is staggering. However, the distinction of the blame for these individual atrocities is monumentally important. Poland is owed an explicit, accurate acknowledgment of its history.

Victims’ families are owed truth and justice. The efforts by the Soviet Union to protect the secret of Katyn would continue at the expense of Poland for decades to come.

During World War II, Joseph Stalin was in alliance with England’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the common goal of taking down Hitler. This alliance was tense and strange. Churchill and Roosevelt were cautious not to set off the hot temper of the Soviet Dictator. They opposed many of his tactics and ideology but failed to do much in swaying him. In a private conversation with Polish leader Władysław Sikorski, Churchill is quoted to have said about Katyn:

Unfortunately, the German accusations are probably true. The Bolsheviks are capable of the worst atrocities.

There is strong evidence to suggest that Churchill and Roosevelt were not just suspicious, but explicitly aware of the Soviets’ hand in the mass executions. Dariusz Tolczyk (2010) details some of this evidence:

Both Churchill and Roosevelt were better informed about the Katyn massacre than they were willing to admit. In 1943 and 1944, secret investigations were conducted on this matter by both the American and the British governments. In June 1943, the British Ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile, Sir Owen O’Malley, concluded his investigation with a report pointing unambiguously to the Soviets as the perpetrators.

Having read O’Malley’s report, Churchill said to Eden:

We should none of us ever speak a word about it.

By way of negligence to expose these war crimes, or to take the many red flags about the extent of Stalin’s capacity for evil seriously, the U.S and Britain were complicit.

In 1951, under the presidency of Harry S. Truman, the U.S. released a public document called the Madden Committee Report, detailing an investigation into the Katyn executions. The report was to serve two functions: openly determine who was responsible for the mass killings, and to determine if the U.S. was involved in covering it up. The committee found that the NKVD was indisputably to blame, but failed to be as decided about America’s involvement. The report seemed to suggest that the U.S was another passive victim of Stalinism, skimming over clear evidence that Roosevelt was aware of Stalin’s tyranny from the beginning of their alliance. Roosevelt wanted to keep a paranoid Stalin from inciting war with the U.S., which gave him a strong motivation for turning a blind eye to the innocent blood spilled at the hands of Stalin. The Madden Report concluded with requesting an investigation by the International World Court of Justice, though responsibility for Katyn would be disputed until nearly forty years later.

In 1987, a joint historical commission was formed between Poland and Soviet Russia to shed light on the discrepancies of the events at Katyn. This formation generated optimism from the Polish government that this commission could lead to Soviet disclosure of information about the Katyn mass graves and the thousands of missing Poles whose disappearances were still unsolved. In 1989, the Polish government still had no answers from the Soviet faction of the historical commission after two years and was rightfully impatient. The commission was formed to address Russian secrecy, yet pressing questions were left unaddressed. Finally, Poland officially announced to the public that Stalin’s Politburo, not German soldiers, were responsible for ordering the executions.

Backed into a corner, the Russian president in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that Russia was responsible for the executions, but only in the capacity that they had been allegedly carried out by NKVD leader Lavrenty Beria and his officers in a rogue act. This claim was based on government documents not publicly disclosed. Gorbachev at the time was campaigning an effort to increase transparency between the government and the Russian people, which motivated him to address the accusations from Poland. The admission of guilt may have also been an attempt to strengthen trust in the Polish-Russian relationship, which had been tumultuous since World War II. Gorbachev then launched Russia’s investigation into the tragic event for the alleged purpose of achieving further transparency.

Though long-awaited, the Russian admission in 1990 was one of many unfulfilling announcements from Russia that gave the appearance of transparency without any actual consequence. Essential details of Russia’s extensive cover-up and exposure of other complicit communist leaders were left out of the statement. Gorbachev seemed to hurriedly pin the blame solely on the NKVD, and pass over specifics. The move seemed beneficial to Gorbachev’s public image, and a move that he was forced to make. As Gregory and Siekierski (2008) articulated:

The Russian strategy continues to this day: deny responsibility for Katyn outright until denial is no longer possible and then admit as little as possible.

The accuracy of this statement is evident when evaluating the context of Gorbachev’s 1990 admission.

Two years later, in October 1992, the Russian government released some critical documents regarding Katyn to the Polish government. The decision to do so was spearheaded by the President at the time, Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was Gorbachev’s protege-turned-rival who, now having replaced Gorbachev in a position of power, had a bone to pick with the former Soviet President. Whether due to a personal rivalry or a genuine dedication to the truth (Likely the former), Yeltsin kicked open the doors to a broader picture of what happened in Katyn and gave a scathing indictment of Gorbachev’s 1990 admission of Soviet guilt. Once again, Katyn’s tragic history finds itself caught in a political brawl.

Yeltsin revealed that Gorbachev had removed the two most important files from the collection of documents related to Katyn. These hidden files contained not only evidence of the full gravity of Russian liability, but also correspondence dated as recently as 1990 that implicated a massive cover-up. Recovery of these two files was integral to bringing the truth to light.

In 2004, the Russian investigation into the Katyn operation started by Gorbachev in 1990 concluded. The Russian government did not publicly announce this news or notify the victims’ families. Furthermore, disclosure of the Katyn investigation documents was kept classified. Russia’s official statements are that of regret, but its actions suggest otherwise. It makes no sense for this war crime to go unpunished because of an unofficial, unspoken statute of limitations, or because those directly responsible are long dead.

In 2007, fifteen descendants of twelve Katyn victims sued Russia over the crimes committed against their relatives. This case went to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The Russian government still withheld requested documents to the court under the reasoning that their declassification would threaten the safety of their country. The court did not find substantial evidence for this claim. Russia’s lack of cooperation prevented any progress in the case. The court commented that it was

struck by the apparent reluctance of the Russian authorities to recognize the reality of the Katyn massacre,

and noted

a callous disregard for the applicants’ concerns and deliberate obfuscation of the circumstances of the Katyn massacre.

Later, in 2010, the Russian government made some Katyn documents publicly available on the internet, but it was an incomplete disclosure.

The lack of consequences that the Russian government has faced for the Katyn genocide is a frustrating conundrum. Stalin left a legacy of secrecy about Katyn that has somehow survived the test of time. Katyn victims’ families have spent decades searching for answers to no avail. That uncertainty causes significant emotional suffering. The smallest gesture of decency they could receive is a public release of all documents and evidence that Russia has, and an extensive, sincere public apology. The lack of this necessary act has contributed to a tense Polish-Russian relationship for years. Katyn is a topic of unresolved tension for Poland.

Unfortunately, Putin’s leadership style indicates little hope of Russian humility under his rule. There is an egregious anti-Polish attitude from the modern-day Russian government. Vladimir Putin has openly accused Poland of colluding with Hitler, causing World War II. In 2019, Putin used a Polish slur, calling a World War II-era Polish ambassador an “anti-Semitic pig.” On the subject of Katyn, he has effectively asked Poland to move on. Just days before the annual ceremony of remembrance at a historic building in Tver where 6,000 of the captured Poles were killed in 1940, the government ordered that the plaques memorializing the dead be taken down. Putin has repeatedly presented false history about Poland that has been overwhelmingly disproven. This attitude from Russian leadership is fueling a dangerous re-energization of anti-Polish sentiment in Russia and beyond.

Since few people, especially in the West, are aware of the strategic mistreatment of Polish people during World War II, the deep roots of Polish discrimination remain intact. No hard line has been drawn between the anti-Polish propaganda conceived by Hitler and Stalin and the offensive attitudes held towards Polish people today. The hateful stereotype of Polish people being intellectually inferior is a direct legacy of World War II tyranny and the Katyn massacre. First, German and Russian forces sought, with the full extent of their ability, to permanently devastate the Polish intellectual and political elite. When Poland was straining to regain stability, Hitler used this as evidence of Poland’s innate weakness. To convince society that Poles were subhuman would benefit Hitler and Stalin by dampening opposition from the public towards any cruel treatment of Poles.

Anti-Polish “humor” permeated Western media in the 1960s. Though anti-Polish bias is widely considered offensive in the U.S. today, it lingers in the form of subtext, insufficient awareness of history, and the occasional slip from a public figure. Those calling attention to these offenses are usually Polish people themselves. We are thus continuing the attitude that Polish suffering is solely the burden of Poland. Further, when Polish suffering during World War II is mentioned in history books, it is often grouped in with Jewish suffering, presented as a footnote of the Holocaust. In these ways, we allow the de-legitimization of Polish culture to thrive well into the 21st century.

It would not be unreasonable for the Katyn descendants to receive reparations for their suffering from the Katyn genocide. After World War II, Germany was left with the atrocities of Hitler’s rule to atone for, and took on the immense task of distributing billions of dollars in reparations to descendants of holocaust victims and Israel. Several nations, including Poland, collaborated with the German government to form a foundation to aid Holocaust victims and descendants. Germany also outlawed Nazi hate symbols and encouraged a culture of collective regret. Contrast this to what Polish descendants of Katyn victims have received: Denial, indifference, and encouragement to move on…

The decision to murder 22,000 Poles was made to incapacitate the Polish nation in the long term. It stands to reason that a proper recompense would be an opposite action to the crime, for Russia to make a concerted attempt to uplift, aid, and support Polish citizens, especially families of the victims. It makes no sense for this war crime to go unpunished because of an unofficial, unspoken statute of limitations, or because those directly responsible are long dead.

It is a matter of international importance that the Russian government be held accountable for its long-standing tradition of controlling its history. Unopposed immoral leadership is a threat to every nation. It is not enough for the current Russian leadership to verbally refute their history of totalitarianism; it must, with its actions, close the doors on the Stalin era for good. With each passing day without a resolution, the pain of Katyn grows for victims’ descendants. As long as Katyn is unresolved and anti-Polish revisionism persists, the nightmare of World War II still haunts Poland.

Works Cited

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Fischer, Benjamin B. “The Katyn Controversy: Stalin’s Killing Field.” Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 14 Apr. 2007; https://www.cia.gov/static/5a3e46e77b3c417a15bcf927e7b049cc/Stalins-Killing-Field.pdf 

Gregory, P. R., & Siekierski, M. (2008). Exhuming Secrets. Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://www.hoover.org/research/exhuming-secrets

Haskew, M. E. (2016, September 23). What did FDR know about the Katyn Forest Massacre? Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2016/09/23/18847/

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KATYN – THE TRUE STORY OF A LIE (KŁAMSTWO KATYŃSKIE), Directed by Emil Marat; Produced by the Polish History Museum, Poland 2020, Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mo0Q6FqT5c.

Lesser, Ben. “Katyn Massacre: Soviets Execute Tens of Thousands of Polish Officers.” Zachor Foundation, 2020, www.zachorfoundation.org/timeline/katyn-massacre-soviets-execute-tens-of-thousands-of- polish-officers.

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The post “AMERICANS FOR KATYŃ JUSTICE” AWARD appeared first on Polonia Institute.

Thomas Richard Langtry
Golden Gate University School of Law
San Francisco, CA

On March 5, 1940, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) sent a memo to Josef Stalin stating that “[t]he cases of 14,700 people located in prisoner-of-war camps … and … 11,000 people … in … the western regions of Ukraine and Belorussia” should be examined, “with the application of capital punishment by shooting … without summoning those under arrest and without presentation of the accusation. … Review of the cases and pronouncement of sentence [should] be entrusted to a troika consisting of comrades Merkulov, Kabulov, and Bashtakov” (Crozier, 2000, pp. 523-524). These orders were executed and became known as the Katyn Massacre.

In June 1941, after the Soviet occupation of Poland, Polish General Władysław Anders began organizing Polish forces to oppose German Nazi forces, which prompted him to ask about the officers that were missing as a result of the Katyn Massacre. The Poles initiated an investigation and in 1942, Polish railroad workers reported rumors of a mass grave near Katyn. In early 1943, a German intelligence officer relayed the information to Berlin. Around March or April 1943, Joseph Goebbels, a top decision-maker in the German Nazi regime, was informed of the discovery and believed it could be used as a propaganda tool to smear the Soviet government. The German government prepared an excavation of the grave. On April 13, 1943, they issued a broadcast to world news media that they had uncovered a mass grave that was “28 meters long and 16 meters wide” (Engel, 1993, p. 71). More than 4,000 corpses were ultimately exhumed at that single site in Katyn. The German government placed the blame for the massacre entirely on the Soviet government. After the April 1943 discovery, the Polish government-in-exile in London insisted on an investigation by the International Red Cross.

The Soviet government had denied responsibility and had issued a press release stating that the grave was the result of “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” (Zawodny, 1980, p. 77). Polish diplomats in London met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and told him that they had definite proof that the Soviets, not the German Nazis, were responsible for the mass shootings. Previously classified documents from the British government support the view that Churchill agreed that Stalin was responsible for the massacre; however, Churchill viewed his strategic alliance with the Soviet Union as more important than the moral issues of the mass shooting. He resisted pressure to initiate an investigation by the International Red Cross, telling the Soviet leadership on April 24, 1943, that he “shall certainly oppose vigorously any ‘investigation’ by the International Red Cross or any other body in any territory under German authority” (Crawford, 2006, p. 20).

The Soviets responded to the German publicity campaign by creating and publicizing disinformation about Katyn. In September and October of 1943, the USSR NKVD conducted its own fraudulent “investigation.” NKVD operatives Vsevolod Merkulov and Sergei Kruglov led a disinformation team in the area of the Katyn Forest where the first grave had been uncovered. The NKVD removed much of what they regarded as incriminating evidence. The dates on artifacts such as identification and newspapers that had remained with the prisoners did not include any dates later than April 1940, so they planted evidence in an effort to allow them to claim that the shooting had taken place in mid-1941 when the area was under German control. They also conducted “interviews” with witnesses, all of whom were told that their testimony must conform to the official Soviet version of events. The “witnesses” were intimidated and threatened with arrest for collaborating with the German Nazi government if they didn’t comply.

Merkulov and Kruglov issued the preliminary report in early 1944, which stated that all of the Polish officers and other prisoners had been shot by Nazi German soldiers. Subsequently, in January 1944, the USSR assembled another commission to collect additional “evidence” that the German Nazis were responsible. This second commission was headed by Nikolai Burdenko, President of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, and was called the “Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes perpetrated by the German-Fascist invaders.” This so-called Burdenko Commission was comprised exclusively of top members of the Soviet leadership.

Burdenko was likely aware of the truth about what happened, but he had been given strict orders to issue findings that agreed with the report written by Merkulov and Kruglov.

The Burdenko Commission exhumed the bodies and produced a report concluding that all of the killings had taken place in late 1941 by German soldiers. The “Burdenko Report” became the official basis upon which the Soviet government rested its claim that Germany had been responsible for the mass killing.

As World War II ended, the events at Katyn were reviewed during the war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany in 1946. Prior to the trial, the Soviet leadership had sent negotiators to the London conference at which the indictments against Nazi Germany were initially formulated. The Soviet negotiators hoped to definitively pin the blame for the crime on the Germans and urged the prosecution to include in the indictments against the Germans the statement that “[i]n September 1941, 925 Polish officers who were prisoners of war were killed in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk” (Hepner, 1965, p. 138). American negotiators agreed to the Soviet request but told them that their effort was embarrassing, especially in light of the extensive public debate in the press to which the event had already been subjected.

The Americans told the Soviets that it was their responsibility exclusively to sustain any further propaganda efforts at trial. During the actual trial, Soviet General Roman Rudenko introduced the indictment and testified 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” (Trials of German, 1991). Despite Soviet efforts to co-opt the Nuremberg trials for their own propaganda purposes, they failed to make their case.

Efforts to establish the truth of the Katyn Massacre continued long after World War II ended. Once America was no longer dependent on its military alliance with the Soviet Union, their relationship became adversarial and eventually developed into the decades-long Cold War, during which two conflicts broke out—the Korean War and the Vietnam War. These conflicts were viewed as proxy battles in the larger Cold War. During the Korean War, the United States Congress revisited the events at Katyn during an investigation under the supervision of U.S. Representative Ray Madden.

Popularly known as the Madden Committee, this Congressional hearing was officially known as the “Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation of the Facts, Guidance, and Circumstances of the Katyn Massacre.” It took place from 1951 through 1952 during the 1ˢᵗ Session of the 82ⁿᵈ Congress. Congress heard the testimony of 400 Polish prisoners who had managed to survive the incident, including descriptions of “the investigations and procedures of the NKVD towards the Polish officers” (House of Representatives, 1951).

Congress also heard testimony from Major General Clayton Lawrence Bissell. Bissell had previously silenced a 1945 report by American prisoners-of-war that had placed blame on the Soviets. Bissell testified that he had been concerned that angering the Soviet leadership would harm American efforts to engage the USSR as an ally in the American effort to defeat Japan. The Madden Committee pinned the blame for the Katyn Massacre on the USSR NKVD and recommended that appropriate members of the Soviet leadership be tried by the International Court of Justice.

Regardless, Soviet responsibility and accountability for the war crime remained elusive. The American and British governments contributed to Russian impunity by accommodating the Soviet government in ways that contrasted with their condemnation of the Nazi German government. During World War II, both the UK and American governments believed the USSR represented such tremendous political and military power that their alliance should be maintained. After the war, Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in the US. He deplored the brutal regimes of the Soviet-controlled territories in Eastern Europe, but many people questioned the genuineness of his views.

Some Americans viewed his speech as an effort to co-opt American political and economic strength to re-energize the waning influence of the British empire. In addition, British government officials themselves may have been subjected to Soviet intimidation. In 1944, a British-Polish intelligence agent by the name of Ron Jeffery had presented the British government with a Polish report regarding the Katyn Massacre. He appealed to them to take a stronger stand against the USSR. Initially, his efforts were rewarded, but soon he was ignored and subsequently released from the army. Jeffrey believed this reversal resulted from the influence of communist agents who had entrenched themselves within the upper levels of the British government.

The American position was even more hypocritical. The American government officially sanctioned and then silenced two investigations that had placed responsibility for the Katyn Massacre entirely with the USSR. The first report was the work of Navy Lt. Commander George Earle, who was then acting as a special emissary to the Balkans. In 1944, Earle produced a report that placed the blame on the USSR, but then-President Roosevelt issued an official opinion rejecting the report and declaring support for the position of Nazi responsibility. He also issued an order to suppress Earle’s report.

The second report was issued in 1945 by two American prisoners-of-war who had been in German captivity and were taken by the Germans to Katyn in 1943 for an international news conference. The two soldiers had sent coded messages to their superiors in which they stated that the Soviets had committed the mass killings. Major General C. L. Bissell destroyed the report in 1945 as soon as he received it. Six years later, he was forced to answer for his actions during the Madden Committee hearings.

Meanwhile, top-level Soviet bureaucrats were well aware of the USSR’s responsibility for the mass killing. In March 1965, in a letter to Nikita Khrushchev, former Committee for State Security (KGB) Chairman Alexander Shelepin provided a precise count of the Polish prisoners who had been shot, which included “in all 21,857 persons. … Of these, 4,421 in the Katyn Forest; … 3,820 in the Starobelsk camp; … 6,311 in the Ostashkovo camp; … and 7,305 … in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia” (Crozier, 2000, p. 526).

Shelepin’s memo stated that “[t]he whole operation to liquidate the aforesaid persons was carried out in accordance with the Resolution of … 5 March 1940” (Crozier, 2000, p. 526). He cited the Burdenko Commission report, which stated that “all the Poles who were liquidated there are regarded as having been exterminated by the German invaders” (Crozier, 2000, p. 526). Neither the Nuremberg court nor the Madden Committee successfully assigned definitive responsibility to the USSR, so Shelepin stated that “[t]he conclusions of the commission have taken firm root in international opinion” (Crozier, 2000, p. 527). Shelepin advised Khrushchev “to destroy all the records of the persons who were shot in 1940 during the previously mentioned operation,” except for “the [r]ecords of the sessions of the USSR NKVD troika[,] which condemned the aforementioned persons to be shot, and the documents on the implementation of the decision of the troikas. In volume, these documents are insignificant, and they could be kept in a special folder” (Crozier, 2000, p. 527). Shelepin thought they might be helpful in “deal[ing] with possible inquiries through the” Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee (CPSU CC) “or Soviet government” (Crozier, 2000, p. 256).

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet leadership continued to take action in the international arena to maintain its façade, but continued pressure eventually forced them to admit responsibility. In 1976, Soviet leaders were “thinking about steps to counteract the propaganda pressure … and express[ed] views in favor of holding consultations with the Soviet party” (Crozier, 2000, p. 538). In 1989, another memo to the CPSU stated that the Katyn Massacre had “become a matter of extraordinary sensitivity in Poland and is being exploited to the detriment of Soviet-Polish relations” (Crozier, 2000, p. 543).

The USSR began “to arrange some publicity about the careful investigation being carried out by the competent Soviet organs” (Crozier, 2000, p. 543). State-controlled Soviet press agencies were instructed to publicize newspaper articles about the investigation. In 1990, then-president Mikhail Gorbachev received a letter in which the results of this special investigation were revealed. The letter contained an admission of Soviet responsibility and laid out a case for assigning blame to the Soviets. The letter stated that “materials … relating to the so-called Katyn Affair” have revealed that “as of the beginning of January 1940 there were about 14,000 former Polish citizens … in the camps … in Ostashkov in the Kalinin region, Kozelsk in the Smolensk region, and Starobelsk in the Voroshilovgrad region” (Crozier, 2000, p. 545). Furthermore, historians used “documents from the Soviet archives … to trace the fate of the interned Polish officers. … [T]he identification lists compiled by the Germans during the process of exhumation in the spring of 1943 revealed that they tallied completely, which is evidence of the interrelationship between the events that occurred” (Crozier, 2000, pp. 546-547). The letter further advised Gorbachev that “[t]he appearance of such publications would” compromise the Soviet position “that no materials revealing the true state of affairs … had been uncovered. …

Bearing in mind the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary of Katyn, it would be necessary to … spell out our position” (Crozier, 2000, p. 547). The letter finally advised Gorbachev to inform the Polish president that the information they had found “put in doubt the reliability of the … ‘Burdenko Report,’” thus making it “possible to draw the conclusion that the death of the Polish officers in the district of Katyn is the work of the NKVD” (Crozier, 2000, p. 547).

Later in 1990, Boris Yeltsin, who was to become the President of Russia, released the archival documents to Lech Walesa, then-president of Poland. This so-called “Package No. 1” contained most of the previously classified material, including all of the memos and evidence cited in this essay. Finally, on October 15, 1992, the New York Times printed a story entitled,

“Russian Files Show Stalin Ordered Massacre of 20,000 Poles in 1940.”

The story stated that the “Russian Government for the first time made public secret documents revealing that Stalin’s Politburo in March 1940 had specifically ordered the execution of more than 20,000 Poles, including nearly 5,000 senior Polish Army officers, whose bodies were dumped in a mass grave in the forests of Katyn” (Bohlen, 1992).

Despite the apparent final resolution of the Katyn Massacre and its cover-up, the controversy has continued. In spring 1990, the Russian prosecutor’s offices in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Tver, Russia opened an investigation to prosecute the executioners and other perpetrators. Thousands of witnesses were questioned. Two interviewees provided particularly condemnatory testimony—Mitrofan Syromatnikov, a senior caretaker of the internal NKVD prison blocks, and Dmitry Tokarev, the head of NKVD headquarters in Kalinin (modern-day Tver). Former NKVD Director of POW Affairs Major Piotr Soprunenko also testified. He provided hostile testimony and attempted to defend himself by refusing to provide his signature.

The Soviet Prosecutor’s Office began proceedings against him but discontinued their efforts in consideration of his advanced age and ongoing cancer treatments. The Russian Federation continued the effort after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but they ultimately refused to acknowledge that the Katyn Massacre was an act of genocide. Current Russian President Vladimir Putin has referred to the Massacre as a political crime!

The proceedings were discontinued on September 21, 2004. The people of Poland lived under communism from 1939 until 1989, when they were finally free to speak about Katyn. During the intervening 50 years, the actual executions proved to be only the beginning of this horrendous crime. The Soviets continued to inflict damage on survivors and those forced to live under a government that was recognized by the world as legitimate even though its only claim to authority was based on the mass slaughter of 24,000 innocent citizens and a signed agreement with the German Nazi regime.

Thus, for the families of the Katyn victims, the past is not the past — it is very much the present. According to the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, “[s]urvivors or descendants of survivors of genocide, the mass murder of loved ones, may [develop] posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, a bipolar disorder, any of the… personality disorders, … substance abuse, or a sense of pervasive anxiety and pessimism” (Kaslow, 2000).

The Holocaust Dialog Interactive Group Sessions were initiated in 1994 to facilitate among survivors of the German Holocaust “catharsis regarding long-repressed issues” (Kaslow, 2000).

Yet, the Katyn Massacre has not officially been recognized   as genocide.

If the surviving victims and descendants of the German Holocaust still require ongoing acknowledgment of wrongdoing by the Holocaust perpetrators to be able to function and to heal, the need for such cathartic healing on the part of the Polish community must be even greater. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union allowed the USSR to occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, which set the stage for the Katyn Massacre.

There were reports of abuses throughout regions of Soviet occupation, such as prisoners who “had their testicles kicked to a pulp, were seated on red- hot stoves, had needles rammed under their fingernails, were scalped, had their jaws ripped down to their necks and had their eyes gouged and their tongues tore out” (Tolstoy, 1982, p. 195).

In Poland immediately following the Soviet occupation, Soviet efforts to conceal the cover-up were particularly harsh. The Soviet government maintained strict adherence to its propaganda narrative and censored any sources that might provide people with a means of discovering the truth.

The government of the post-Soviet People’s Republic of Poland constructed an official government censorship program that identified the Katyn Massacre in the “Black Book of Censorship” as a forbidden topic for the media and academia. Anyone who violated the ban faced arrest, detention, beatings, and permanent ostracism throughout society.

This oppression continued until the late 1970s when Polish pro-democracy groups such as the Workers’ Defense Committee began to defy the censorship rules despite the risks. In the early 1980s, the Polish trade and labor union Solidarity built a memorial to the victims that bore the inscription, “Katyn, 1940.” The authorities confiscated this memorial and replaced it with an “official” memorial with the inscription, “To the Polish soldiers—victims of Hitlerite fascism—reposing in the soil of Katyn” (Crozier, 2000, p. 537).

Solidarity’s efforts inspired annual gatherings throughout Poland dedicated to remembering the victims and their families. However, the authorities routinely disrupted the gatherings and maintained their position that the subject was off-limits for political, media, or academic discussion.

Polish leaders have not yet succeeded in forcing Russia to accept responsibility for having committed the crime.

Russian officials, since Boris Yeltsin in 1998 have begrudgingly agreed to allow construction of memorials to the victims of Katyn, have made such agreements contingent upon the simultaneous construction of pro-Soviet and pro-Russian monuments. Yeltsin conditioned his 1998 offer on the construction of a monument honoring the deaths of Soviet prisoners-of-war in Polish camps from 1919-1924 in which 16,000 to 20,000 Russians died from communicable diseases. Russian leadership compared these deaths as “a genocide comparable to Katyn” (Fischer, 2008), but Polish leaders view such efforts as an attempt by Russia to water down the seriousness of their own crimes and “balance the historical equation” by engaging in “anti-Katyn” propaganda (Fischer, 2008).

In 2010, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was then serving as Russia’s Prime Minister, invited the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to attend a Katyn memorial service commemorating the 70ᵗʰ anniversary of the massacre. The visit was preceded in 2007 by the showing on Russian state television of the 2007 film Katyn. Three days after the memorial, an aircraft that was carrying Polish president Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and 87 other politicians and high-ranking military officers to another ceremony marking the anniversary of Katyn crashed in Smolensk. All 96 passengers were killed. Distorted Russian narratives have blamed the crash on bad weather and human error. However, “sitting politicians” acting in concert with the Polish Communist Secret Police, the WSI, and the KGB (GRU) are more likely to have engaged in disinformation to promote “Polish dependence on Russian Oil” (Yurtoğlu, 2018).

Russian impunity in the Katyn Massacre can no longer be regarded as an isolated instance of diplomatic and political abuse of power. Russia’s role represents a contribution to a larger effort to degrade societal standards, invalidate the rule of law, and support campaigns of ethnic and cultural cleansing around the world.

According to the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, “[t]he U.N. has recognized the need for a tangible expression of contrition coupled with compensation as the basis for terminating the state-sponsor of terrorism designation. The U.N. Security Council articulated a threefold requirement” for fulfilling this obligation that includes “(1) renunciation of terrorism; (2) acceptance of responsibility; and (3) just compensation” (Gerson, 2012). Russia’s tepid and begrudging admission of responsibility did not come until fifty years after they had committed the crime. The record shows that both internationally and within the system of Russian legal administration, legal obstruction appears to be deliberate.

From the international perspective, it is indisputable that the Katyn Massacre violated both conventional and customary laws. The 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention prohibit the “kill[ing] or wound[ing] treacherously [of] individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army,” or “of an enemy who … having no longer means of defense, has surrendered at discretion” (Gerson, 2012). The Geneva Convention requires the humane treatment of prisoners of war. “Under contemporary international law, as defined by U.S. courts, Katyn also represented state-sponsored genocidal terrorism” (Gerson, 2012). Thus, both U.S. and international law require that Russia submit to the three-point legal remedy established by the U.N. However, Russia has argued that because the Soviet government never ratified the Hague Convention or the Geneva Convention, they are not required to answer to these laws.

The United States has not officially designated Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, so it is legally possible for Russia to deny liability under U.S. laws relating to genocidal terrorism. The U.S. has tried to use its Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as an avenue of prosecution. The ATS states that U.S. “district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States” (Gerson, 2012).

The ATS has been used to prosecute the claims of Bosnian families in the wake of the Balkan genocides of the 1990s, but this case involved the prosecution of claims by individuals; the U.S. Supreme Court must decide whether corporations and states may also be prosecuted for violations of international law under this statute. Regardless, the Act of State Doctrine and the Foreign Service Immunity Act both limit the ability of parties to bring legal action against a foreign sovereign state or official and therefore represent another opportunity for Russia to continue to escape prosecution. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) attempted to prosecute the case under Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The court could not prosecute the case under Article 2 because the Katyn Massacre took place before the Convention had been ratified. The ECHR found that Russia had violated Article 3 and its obligation to cooperate with the ECHR under Article 38. The ECHR also found that Russia had demonstrated “‘a flagrant, continuous and callous disregard for the concerns and anxieties of the families of victims” (Gerson, 2012) but stopped short of issuing a prosecution and a legally binding order to compel Russia to adhere to the three-point U.N. statute.

Within the Russian legal system, the Russian Main Military Prosecutor’s Office in 2004 ended efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the massacre, and all of the associated records and materials were classified. In 2005, they issued a statement that a few top members of the NKVD had “exceed[ed] their authority with serious consequences in the presence of particularly aggravating circumstances” (Guryanov, 2013). This ruling left outside the realm of prosecution Stalin and the Politburo members who had planned and authorized the slaughter and officially designated the Katyn Massacre as an ordinary crime subject to a ten-year statute of limitations. The Main Prosecutor’s Office declined to name as parties to the crime those who actually carried out the execution. A 2005-2006 review by the same office issued a ruling that “refused to consider whether each individual prisoner of war who was shot was an individual victim of political repression” (Guryanov, 2013), in direct violation of contemporary Russian law.

These abuses of bureaucratic authority allowed Russia to claim that “the investigation is terminated; the materials are classified; the Katyn Massacre is an ordinary crime that is long time-barred; only a few leaders of the NKVD, but not Stalin and other members of the Soviet leadership, are guilty; and the victims of the shooting are not subject to rehabilitation” (Guryanov, 2013).

The Katyn Memorial Society appealed the decision throughout every jurisdiction of the Russian legal system, but all appeals were denied. The Memorial Society also filed requests “in the Khamovnichesky district court of Moscow … and then the Moscow City Court” to have the remaining Katyn documents declassified, but the court “found no violations in the actions of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office” (Guryanov, 2013). The Memorial Society appealed to the Interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets, which is supervised by the president of the Russian Federation, but the Interdepartmental Commission denied their appeal. The Memorial Society appealed to the Moscow City Court, “which … ruled that the actions of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office and the Interdepartmental Commission were legitimate.

Despite the Moscow City Court’s flagrant violations of the Civil Procedure Code, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the decision” (Guryanov, 2013). Finally, the Memorial Society formulated “a supervisory complaint” for the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation “concerning the illegality of the classification of key material … as well as the next complaint to the European Court of Human Rights” (Guryanov, 2013). The Memorial Society has acknowledged that justice through the international courts is one possible path toward resolution, but they would prefer to see a conviction within the Russian legal system. The problems of obstruction originate within Russia, and Russia’s refusal to prosecute the case represents a second legal violation—that of the Memorial Society’s legal right to “carry out its statutory activities and its right to a fair trial” (Guryanov, 2013).

Despite more recent efforts on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian state to publicly voice … their opinion about … the personal responsibility of Stalin and his associates as the main perpetrators of [the] Katyn Massacre” (Guryanov, 2013), Russia has not changed its official position regarding the decisions of the Main Prosecutor’s Office or any of the appeals of those decisions.

The legal record shows that the people and the institutions responsible for interpreting and enforcing laws have made a conscious effort to invent reasons for not enforcing laws and for not holding violators accountable, even when the crime is as serious as genocide and the responsible parties have admitted guilt. Thus, no solution is possible except at the level of the individual.

Society cannot function without a viable apparatus of dispute resolution. The degree to which this apparatus is degraded through bribery and corruption is the degree to which society will no longer sustain its citizens’ ability to attain prosperity and security. Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Civil Disobedience” (1980) about the importance of acting according to individual conscience. Citizens endowed with the right of individual sovereignty do not have the luxury of shifting to a governmental body or set of institutional rules their responsibility to act or the consequences of failing to act. Quite the opposite, deadlocked legislative bodies result precisely from the collective, conscious actions of individuals engaged in obstruction of justice. Yet, individual action is within the grasp of each individual.

Lessening the Soviet victory at Katyn can now only result when each of us—whether we occupy positions of authority or live in the mundane mainstream—assumes individual responsibility for dethroning elements of corruption. Like depriving a fire of oxygen, our collective individual actions can deny repressive political regimes the access to power that they need to prevail.

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The post The Katyn Massacre: Causes and Consequences of Russian Impunity appeared first on Polonia Institute.

By Eric Svoboda

September 1^st, 1939; a date which the world, and especially Poles, will never forget. On this fateful day, Poland was plunged into the darkest era in its history when Hitler’s Nazi armies invaded from the west. Despite being overwhelmed by Germany’s blitzkrieg, there was still hope that Polish forces could hold off the Germans while French and British forces came to their aid. They never would. To the east, however, the Soviet Union was preparing its own invasion. In the days leading up to the invasion of Poland, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed on to an unholy alliance called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with one goal in mind: to divide Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe between themselves. On September 17^th, Stalin upheld his end of the deal and Soviet forces began to pour into eastern Poland. Within a few more days, Poland would be completely occupied by the two totalitarian powers and would soon experience their full malice and cruelty. While most of this cruelty was committed at the hands of the Germans, who sought the complete extermination of the Polish people, the Soviets also had blood on their hands. In the forest of Katyn outside Smolensk and in other locations throughout the Soviet Union, over 21,000 Polish prisoners-of-war and civilians were brutally executed in an attempt to eliminate all opposition to the communist order. With these potential enemies eliminated and their deaths made secret, it seemed as though there would never be justice for the lost.

That all changed, however, in the Spring of 1941 by perhaps the most unlikely of sources. Germany, Stalin’s accomplice in the crime against the Polish nation, betrayed the Soviets and launched the largest invasion in history against them. Within months, the Soviets would suffer tremendous casualties and be driven back to the very gates of Moscow. Only a costly victory at the Battle of Stalingrad would save them from a total German victory. From then on, the USSR would begin to slowly drive the Germans from their recent conquests. With the war not going as planned, the Nazis hoped to reverse their fortunes by turning the Allied powers against one another.

Such an opportunity presented itself in April 1943, when mass graves were discovered in the Katyn Forest. Human remains had been discovered by nearby Polish workers the year prior, but German authorities were uninterested at the time.^[1] When German military personnel began uncovering mass graves, however, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels became particularly interested in the gruesome findings, writing in his diary on April 9^th:

Polish mass graves have been found near Smolensk. The Bolsheviks

simply shot down and then shoveled into mass graves some 10,000 Polish

prisoners, among them, civilian captives, bishops, intellectuals, artists, et

cetera …. Gruesome aberrations of the human soul were thus revealed. I

saw to it that the Polish mass graves be inspected by neutral journalists

from Berlin. I also had Polish intellectuals taken there. They are to see for

themselves what is in store for them should their wish that the Germans be

defeated by the Bolsheviks actually be fulfilled.^[2]

Several days later on April 13^th, Berlin radio announced the discovery of the graves to the world. The Soviets immediately denounced the revelation as slander and many other nations looked upon German claims with skepticism. To prove that they were telling the truth, the Germans brought in neutral experts from the European Red Cross to examine the graves. The Katyn Commission, as this group was called, came to the conclusion that the deaths took place between March and April 1940, during the period of Soviet control.^[3]

Aware of the criminal nature of both Germany and the Soviet Union and still uncertain about the findings, the Polish government-in-exile hoped to settle the issue once and for all by petitioning the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate. The ICRC, though ready to send a special team to the scene, had to obtain permission to investigate from all countries involved. Germany was more than happy to comply and quickly agreed in order to show Polish-German cooperation in the matter. The Soviets, meanwhile, fearing an unquestionable verdict, declined the request, which prevented the Red Cross from investigating. With the threat of a Red Cross intervention eliminated, the Soviets took swift retributive actions against the Polish government-in-exile. Diplomatic ties were severed, and the exiled government was delegitimized as German collaborators, which gave Stalin an excuse to support a communist Polish government.^[4]

Thus, Goebbels’s hope of turning the Allies against each other was realized. However, it was not as he expected. While Poland and the Soviet Union were no longer allies, the Western Allies continued to back Stalin. The war that was initially fought for the sake of Poland had now encompassed the entire world. Poland was crushed early on while the Soviet Union was doing most of the fighting in Europe. Therefore, to the Western Allies, it was vital to keep good relations with the Soviets so as not to harm the war effort. This would lead them to neglect Stalin’s atrocities and even portray him as a good man and hero instead of the monster he really was. When the Polish government-in-exile began to seek a Red Cross investigation, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt did everything in their power to restrain the Poles. When that failed, they decided to help Stalin cover up the massacre. The British and American leaders had obtained strong evidence of Soviet guilt as early as mid-1943, with reports from US diplomats and testimonies from Polish officials and American POWs taken to the scene. Rather than releasing such crucial knowledge, though, Roosevelt and Churchill instead kept it classified and supported the findings of the Soviet Burdenko Commission.^[5]

The Burdenko Commission was formed in January 1944 so that the Soviets could obtain their own ‘evidence.’ After conducting an investigation, the commission concluded that it was Germany who committed the heinous act.^[6] Burdenko’s investigation, however, was a fabrication meant to ‘prove’ German guilt. Even the title of the report (Report of Special Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating the Circumstances of the Shooting of Polish Officer Prisoners by the German-Fascist Invaders in the Katyn Forest) demonstrates that “the conclusion was predetermined before the investigation began.”^[7] In late 1943 when the Soviets recaptured Smolensk, the NKVD^[8] quickly went to work covering up the scene of the crime. Witnesses were forced to change their accounts or be branded as German-collaborators, evidence found by the Germans and Red Cross memorials were removed, and documents were planted on the corpses to make it seem as though they were killed after 1941. So, when investigators were allowed to enter several months later, the evidence they uncovered clearly indicated that Germany was behind the massacre. To finish cementing their version of what happened in the minds of the international community, western journalists were brought in to verify. While many of them found flaws in the investigation, they were unable to block the Soviet conclusions, which would become the accepted version for the remainder of the war.^[9]

It wasn’t until 1946 during the Nuremberg trials that the Katyn Massacre would be brought up again. The trials were meant to try German war criminals, and since the Germans allegedly committed the massacre at Katyn, the tribunal felt compelled to discuss the matter. Both the Germans and Soviets were allowed to present three witnesses each during the proceedings on July 1^st and 2nd, but no Polish witnesses or evidence were admitted.^[10] Thus, rather than asking the victims of the crime for their input, two untrustworthy criminal nations took control of the narrative and the court was unable to determine culpability as a result. Moreover, the issue wasn’t even mentioned in the final judgment, which implies that the subject was politically inconvenient at the time.^[11] It would seem as though the court was collaborating with war criminals to try other war criminals, which would put the legitimacy of its rulings in doubt. It also wasn’t up to the court to determine Soviet guilt since it was only meant to try German war criminals. As a result of the Nuremberg trials’ inconclusiveness, the issue of Katyn would be shelved once more and hope for the truth left once again in doubt.

While the Western Allies had a history of not challenging Soviet atrocities and violations of human rights, that position soon changed with the dawn of the Cold War. During this time, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for influence across the world while avoiding all-out war. The conflict would, however, heat up at times as the two superpowers aided one side over another in a number of proxy wars. The first, and perhaps most prominent, of these proxy wars was the Korean War, which began in 1950 when communist North Korea, later backed by communist China, invaded the western-aligned South. The US, which had sent troops to aid the South Koreans, was worried about what might happen to them if they were captured and began seeing Katyn as a potential blueprint. Therefore, on September 18^th, 1951, a congressional investigation led by Rep. Ray J. Madden commenced.

The Madden Committee, as it’s called, had two goals in its investigation: to determine which country was responsible for the massacre and whether any American officials were responsible for suppressing facts about it. Testimonies from dozens of witnesses from the US, Germany and Italy were gathered and the governments of West Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist Poland, and the Polish government-in-exile were invited to present evidence. The Soviet Union, and by default their puppet government in Warsaw, declined the offer, believing the matter had already been settled and that all the evidence the US needed was present in the report of the Burdenko Commission. Based on the information gathered, the committee unanimously agreed that “evidence dealing with the first phase of its investigation proves conclusively and irrevocably the Soviet NKVD… committed the massacre of Polish Army officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia, not later than the spring of 1940,”^[12] and recommended that the US government take the Soviets to the International Court of Justice over Katyn.

As for the second phase, after reviewing documents from various departments and questioning officials, the committee determined that “nearing the end of the Second World War there unfortunately existed in high governmental and military circles a strange psychosis that military necessity required the sacrifice of loyal allies and our own principles in order to keep Soviet Russia from making a separate peace with the Nazis.”^[13] Although critical of American policy towards the Soviet Union during the war, the committee was unable to find clear signs of an American cover up. While it could have been a major breakthrough in achieving justice for the victims of Katyn, the Madden Committee report ultimately didn’t go anywhere as the Korean War’s end removed the fear which had prompted the investigation and the death of Stalin allowed US-Soviet relations to improve.

As the Katyn tragedy was being discussed in the halls of Congress, the subject had become politically taboo back in Poland. Following the Second World War, the Soviet Union maintained a heavy presence in Poland, influencing both its foreign and domestic affairs. In accordance with Soviet demands and in an effort to protect its power, the communist government in Poland banned any mention of Katyn and repressed anyone who sought the truth. Most of this repression began in the late 1950s when Poles began actively defending the truth and preserving its memory. Around a hundred cases of Katyn-related offenses were brought to court, but the majority of offenses were dealt with outside the courtroom. Retaliation by authorities and severe punishment awaited anyone who told the truth, and preventative measures, such as mass and careful censorship, were taken by the communist government to further prevent the spread of so-called ‘imperialist lies.’^[14] Beginning in the mid-1970s, the communist government lightened restrictions on Katyn remembrance. Talking about Katyn was no longer forbidden, but one could only blame it on the Germans or leave it anonymous by simply saying ‘died in Katyn.’^[15] Monuments to the victims could also be erected, but they still had to follow the communist narrative. For instance, in 1981 the Polish trade union Solidarity built a monument inscribed with the words ‘Katyn, 1940.’ The monument was quickly taken down and replaced with another reading ‘To the Polish soldiers – victims of Hitlerite fascism – reposing in the soil of Katyn.’^[16] Despite all of this effort to hide the truth about Katyn, Poles would still remember who was truly responsible for the crime, and with the fall of the communist regime, they would continue to press the Soviets until the truth came out.

It was in the late 1980s that the communist world turned upside down. Perceiving the weakness of the communist system and fearing the collapse of the USSR, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pursued a series of reforms that he hoped would save his country. These reforms, known as glasnost and perestroika, aimed at democratizing the country and making it more transparent. Additionally, Soviet interference in foreign countries was greatly reduced, which allowed countries in Eastern Europe to overthrow their communist regimes and begin the process of democratization. In Poland, this meant that people could now openly discuss Katyn without fear of repression, and soon societies and committees were formed to investigate and obtain justice for the victims’ families. Polish investigations were further aided by historians and journalists within the USSR itself, who were now able to explore state archives where reports of NKVD involvement were uncovered. No longer able to deny the truth both at home and abroad, the Soviet Union officially acknowledged and apologized for its role in the Katyn massacre on April 13^th, 1990 – 47 years to the day Nazi Germany announced its discovery of the graves.^[17] The admission, it was hoped, would begin the difficult process of mending Polish-Russian relations and give families of the slain final closure on their loved ones’ deaths.

For a while, it seemed as though a reconciliation was possible as the Soviet Union, and later Russia, began a decade-long investigation to uncover the full scope of the crime. In March 1990, Gorbachev ordered the Office of the Soviet (later Russian) Prosecutor General to gather evidence against the NKVD and find missing documents relating to the Katyn case. Lists of prisoners in the three camps were found in the initial phase of the investigation and still-living eyewitnesses and former NKVD functionaries were brought in for questioning. Based on the information gathered, it was already believed that enough evidence was found to blame the NKVD for the massacre. However, crucial files, such as protocols and investigation files on executed prisoners, were nowhere to be found. It wasn’t until December 1991, on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse, that the most important documents would appear. As Gorbachev yielded power to Boris Yeltsin and the newly formed Russian Federation, he gave Yeltsin a handful of documents, which he most certainly knew of for some time, and gave him the choice of whether to reveal their contents to the world or not. Yeltsin would keep the contents a secret until October 1992 when he began facing stiff opposition from the Communist Party. In an effort to discredit the party as a criminal organization, the top-secret documents were made public. These contained the NKVD’s order to execute 25,700 Polish prisoners signed by Stalin and approved by the Soviet Politburo, and a note to Nikita Khrushchev mentioning the execution of 21,857 Poles and proposing that any files regarding it be destroyed.^[18] This revelation not only cemented the fact of Soviet guilt but also provided vital information on the full extent of the crime, which was previously estimated to be at only around 10,000 victims.

The Russian investigation would continue until September 2004, with its findings being reported in March of the following year. In its conclusion, the Office of the Russian Prosecutor General claimed that out of 14,542 Poles sentenced to death, only 1,803 were executed. It also said that no judicial actions would be taken because those responsible had already died and thus were unnecessary. Furthermore, the Russians denied that the massacre was a genocide, saying instead that the “actions of the NKVD officials of the USSR against Polish citizens were based on a criminal law motive and were not intended to destroy any demographic group.”^[19] The results of these findings came as a shock to the Polish nation as it seemed as though Russia was reverting back to its history of denial and that all the progress made toward reconciliation was suddenly reversed. On March 22^nd, 2005, the Polish government passed a resolution condemning the conclusions, saying that Russian authorities “seek to diminish the burden of this crime by refusing to acknowledge it was genocide,”^[20] and requested that Russia recognize the Katyn massacre was a genocide and hand over all records of the investigation. Russia maintained its position, however, and the long search for truth and justice, which had seemingly been nearing its end, would only continue longer.

Since the end of the Russian investigation into the Katyn case, Polish-Russian relations have only worsened as a result of growing nostalgia for the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladimir Putin. While most Russians don’t want to bring back the USSR, there is, however, widespread bitterness towards its collapse. The destruction of the single market created financial instability, with the ruble becoming nearly worthless, the rise of a shady oligarchy led to rampant corruption in the government, the loss of superpower status and the supposed lack of concern for Russia’s problems by the international community have left Russians feeling humiliated, and the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe created a sense of weakness and vulnerability.^[21] For these reasons, people in Russia long for the Soviet Union, and this growing nostalgia has had a major impact on Russian society. The past has been rewritten to glorify the Soviet Union, particularly in its war against Germany where Russians can portray themselves as victims, and its darker parts widely ignored. Soviet atrocities, especially Katyn, and acts of repression are overlooked or even completely denied in Russian history books, and memorials to the victims of such crimes are being removed. Some historians and societies in Russia try to speak out against Soviet repression but are themselves becoming increasingly repressed, which is making it harder for Russians to understand the truth about their past. Finally, there has also been a major change in how Russians view Joseph Stalin, the man who epitomizes Soviet tyranny. Rather than viewing him as one of the worst mass murderers of the 20^th century, more and more are viewing Stalin as the savior of Russia and the one who turned it into a superpower.^[22] The victim mentality in Russia has given Russians an excuse not to be concerned for the injustices of the past, and this, alongside the whitewashing of Russian history, has created greater mistrust and misunderstanding between Russia and its western neighbors.

Feeding off this nostalgia is the current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who has made it his personal mission to restore Russia to its former glory. Under his regime, the Russian economy has stabilized, its military strength rejuvenated, and a sense of national pride restored by the reintroduction of Soviet imagery and a return to prominence in the international sphere. Though much has changed on the domestic level, it is on the international level that Mr. Putin hopes to leave his mark. Russia is attempting to expand its sphere of influence, allying with many leaders alienated from the rest of the international community such as Assad in Syria, and is attempting to regain territories lost after the USSR’s collapse. The most blatant attempt at this was the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. This obsession with regaining lost power has alarmed countries in eastern Europe, including Poland who now fears a future conquest by Russia and a return to Soviet-era repression and atrocities. After all, if Russians are once again dismissing the darker parts of their past, what’s to stop another Katyn from happening? To prevent this, Poland and its NATO allies are expanding their militaries which, in turn, is causing Russia to further expand its military. Thus, what was mistrust and misunderstanding between Russia, Poland, and the rest of NATO has now risen to the point that the threat of armed conflict looms once again over eastern Europe.

While many factors have contributed to these grim circumstances between Russia and Poland, impunity for Katyn has certainly been a contributing factor. The effects of this impunity are not just limited to Poland and Russia, however. Many bad actors across the globe can look at Katyn as a precedent for how they might be treated for committing similar crimes. Genocide and state terror aren’t concepts that ended with the Second World War, they continue even until today. By refusing to seek justice for the victims of Katyn, countries who consider themselves guardians of international peace and justice not only make a bad name for themselves but also encourage enemies to those very concepts to act without fear of retaliation. This not only dishonors the memories of the slain but also poses a potential threat to international security and law and order.

Despite all of the previously mentioned consequences of Russian impunity, no one has suffered the most through this ordeal than the loved ones of the victims. Certainly, grief over the loss of their fathers, brothers, and sons was more than anyone of them should have had to bear; yet they would end up being forced to face even more hardships. Children were not only orphaned because of the loss of their fathers, but also because sometimes, their mothers, unable to bear the loss of their husbands, committed suicide. They would also wander, avoiding death on a daily basis, whether it was due to a lack of necessities or to occupational forces. Many would survive, often fleeing the country, either temporarily or permanently. Others were imprisoned by the German and Soviet occupiers and would meet their ultimate demise in death and labor camps. Others still tried to avenge their families and country by joining resistance movements and fighting in the Warsaw Uprising.^[23] There is an unfathomable amount of experiences these families have had to endure and now, decades later, when justice seems possible, little is being done. It’s like a criminal admits guilt, is found guilty but is allowed to walk away free without any consequences. It’s humiliating and only tells these people that their lives and suffering don’t matter. That is why, when finding a solution to this problem, it is important that the families of the victims be given top priority.

So how do we solve the Katyn controversy and fix relations between Poland and Russia? Ultimately, the burden lies upon the Russian people. It was their country that committed this unspeakable act, and so it is up to them to make amends. Russians, however, have been reluctant to take responsibility, believing that they shouldn’t be held responsible for their ancestors’ crimes. This sentiment is understandable, as no child should have to pay for their parents’ wrongdoings. However, Russians today still have a responsibility to move past their dark history, and by not doing so, they become complicit in those same mistakes. By releasing all documents relating to the Katyn murders, acknowledging the crime as a genocide, bringing charges against surviving NKVD members, and giving compensation to the victims’ families, Russia can begin to mend its problematic relationship with Poland. While this is a start, there are more Russians will need to do on a societal and governmental level. Schools ought to teach history as it actually happened and proper homage needs to be paid to all victims of Soviet atrocities, including those at Katyn. Russia also needs to shift away from the lures of totalitarianism and end its expansionist policies to prove its commitment to change. While most of the work will need to be done by Russia, that does not mean that Poland should do nothing in return. For a long time, Russia has been ostracized by the West, and in many ways, this is the reason why Russia is the troubled nation that it is today. That is why Poland needs to help it on its way to self-improvement and to fully embrace it when that time comes. Change is going to be difficult for Russians and is likely going to take a long time. It is not impossible, though, Russia just needs help in doing so, both from within and without. Poles and Russians share many commonalities, and it is unfortunate things are the way they are right now between the two. If they can come to terms with each other, not only will it be beneficial for them, but for the world as well. This can only happen, though, if they find a way to put Katyn behind them for good.

08/01/2020

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^[1] Joanna Żelazko, “The Katyn Massacre – the Way to the Truth,” The Warsaw Institute Review  9, Issue 2 (2019), accessed July 24, 2020, https://warsawinstitute.org/katyn-massacre-way-truth/.

^[2] Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943, ed. Louis P. Lochner, (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1948), p. 318.

^[3] “The Mass-Murder in the Katyn Forest, a Documentary Account of Evidence; International Katyn Commission Findings, Germany, 1943,” Warsaw Uprising, accessed July 24, 2020, http://www.warsawuprising.com/doc/katyn_documents1.htm

^[4] Żelazko, The Katyn Massacre – the Way to the Truth.

^[5] Christian Lowe, “War-Time Allies Hushed up Katyn Massacre of Poles: Documents,” Reuters, September 11, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-poland-katyn/war-time-allies-hushed-up-katyn-massacre-of-poles-documents-idUSBRE88A0O020120911.

^[6] “The Truth About Katyn,” Report of Special Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating the Circumstances of the Shooting of Polish Officer Prisoners by the German-Fascist Invaders in the Katyn Forest, Smolensk, 1944. US San Diego Digital Collection, accessed July 24, 2020, https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb95934526.

^[7] Laurence Rees, World War II behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 243.

^[8] Soviet secret police.

^[9] Rees, World War II behind Closed Doors.

^[10] “Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 17,” Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, accessed July 24, 2020, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-01-46.asp.

^[11] “Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals,” Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, accessed July 24, 2020, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judgen.asp.

^[12] “The Katyn Forest Massacre: Interim Report of the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre Pursuant to H. Res. 390 and H. Res. 539, Eighty-Second Congress, a Resolution to Authorize the Investigation of the Mass Murder of Polish Officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia,” National Archives Catalog, accessed July 24, 2020,  https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6850534.

^[13] “The Katyn Forest Massacre: Final Report of the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre Pursuant to H. Res. 390 and H. Res. 539, Eighty-Second Congress, a Resolution to Authorize the Investigation of the Mass Murder of Polish Officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia,” National Archives Catalog, accessed July 24, 2020, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6852791.

^[14] Witold Wasilewski, “The Katyn Lie. Its Rise and Duration,” Institute of National Remembrance, accessed July 23, 2020, https://ipn.gov.pl/en/news/4020,The-Katyn-lie-Its-rise-and-duration.html.

^[15] Monika Komaniecka et al., “Katyn Massacre – Basic Facts,” Poland.pl, April 20, 2018, https://poland.pl/history/history-poland/katyn-massacre-basic-facts/.

^[16] Benjamin B. Fischer, “The Katyn Controversy: Stalin’s Killing Field,” Central Intelligence Agency, June 27, 2008, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art6.html.

^[17] Mark J. Porubcansky, “Soviets Admit Responsibility for Katyn Massacre,” Associated Press, April 13, 1990, https://apnews.com/c28f061b5edf068cf4baca96300a3113.

^[18] Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva, Wojciech Materski, Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment (Yale University Press, 2008).

^[19] Kondratov, V. K, Ответ ГВП на письмо общества “Мемориал” [Answer of the General Prosecutor’s Office to the letter of the Memorial Society] (in Russian), General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, 2005.

^[20] “Senate Pays Tribute to Katyn Victims,” The Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Canada, March 31, 2005, https://archive.vn/20050420045807/http://www.polishembassy.ca/news_details.asp?nid=230.

^[21] Adam Taylor, “Why Do so Many People Miss the Soviet Union?” The Washington Post, December 21, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/12/21/why-do-so-many-people-miss-the-soviet-union/.

^[22] Halya Coynash, “Russia Removes Memorial to Katyn Massacre in New Attack on Historical Truth,” Human Rights in Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, May 8, 2020), http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1588896084.

^[23] Teresa Kaczorowska, Children of the Katyn Massacre: Accounts of Life after the 1940 Soviet Murder of Polish POWs (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2015).

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