Katyn is the story of the tragedy. Katyn impasse: everything points to the execution of Polish officers in Katyn by the Nazis
On March 5, 1940, the USSR authorities decided to apply the highest form of punishment to Polish prisoners of war - execution. This marked the beginning of the Katyn tragedy, one of the main stumbling blocks in Russian-Polish relations.
Missing officers
On August 8, 1941, against the backdrop of the outbreak of war with Germany, Stalin entered into diplomatic relations with his newfound ally, the Polish government in exile. As part of the new treaty, all Polish prisoners of war, especially those captured in 1939 on the territory of the Soviet Union, were granted an amnesty and the right to free movement throughout the territory of the Union. The formation of Anders' army began. However, the Polish government was missing about 15,000 officers who, according to documents, were supposed to be in the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Yukhnovsky camps. To all the accusations of the Polish General Sikorski and General Anders of violating the amnesty agreement, Stalin replied that all the prisoners were released, but could escape to Manchuria.
Subsequently, one of Anders’ subordinates described his alarm: “Despite the “amnesty”, Stalin’s own firm promise to return prisoners of war to us, despite his assurances that prisoners from Starobelsk, Kozelsk and Ostashkov were found and released, we did not receive a single call for help from prisoners of war from the above-mentioned camps. Questioning thousands of colleagues returning from camps and prisons, we have never heard any reliable confirmation of the whereabouts of the prisoners taken from those three camps.” He also owned the words spoken a few years later: “Only in the spring of 1943 a terrible secret was revealed to the world, the world heard a word that still emanates horror: Katyn.”
re-enactment
As you know, the Katyn burial site was discovered by the Germans in 1943, when these areas were under occupation. It was the fascists who contributed to the “promotion” of the Katyn case. Many specialists were involved, the exhumation was carefully carried out, they even took local residents on excursions there. The unexpected discovery in the occupied territory gave rise to a version of a deliberate staging, which was supposed to serve as propaganda against the USSR during the Second World War. This became an important argument in accusing the German side. Moreover, there were many Jews on the list of those identified.
The details also attracted attention. V.V. Kolturovich from Daugavpils outlined his conversation with a woman who, together with fellow villagers, went to look at the opened graves: “I asked her: “Vera, what did people say to each other while looking at the graves?” The answer was as follows: “Our careless slobs can’t do that - it’s too neat a job.” Indeed, the ditches were perfectly dug under the cord, the corpses were laid out in perfect stacks. The argument, of course, is ambiguous, but we should not forget that according to the documents, the execution of such a huge number of people was carried out in the shortest possible time. The performers simply did not have enough time for this.
Double jeopardy
At the famous Nuremberg Trials on July 1-3, 1946, the Katyn massacre was blamed on Germany and appeared in the indictment of the International Tribunal (IT) in Nuremberg, section III “War Crimes”, about cruel treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of other countries. Friedrich Ahlens, commander of the 537th regiment, was declared the main organizer of the execution. He also acted as a witness in the retaliatory accusation against the USSR. The tribunal did not support the Soviet accusation, and the Katyn episode is absent from the tribunal’s verdict. All over the world this was perceived as a “tacit admission” by the USSR of its guilt.
The preparation and progress of the Nuremberg trials were accompanied by at least two events that compromised the USSR. On March 30, 1946, the Polish prosecutor Roman Martin, who allegedly had documents proving the guilt of the NKVD, died. Soviet prosecutor Nikolai Zorya also fell victim, who died suddenly right in Nuremberg in his hotel room. The day before, he told his immediate superior, Prosecutor General Gorshenin, that he had discovered inaccuracies in the Katyn documents and that he could not speak with them. The next morning he “shot himself.” There were rumors among the Soviet delegation that Stalin ordered “to bury him like a dog!”
After Gorbachev admitted the guilt of the USSR, researcher on the Katyn issue Vladimir Abarinov in his work cites the following monologue from the daughter of an NKVD officer: “I’ll tell you what. The order regarding the Polish officers came directly from Stalin. My father said that he saw an authentic document with Stalin’s signature, what should he do? Put yourself under arrest? Or shoot yourself? My father was made a scapegoat for decisions made by others.”
Party of Lavrentiy Beria
The Katyn massacre cannot be blamed on just one person. Nevertheless, the greatest role in this, according to archival documents, was played by Lavrenty Beria, “Stalin’s right hand.” The leader’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, noted the extraordinary influence that this “scoundrel” had on her father. In her memoirs, she said that one word from Beria and a couple of forged documents was enough to determine the fate of future victims. The Katyn massacre was no exception. On March 3, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria suggested that Stalin consider the cases of Polish officers "in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." Reason: “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system.” Two days later, the Politburo issued a decree on the transport of prisoners of war and preparations for execution.
There is a theory about the forgery of Beria’s “Note”. Linguistic analyzes give different results; the official version does not deny Beria’s involvement. However, statements about the falsification of the “note” are still being made.
Frustrated hopes
At the beginning of 1940, the most optimistic mood was in the air among Polish prisoners of war in Soviet camps. Kozelsky and Yukhnovsky camps were no exception. The convoy treated foreign prisoners of war somewhat more leniently than its own fellow citizens. It was announced that the prisoners would be transferred to neutral countries. In the worst case, the Poles believed, they would be handed over to the Germans. Meanwhile, NKVD officers arrived from Moscow and began work.
Before departure, the prisoners, who sincerely believed they were being sent to a safe place, were given vaccinations against typhoid fever and cholera - presumably to reassure them. Everyone received a packed lunch. But in Smolensk everyone was ordered to prepare to leave: “We have been standing on a siding in Smolensk since 12 o’clock. April 9, getting up in the prison cars and preparing to leave. We are being transported somewhere in cars, what next? Transportation in “crow” boxes (scary). We were taken somewhere in the forest, it looked like a summer cottage…” - this is the last entry in the diary of Major Solsky, who rests today in the Katyn forest. The diary was found during exhumation.
The downside of recognition
On February 22, 1990, the head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, V. Falin, informed Gorbachev about new archival documents found that confirm the guilt of the NKVD in the Katyn execution. Falin proposed to urgently formulate a new position of the Soviet leadership in relation to this case and inform the President of the Polish Republic Wojciech Jaruzelski about new discoveries in the matter of the terrible tragedy.
On April 13, 1990, TASS published an official statement admitting the guilt of the Soviet Union in the Katyn tragedy. Jaruzelski received from Mikhail Gorbachev lists of prisoners being transferred from three camps: Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk. The main military prosecutor's office opened a case on the fact of the Katyn tragedy. The question arose of what to do with the surviving participants of the Katyn tragedy.
This is what Valentin Alekseevich Alexandrov, a senior official of the CPSU Central Committee, told Nicholas Bethell: “We do not exclude the possibility of a judicial investigation or even a trial. But you must understand that Soviet public opinion does not entirely support Gorbachev's policy regarding Katyn. We in the Central Committee have received many letters from veterans’ organizations in which we are asked why we are defaming the names of those who were only doing their duty in relation to the enemies of socialism.” As a result, the investigation against those found guilty was terminated due to their death or lack of evidence.
Unresolved issue
The Katyn issue became the main stumbling block between Poland and Russia. When a new investigation into the Katyn tragedy began under Gorbachev, the Polish authorities hoped for a confession of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, the total number of which was about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the issue of the role of genocide in the Katyn tragedy. However, following the results of the case in 2004, it was announced that it was possible to establish the deaths of 1,803 officers, of whom 22 were identified.
The Soviet leadership completely denied the genocide against the Poles. Prosecutor General Savenkov commented on this as follows: “during the preliminary investigation, at the initiative of the Polish side, the version of genocide was checked, and my firm statement is that there is no basis to talk about this legal phenomenon.” The Polish government was dissatisfied with the results of the investigation. In March 2005, in response to a statement by the Main Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, the Polish Sejm demanded recognition of the Katyn events as an act of genocide. Members of the Polish parliament sent a resolution to the Russian authorities, in which they demanded that Russia “recognize the murder of Polish prisoners of war as genocide” based on Stalin’s personal hostility towards the Poles due to defeat in the 1920 war. In 2006, relatives of the dead Polish officers filed a lawsuit in the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, with the aim of obtaining recognition of Russia in the genocide. The end to this pressing issue for Russian-Polish relations has not yet been reached.
The question of who is responsible for the death of Polish military prisoners in Katyn (more precisely, in the Kozya Gory tract) has been discussed for more than 70 years. “LG” has addressed this topic more than once. There are also official estimates from the authorities. But many dark places remain. Professor of the Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU), Doctor of Historical Sciences Alexey PLOTNIKOV shares his vision of the situation.
- Alexey Yuryevich, what was the total number of Polish prisoners of war?
There are several sources, and there are discrepancies between them. According to various estimates, 450-480 thousand Polish soldiers were captured by the Germans in 1939. In the USSR there were 120-150 thousand of them. The data cited by a number of experts - primarily Polish - about the internment of 180 or even 220-250 thousand Poles is not supported by documents. It should be emphasized that at first these people - from a legal point of view - were in the position of internees. This is explained by the fact that there was no war between the Soviet Union and Poland. But after the Polish government in exile declared war on the Soviet Union on December 18, 1939 (the so-called Angers Declaration) over the transfer of Vilna and the Vilna region to Lithuania, the internees automatically turned into prisoners of war. In other words, legally, and then actually, prisoners of war, they were made by their own emigrant government.
- How did their destinies turn out?
Differently. Natives of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, privates and sergeants, were sent home even before the emigrant government declared war on the USSR. It is not known exactly how many there were. Then the USSR and Germany entered into an agreement under which all prisoners of war conscripted into the Polish army from territory ceded to the USSR, but captured by the Germans, were transferred to the Soviet Union, and vice versa. As a result of the exchange in October and November 1939, about 25 thousand prisoners of war were transferred to the USSR - citizens of the former Poland, natives of territories ceded to the Soviet Union, and more than 40 thousand to Germany. Most of them, privates and sergeants, were sent home. The officers were not released. Employees of the border service, police and punitive structures were also detained - those who were suspected of involvement in sabotage and espionage activities against the USSR. Indeed, in the 1920-1930s, Polish intelligence was very active in the western regions of the Soviet Union.
By the beginning of 1940, no more than 30 thousand Polish prisoners of war remained in the USSR. Of these, approximately 10 thousand are officers. They were distributed to specially created camps. There were 4,500 Polish prisoners of war in the Kozelsky camp (in 1940 - Western, now Kaluga region), 6,300 in Ostashkovsky (Kalinin, now Tver region), and 3,800 in the Starobelsky camp (Voroshilovgrad, now Lugansk region). At the same time, captured officers were kept mainly in the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps. Ostashkovsky was predominantly “soldiers”, there were no more than 400 officers. Some Poles were in camps in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. These are the original numbers.
On July 30, 1941, the Kremlin and the Sikorsky government signed a political agreement and an additional protocol to it. It provided for the provision of an amnesty to all Polish prisoners of war. These allegedly turned out to be 391,545 people. How does this compare with the numbers you provided?
Indeed, about 390 thousand Poles were included in the amnesty in August 1941. There is no contradiction here, since along with prisoners of war in 1939-1940, civilians were also interned. This is a separate topic. We are talking about prisoners of war - former Polish soldiers of the Polish Army.
- Where and how many, besides Katyn, were Polish prisoners of war shot during the Great Patriotic War?
It’s unlikely that anyone will name it exactly. If only because some of the archival documents are still classified. I will only say about two burials not far from Katyn (Goat Mountains). The first was located in Serebryanka (Dubrovenka) near Krasny Bor, the second - not yet documented - to the west of the village of Katyn. Information about him is contained in the memoirs of the daughter of one of the dead Poles, Shchiradlovskaya-Petsa.
Your opponents claim that Polish prisoners of war in Katyn were shot on the orders of Stalin. Why don't you agree with them?
Supporters of the Polish (it would be more honest to say - Goebbels) version do not explain, but ignore or openly suppress facts that are inconvenient for themselves.
I will list the main ones. First of all, it has been proven: German-made cartridges of 6.35 and 7.65 mm caliber (GECO and RWS) were found at the scene of the execution. This indicates that the Poles were killed with German pistols. The Red Army and the NKVD troops did not have weapons of such calibers. Attempts by the Polish side to prove the purchase of such pistols in Germany specifically for the execution of Polish prisoners of war are untenable. The NKVD used its own standard weapons. These are revolvers, and the officers have TT pistols. Both are 7.62 mm caliber.
In addition, and this is also documented, the hands of some of those executed were tied with paper twine. This was not produced in the USSR at that time, but it was produced in Europe, including Germany.
Another important fact: documents on the execution of the sentence were not found in the archives, just as the execution sentence itself was not found, without which no execution would be possible in principle.
Finally, documents were found on individual corpses. Moreover, both by the Germans during the exhumation in February-May 1943, and by the Burdenko commission in 1944: officer IDs, passports, and other identification documents. This also indicates that the USSR was not involved in the execution. The NKVD would not have left such evidence - it was strictly prohibited by the relevant instructions. There would be no newspapers left that were printed in the spring of 1940, but they were “found” by the Germans in large quantities at burial sites. In the fall of 1941, the Germans themselves could leave documents with those executed: then, in their opinion, they had nothing to fear. Back in 1940, the Nazis, without hiding, destroyed several thousand representatives of the Polish elite. For example, in the Palmyra Forest near Warsaw. It is noteworthy that the Polish authorities rarely remember these victims.
- So it won’t be possible to declare them victims of the NKVD.
Will not work. The Polish version is untenable for a number of reasons. It is known that many witnesses saw the Poles alive in 1940-1941.
Archival documents have also been preserved about the transfer of cases against Polish prisoners of war to the Special Meeting (OSO) of the NKVD of the USSR, which did not have the right to sentence them to death, but could sentence them to a maximum of eight years in the camps. In addition, the USSR never carried out mass executions of foreign prisoners of war, especially officers. Especially in an out-of-court manner without completing the relevant procedures provided for by law. Warsaw stubbornly ignores this. And one more thing. Until the fall of 1941, in the Kozyi Gory tract there was no technical possibility of quietly shooting several thousand people. This tract is located 17 kilometers from Smolensk, not far from the Gnezdovo station, and until the war it remained an open recreation area for townspeople. There were pioneer camps here, an NKVD dacha burned by the Germans during their retreat in 1943. It was located 700 meters from the busy Vitebsk highway. And the burial sites themselves are located 200 meters from the highway. It was the Germans who surrounded this place with barbed wire and set up guards.
- Mass graves in Medny, Tver region... There is no complete clarity here either?
Tver (more precisely, the village of Mednoe near Tver) is the second point on the “Katyn map”, where Polish prisoners of war were allegedly buried. Recently the local community started talking about this loudly. Everyone is tired of the lies that the Poles and some of our fellow citizens are spreading. It is believed that Polish prisoners of war who were previously held in the Ostashkov camp are buried in Mednoye. Let me remind you that there were no more than 400 officers out of a total of 6,300 Polish prisoners of war. The Polish side categorically claims that they all lie in Medny. This contradicts the data contained in the memorandums of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. They were sent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in connection with the consideration in 2010-2013 of the “Case of Yanovets and others against Russia”. The memorandums of the Ministry of Justice - and they reflect our official position - clearly indicate that during the exhumation carried out in 1991 in Medny, the remains of only 243 Polish military personnel were discovered. Of these, 16 people were identified (identified by badges).
- To put it mildly, significant differences.
We must say frankly: this is obvious and unprincipled manipulation. Despite this, the Poles erected a memorial in Mednoye and hung signs with the names of the 6,300 Poles allegedly shot and buried there. The figures I have mentioned allow us to imagine the scale of cynicism and falsification that the Poles have resorted to and continue to resort to. It's sad that they have like-minded people in our country. We won’t speculate about their motives. But they have no arguments! This is the jesuitism and shamelessness of the position of the current Warsaw: to reject and ignore inconvenient facts and talk about its position as the only correct one and not subject to doubt.
- There is a lot of controversy in this regard in the so-called “Katyn No. 3” - Kyiv Bykivna.
In 2012, in Bykivna, the then presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Komorowski and Yanukovych, opened a memorial in memory of the three and a half thousand Polish officers allegedly shot there (please note: again, it was the officers). However, this has not been confirmed by anything. There are not even milestone lists that exist in the “Katyn case”. It is unfoundedly alleged that 3,500 Polish officers were kept in prisons in Western Ukraine. And supposedly they were all shot in Bykovnya.
The opponents' method of conducting discussions is amazing. We are used to presenting facts and arguments. And they give us figures taken from the ceiling, not supported by documents, and present them as indisputable evidence.
Have you ever personally had a discussion with those domestic historians who adhere to the Polish position?
I would be glad! We are always open for discussion. But our opponents avoid discussions and contacts. They operate on the principle of “a scorpion under a stone.” He usually sits for a long time, and at some point he crawls out, bites and hides again.
At the beginning of the year, the Polish Sejm received a bill from Deputy Zielinski. He proposed declaring July 12 as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the 1945 “August Raid.” In Poland it is called Lesser Katyn or New Katyn. The feeling that the Poles bake their “Katyn” like pancakes...
This once again confirms that «
Katyn” as such has long been a tool and at the same time a “source” of the information war against Russia. For some reason this is underestimated here. But in vain.
On July 9, the Polish Sejm adopted the law proposed by Zelinsky on “Remembrance Day on July 12.” So now official Warsaw has another “anti-Russian bogeyman”...
The history of “Little Katyn” is as follows. In July 1945, a military and security operation was carried out against gangs that committed murders and sabotage in the rear of the 1st Belorussian Front. During the operation, more than seven thousand armed people were detained. Approximately 600 of them turned out to be associated with the Home Army (AK). The Polish side claims that everyone was shot immediately. In Warsaw, they refer to one document - a coded telegram from the head of Smersh, Viktor Abakumov, to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Lavrenty Beria, No. 25212 dated July 21, 1945. It allegedly talks about the liquidation of anti-Soviet formations and contains a “proposal to shoot” the mentioned 592 Poles. But in the USSR, I repeat once again, such extrajudicial executions have never been carried out - especially foreign prisoners of war.
At that time, the employees of the GUKR “Smersh” NGO of the USSR did not have any legal grounds for shooting the Poles. Order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 0061 of February 6, 1945, which introduced at the final stage of the war in the front line the right to shoot bandits and saboteurs captured at the scene of a crime, became invalid after the end of hostilities. It was officially canceled even before the start of the “August Operation”. This alone calls into question the reliability of the encryption provided by the Poles.
The indiscriminate, “equalizing” nature of the application of mass execution to all 592 arrested “Akovites” without exception, and only to them, also raises great doubts. The usual practice of law enforcement agencies of the USSR at that time was to divide those arrested according to contingents, categories and other criteria with individual application of appropriate measures.
It is noteworthy that the above encryption was compiled in gross violation of the norms of official subordination. GUKR "Smersh" was not subordinate to the NKVD of the USSR and for this reason its chief, Colonel General Viktor Abakumov, who reported directly to Stalin, in principle should not have asked for "instructions" from the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Moreover, instructions about execution.
A recent examination of the “cipher telegram” clearly shows that we are dealing with a fake. If only because part of the document was printed on one typewriter, and part on another. The publication of the data from this examination, I hope, will put an end to Polish myth-making on these events. However, there is no doubt that “Malye”, “New” and other Katyns will be followed by others. Polish falsifiers of history have lost their sense of reality and are unlikely to stop.
- What can you say about the so-called grave No. 9, discovered in Katyn in the spring of 2000?
Indeed, in 2000, during the construction of a transformer station in Katyn, a previously unknown burial place was discovered. Based on their uniforms and other signs, they established that there were Polish military personnel there. At least two hundred remains. Poland responded to the news of the discovery of a new grave by saying that the wife of then Polish President Kwasniewski arrived in Katyn and laid flowers. But the Polish side did not respond to the proposal to carry out joint exhumation work. Since then, “Grave No. 9” has been a figure of “silence” for the Polish media.
- What, there are “other” Poles lying there?
It’s a paradox, but official Warsaw does not need the remains of “unverified” compatriots. She only needs “correct” burials, which confirm the Polish version of the execution by the “evil NKVD”. After all, during the exhumation of the “unknown grave”, there is almost no doubt that further evidence will be discovered pointing to German perpetrators. To complete the picture, it is necessary to say something about the actions of our authorities. Instead of initiating exhumation, they classified all materials. Russian researchers have not been allowed to visit “Grave No. 9” for sixteen years now. But I am sure: the truth will triumph sooner or later.
- If we summarize the conversation, what issues are among the unresolved?
I have already said most of it. The main thing is that the collected facts and evidence confirming the guilt of the Germans in the execution of Poles in Katyn are ignored by Warsaw and somehow “shamefully” kept silent by our authorities. It’s time to finally understand that the Polish side in the “Katyn issue” has long been not only biased, but also incapable of negotiating. Warsaw does not accept and will not accept any “inconvenient” arguments. The Poles will continue to call white black. They have driven themselves into the Katyn dead end, from which they cannot and do not want to get out. Russia must show political will here.
On April 13, 1943, thanks to the statement of the Minister of Nazi Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, a new “sensational bomb” appeared in all German media: German soldiers during the occupation of Smolensk found tens of thousands of corpses of captured Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. According to the Nazis, the brutal execution was carried out by Soviet soldiers. Moreover, almost a year before the start of the Great Patriotic War. The sensation is intercepted by the world media, and the Polish side, in turn, declares that our country has destroyed the “flower of the nation” of the Polish people, since, according to their estimates, the bulk of the Polish officer corps are teachers, artists, doctors, engineers, scientists and other elite . The Poles actually declare the USSR to be criminals against humanity. The Soviet Union, in turn, denied any involvement in the shooting. So who is to blame for this tragedy? Let's try to figure it out.
First, you need to understand how did Polish officers in the 40s end up in a place like Katyn? On September 17, 1939, under an agreement with Germany, the Soviet Union launched an offensive against Poland. It is worth noting here that with this offensive the USSR set itself a very pragmatic task - to return its previously lost lands - Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which our country lost in the Russian-Polish war in 1921, as well as to prevent the proximity of the Nazi invaders to our borders. And it was thanks to this campaign that the reunification of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples began within the borders in which they exist today. Therefore, when someone says that Stalin = Hitler only because they conspired to divide Poland among themselves, then this is only an attempt to play on a person’s emotions. We did not divide Poland, but only returned our ancestral territories, while at the same time trying to protect ourselves from an external aggressor.
During this offensive, we regained Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and about 150 thousand Poles dressed in military uniform were captured by the Red Army. Here, again, it is worth noting that representatives of the lower class were immediately released, and later, in 1941, 73 thousand Poles were transferred to the Polish general Anders, who fought against the Germans. We still had that part of the prisoners who did not want to fight against the Germans, but also refused to cooperate with us.
Polish prisoners taken by the Red Army
Executions of Poles, of course, took place, but not in the numbers presented by fascist propaganda. To begin with, it is necessary to remember that during the Polish occupation of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine in 1921-1939, Polish gendarmes mocked the population, lashed them with barbed wire, sewed live cats into people’s stomachs and killed them in the hundreds for the slightest violation of discipline in concentration camps. And Polish newspapers wrote without hesitation: “The entire Belarusian population there must fall from top to bottom with horror, from which the blood in their veins will freeze.” And this Polish “elite” was captured by us. Therefore, some of the Poles (about 3 thousand) were sentenced to death for committing serious crimes. The rest of the Poles worked on the construction of the highway in Smolensk. And already at the end of July 1941, the Smolensk region was occupied by German troops.Today there are 2 versions of the events of those days:
- Polish officers were killed by German fascists between September and December 1941;
- The Polish “flower of the nation” was shot by Soviet soldiers in May 1940.
Remains of executed Polish officers
F. Hajek also gives the following arguments against the accusations of the Nazis:
- the corpses of the Polish officers had a high degree of preservation, which did not correspond to their being in the ground for three whole years;
- water got into grave No. 5, and if the Poles had really been shot by the NKVD, then within three years the corpses would have begun to undergo adipocyration (the transformation of soft parts into a gray-white sticky mass) of internal organs, but this did not happen;
- surprisingly good preservation of shape (the fabric on the corpses did not decay; the metal parts were somewhat rusty, but in some places retained their shine; the tobacco in the cigarette cases was not spoiled, although over 3 years of lying in the ground both the tobacco and the fabric should have suffered greatly from dampness) ;
- Polish officers were shot with German-made revolvers;
- the witnesses interviewed by the Nazis were not direct eyewitnesses, and their testimony was too vague and contradictory.
“The members of the international commission - all, I note, except the Swiss expert, from countries either occupied by the Nazis or their satellites - were brought by the Nazis to Katyn on April 28, 1943. And already on April 30, they were taken out of there on a plane that landed not in Berlin, but at a provincial intermediate Polish airfield in Biała Podlaski, where the experts were taken to a hangar and forced to sign a completed report. And if in Katyn the experts argued and doubted the objectivity of the evidence presented to them by the Germans, here, in the hangar, they unquestioningly signed what was required. It was obvious to everyone that the document had to be signed, otherwise they might not have made it to Berlin. Later other experts spoke about this.”
In addition, the facts are now known that experts from the German commission in 1943 discovered a significant number of shell casings from German cartridges in the Katyn burial grounds.”Geco 7.65 D”, which were heavily corroded. And this suggests that the cartridges were steel. The fact is that at the end of 1940, due to a shortage of non-ferrous metals, the Germans were forced to switch to the production of varnished steel sleeves. It is obvious that in the spring of 1940 there was no way this type of cartridge could have appeared in the hands of NKVD officers. This means that there is a German trace involved in the execution of Polish officers.
Katyn. Smolensk Spring 1943. German doctor Butz demonstrates to a commission of experts documents found on murdered Polish officers. In the second photo: Italian and Hungarian “experts” examine the corpse.
Also, “proof” of the guilt of the USSR are the now declassified documents from Special Folder No. 1. In particular, there is Beria’s letter No. 794/B, where he gives a direct order for the execution of more than 25 thousand Polish officers. But on March 31, 2009, the forensic laboratory of one of the leading specialists of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, E. Molokov, carried out an official examination of this letter and revealed the following:
- the first 3 pages were printed on one typewriter, and the last on another;
- the font of the last page is found on a number of obviously authentic NKVD letters from the years 39-40, and the fonts of the first three pages are not found in any of the authentic NKVD letters of that time identified to date [from later expert opinions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation].
The second version of events is primarily based on the one led by the chief military surgeon, Academician N. Burdenko, in 1944. It is worth noting here that after Goebbels staged a performance in 1943 and forced, on pain of death, forensic experts to sign medical reports beneficial to fascist propaganda, there was no point in Burdenko’s commission to hide anything or hide evidence. In this case, only the truth could save our country.
In particular, the Soviet commission revealed that it was simply impossible to carry out a mass execution of Polish officers without the knowledge of the population. Judge for yourself. In pre-war times, the Katyn Forest was a favorite vacation spot for residents of Smolensk, where their dachas were located, and there were no restrictions on access to these places. It was only with the arrival of the Germans that the first bans on entering the forest appeared, increased patrols were established, and in many places signs began to appear threatening to shoot people entering the forest. In addition, there was even a pioneer camp of Promstrakhkassa nearby. It turned out that there were facts of threats, blackmail and bribery of the local population by the Germans to give them the necessary testimony.
The commission of academician Nikolai Burdenko works in Katyn.
Forensic experts from the Burdenko Commission examined 925 corpses and made the following conclusions:
- a very small part of the corpses (20 out of 925) had their hands tied with paper twine, which was unknown to the USSR in May 1940, but was produced only in Germany from the end of that year;
- complete identity of the method of shooting Polish prisoners of war with the method of shooting civilians and Soviet prisoners of war, widely practiced by the Nazi authorities (shot in the back of the head);
- the fabric of clothing, especially overcoats, uniforms, trousers and outer shirts, is well preserved and is very difficult to tear by hand;
- the execution was carried out with German weapons;
- there were absolutely no corpses in a state of putrefactive decay or destruction;
- valuables and documents dated 1941 were found;
- witnesses were found who saw some Polish officers alive in 1941, but who were listed as executed in 1940;
- witnesses were found who saw Polish officers in August-September 1941, working in groups of 15-20 people under the command of the Germans;
- Based on the analysis of injuries, it was decided that in 1943 the Germans performed an extremely insignificant number of autopsies on the corpses of executed Polish prisoners of war.
As can be seen, the Soviet commission presented very significant arguments in its defense. But, despite this, among the accusers of our country, in response, there is a version that Soviet soldiers deliberately shot Polish prisoners with German weapons according to Hitler’s method in order to blame the Germans for their atrocities in the future. Firstly, in May 1940 the war had not yet begun, and no one knew whether it would start at all. And in order to pull off such a cunning scheme, it is necessary to have exact confidence that the Germans will be able to capture Smolensk at all. And if they can capture it, then we must be absolutely sure that, in turn, we will be able to take these lands back from them, so that later we can open the graves in the Katyn Forest and blame ourselves on the Germans. The absurdity of this approach is obvious.
It is interesting that Goebbels’s first accusation (April 13, 1943) came just two months after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad (February 2, 1943), which determined the entire further course of the war in our favor. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the final victory of the USSR was only a matter of time. And the Nazis understood this very well. Therefore, accusations from the Germans look like an attempt to take revenge by redirecting
globalnegative public opinion from Germany to the USSR, and subsequently their aggression.“If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.”
"We do not seek the truth, but the effect"
Joseph Goebbels
However, today it is the Goebbels version that is the official version in Russia.April 7, 2010 at a conference in KatynPutin said that Stalin carried out this execution out of a sense of revenge, since in the 20s Stalin personally commanded the campaign against Warsaw and was defeated. And on April 18 of the same year, on the day of the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, Today's Prime Minister Medvedev called the Katyn massacre “the crime of Stalin and his henchmen.” And this despite the fact that there is no legal court decision about the guilt of our country in this tragedy, neither Russian nor foreign. But there is a decision of the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945, where the Germans were found guilty. In turn, Poland, unlike us, does not repent for its atrocities of 21-39 in the occupied territories of Ukraine and Belarus. In 1922 alone, there were about 800 uprisings of the local population in these occupied territories; a concentration camp was created in Berezovsko-Karatuzskaya, through which thousands of Belarusians passed. Skulski, one of the leaders of the Poles, said that in 10 years there will not be a single Belarusian on this land. Hitler had the same plans for Russia. These facts have long been proven, but only our country is forced to repent. Moreover, in those crimes that we probably did not commit.
The Katyn massacre was a mass murder of Polish citizens (mostly captured officers of the Polish army), carried out in the spring of 1940 by members of the NKVD of the USSR. As evidenced by documents published in 1992, the executions were carried out by decision of the troika of the NKVD of the USSR in accordance with the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940. According to published archival documents, a total of 21,857 Polish prisoners were shot.
During the partition of Poland, up to half a million Polish citizens were captured by the Red Army. Most of them were soon released, and 130,242 people were taken into NKVD camps, including both members of the Polish army and others whom the leadership of the Soviet Union considered “suspicious” because of their desire to restore Polish independence. The military personnel of the Polish army were divided: the senior officers were concentrated in three camps: Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky.
And on March 3, 1940, the head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria proposed to the Politburo of the Central Committee to destroy all these people, since “They are all sworn enemies of the Soviet government, filled with hatred of the Soviet system.” In fact, according to the ideology that existed in the USSR at that time, all nobles and representatives of wealthy circles were declared class enemies and subject to destruction. Therefore, a death sentence was signed for the entire officer corps of the Polish army, which was soon carried out.
Then the war between the USSR and Germany began and Polish units began to form in the USSR. Then the question arose about the officers who were in these camps. Soviet officials responded vaguely and evasively. And in 1943, the Germans found the burial places of “missing” Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. The USSR accused the Germans of lying and after the liberation of this area, a Soviet commission headed by N.N. Burdenko worked in the Katyn Forest. The conclusions of this commission were predictable: they blamed the Germans for everything.
Subsequently, Katyn more than once became the subject of international scandals and high-profile accusations. In the early 90s, documents were published that confirmed that the execution in Katyn was carried out by decision of the highest Soviet leadership. And on November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation, by its decision, admitted the guilt of the USSR in the Katyn massacre. Seems like enough has been said. But it’s too early to draw a conclusion. Until a full assessment of these atrocities is given, until all the executioners and their victims are named, until the Stalinist legacy is overcome, until then we will not be able to say that the case of the execution in the Katyn Forest, which occurred in the spring of 1940, is closed.
Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940, which determined the fate of the Poles. It states that “the cases of 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege officers and jailers in prisoner-of-war camps, as well as the cases of 11 people arrested and in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus 000 people, members of various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special manner, with the death penalty applied to them - execution.”
The remains of General M. Smoravinsky.
Representatives of the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish Red Cross examine the corpses recovered for identification.
A delegation of the Polish Red Cross examines documents found on the corpses.
Identity card of chaplain (military priest) Zelkowski, killed in Katyn.
Members of the International Commission interview the local population.
Local resident Parfen Gavrilovich Kiselev talks with a delegation of the Polish Red Cross.
N. N. Burdenko 
The commission headed by N.N. Burdenko.
The executioners who “distinguished themselves” during the Katyn execution.
Chief Katyn executioner: V. I. Blokhin.
Hands tied with rope. 
A memo from Beria to Stalin, with a proposal to destroy Polish officers. It has paintings of all members of the Politburo.
Polish prisoners of war. 
An international commission examines the corpses.
Note from KGB chief Shelepin to N.S. Khrushchev, which states: “Any unforeseen accident could lead to the unraveling of the operation with all the undesirable consequences for our state. Moreover, regarding those executed in the Katyn Forest, there is an official version: all the Poles liquidated there are considered killed by the German occupiers. Based on the above, it seems advisable to destroy all records of executed Polish officers.”
Polish Order on the found remains.
British and American prisoners attend the autopsy performed by a German doctor.
An excavated common grave.
The corpses were stacked in stacks.
The remains of a major in the Polish army (Pilsudski brigade).
The place in the Katyn forest where the burials were discovered.
Based on materials from http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_ %D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB
(Visited 476 times, 1 visits today)
In September 1939, Soviet troops entered Polish territory. The Red Army occupied those territories that were entitled to it according to the secret additional protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that is, the current western Ukraine and Belarus. During the march, the troops captured almost half a million Polish residents, most of whom were later released or handed over to Germany. According to the official note, about 42 thousand people remained in Soviet camps.
Autumn 1939. (Pinterest)
On March 3, 1940, in a note to Stalin, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria wrote that in camps on Polish territory there were a large number of former officers of the Polish army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, members of uncovered counter-revolutionary insurgent organizations and defectors.
He branded them “incorrigible enemies of Soviet power” and proposed: “Cases about prisoners of war in camps - 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege officers and jailers, as well as cases about those arrested and in prison Western regions of Ukraine and Belarus in the amount of 11,000 people, members of various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." Already on March 5, the Politburo made a corresponding decision.
Note to Stalin. (Pinterest)
Execution near Katyn
By the beginning of April, everything was ready for the destruction of prisoners of war: prisons were liberated, graves were dug. The condemned were taken away for execution in groups of 300-400 people. In Kalinin and Kharkov, prisoners were shot in prisons. In Katyn, those who were especially dangerous were tied up, an overcoat thrown over their heads, taken to a ditch and shot in the back of the head.
As subsequent exhumation showed, the shots were fired from Walter and Browning pistols, using German-made bullets. The Soviet authorities later used this fact as an argument when they tried to blame German troops for the execution of the Polish population at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The tribunal rejected the charge, which was, in essence, an admission of Soviet guilt for the Katyn massacre.
German investigation
The events of 1940 have been investigated several times. German troops were the first to investigate in 1943. They discovered burials in Katyn. The exhumation began in the spring. It was possible to approximately establish the time of burial: the spring of 1940, since many of the victims had scraps of newspapers from April-May 1940 in their pockets. It was not difficult to establish the identities of many of the executed prisoners: some of them kept documents, letters, snuff boxes and cigarette cases with carved monograms.
The Poles were shot with German bullets, but they were supplied in large quantities to the Baltic states and the Soviet Union. Local residents also confirmed that the trains with captured Polish officers were unloaded at a station nearby, and no one ever saw them again. One of the participants in the Polish commission in Katyn, Jozef Mackiewicz, described in several books how it was no secret to any of the locals that the Bolsheviks shot Poles here.
Remains of Poles. (Pinterest)
In the fall of 1943, another commission operated in the Smolensk region, this time a Soviet one. Her report states that there were actually three work camps for prisoners in Poland. The Polish population was employed in road construction. In 1941, there was no time to evacuate the prisoners, and the camps came under German leadership, which authorized the executions. According to members of the Soviet commission, in 1943 the Germans dug up the graves, seized all newspapers and documents indicating dates later than the spring of 1940, and forced locals to testify. The famous “Burdenko Commission” largely relied on the data from this report.
Crimes of the Stalinist regime
In April 1990, the USSR admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre. One of the main arguments was the discovery of documents indicating that Polish prisoners were transported by order of the NKVD and were no longer listed in statistical documents. Historian Yuri Zorya found out that the same people were on the exhumation lists from Katyn and on the lists of those leaving the Kozel camp. It is interesting that the order of the lists for the stages coincided with the order of those lying in the graves, according to the German investigation.
Excavated grave in Katyn. (Pinterest)
Today in Russia the Katyn massacre is officially considered a “crime of the Stalinist regime.” However, there are still people who support the position of the Burdenko Commission and consider the results of the German investigation as an attempt to distort Stalin’s role in world history.
Loading...