On April 13, we celebrate the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Katyn Massacre. On this day in 1943, information was revealed in Berlin about the discovery in Katyn of mass graves of Polish officers killed by the Soviet NKVD on the basis of a decision of the Politburo of the CPSU. Since 2008, April 13 is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Katyn Crime.
The cracks in the Soviet-built Katyn Lie appeared long before the assassination was revealed by the German propaganda machine. Already in the summer of 1941 it turned out that very few officers had signed up for the newly created Polish army in the East. Józef Czapski, one of the few survivors of the Starobielsk camp, was given the task of finding fellow prisoners and POWs from the other two camps. During the investigation, Czapski spoke not only with Polish POWs and Gulag prisoners, but also with Soviet officials and NKVD members. Some of them suggested that the missing prisoners had been sent to the furthest islands in the Arctic Ocean. A similar belief was expressed by some companions of captivity who avoided death.
A few months later, during a conversation between General Władysław Sikorski and Stalin, when questioned by the Polish Prime Minister, the Soviet dictator stated that thousands of Polish POWs had escaped to Manchuria. In the spring of 1942, the Polish authorities asked the British for support in the search. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden has banned diplomats from participating in the growing Polish-Russian conflict over this issue. However, this matter appeared in a report prepared for the War Department by Lt. Col. Leslie Hulls: “The prisoners in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov simply disappeared without a trace (8,300 in total). No one has heard from them since 1940, and despite Stalin’s personal promise to General Sikorski and General Anders, the fate of these officers remains a complete mystery.”
A shocking discovery
In the spring of 1942, part of the truth about the fate of Polish prisoners of war was unwittingly discovered by Polish forced laborers who learned about the execution from local residents. The cross they placed may have been one of the clues that led the Germans to the scene of the murder. The accounts of the local people were also critical to the discovery of the death pits.
On April 11, 1943, the German news agency Transocean published a telegram about finding the corpses of about 3,000 people near Katyn, in the Kozie Góry forest. bodies of Polish officers captured by the Soviets in September and October 1939. This was the beginning of a gigantic German propaganda campaign, the aim of which was to break the alliance between the USSR and the Western countries and to convince the Poles of the futility of fighting on their side. The following weeks were to prove the machine’s ineffectiveness checked by Joseph Goebbels. Two days earlier, the German Propaganda Minister had written in his diary:
Mass graves of Poles have been discovered near Smolensk. The Bolsheviks just shot about 10,000 of them. Polish prisoners of war, including civilian prisoners, bishops, intellectuals, artists, etc., were buried in communal graves.
Two days later, a special press conference was held at the headquarters of the German Foreign Ministry where the first details of the excavation work were revealed, including the names of some of those killed. On the same day at Radio Berlin reported the discovery at 3:15 pm:
It is reported from Smolensk that the local population has reported to the German authorities the place of secret mass executions by the Bolsheviks […] It has already been established that among the murdered Gen. [Mieczysław – przyp. red.] Smorawiński from Lublin. […] The total number killed is estimated at 10,000, roughly equivalent to the entire Polish officer corps captured by the Bolsheviks.
News – in the morning about the discovery by the Germans near Smolensk of the grave of 11 thousand. Poles murdered by the Bolsheviks
– was entered in the “Diary of Activities of the President of the Republic of Poland Władysław Raczkiewicz” under the date of April 13, 1943. Two days later, information about finding the crime scene was published in the press of the General Government. On the same day, the commander of the Home Army, General Stefan Rowecki “Grot”, reported to London on the matter.
Several Poles from Warsaw and Kraków who had been specially transported there took part in the examination of the tomb. Their accounts leave us in no doubt as to the authenticity of this massacre. Public opinion is agitated, details in the coming days
He wrote. A week later he sent information to London on the composition of the delegation and details of the work carried out by the Germans, including how to find the officers’ notes to date the assassination in the spring of 1940.
We’re still pumping things up, and we’re going to attack the British and Americans first and foremost until they finally speak up. […] The whole Katyn case is turning into a huge political event that may spark even more weighty reactions
– wrote Goebbels after a few days of propaganda action. He attached particular importance to the shocking images of Katyn, which were “so terrible in meaning that only a portion was fit for publication”. He also attached great importance to the credibility of the excavation by representatives of neutral countries and institutions active in the General Government, which retained the Polish leadership. On April 14, the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross went to Katyn with its General Secretary, Kazimierz Skarżyński.
On April 19, Skarżyński presented a report on the results of the work, which confirmed that the officers had been killed in the spring of 1943 with a shot to the back of the head. On April 23, PCK activists asked the International Red Cross for help in clearing up this issue.
Already two days earlier, on April 17, 1943, the Polish side submitted an official note on this matter in Geneva, learning at the same time that the Germans had previously asked the ICC to investigate. Moscow reacted very sharply to the proposal of an investigation by the International Red Cross. On April 19, the daily Pravda published an article entitled “Hitler’s Polish Helpers”. You could read in it:
Before the ink had dried on the pens of the German-fascist scribbles, the ghastly fabrications of Goebbels and co about the alleged mass murder of Polish officers by the Soviet authorities in 1940 were picked up not only by loyal Nazi accomplices, but even more strangely, by the ministerial circles of General Sikorski’s government.
The revelation of the assassination was used by the Soviets as a pretext to break off diplomatic relations with the government of the Republic of Poland. Almost at the same time, the Kremlin began to create subordinate Polish armed forces and intensively prepared to establish its own center of power in the future Poland. Moscow formally broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile on the night of April 25–26, 1943.
On April 21, Stalin sent secret telegrams to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill accusing General Sikorski’s government of waging a hostile campaign against the Soviet Union in collusion with Hitler. On April 24, in an interview with Prime Minister Sikorski, the head of British diplomacy, Anthony Eden, appealed to the Polish government to withdraw the International Red Cross’s application and declare that the German side was fully responsible for the assassination .
On the side of Russia there is strength – on our side there is justice
replied General Sikorski.
German research
Because the Soviets blocked the ICC’s investigation of the Katyn case, the Germans organized their own investigation. On April 28, 1943, a group of international experts in forensic medicine and criminology arrived at the crime scene at the invitation of the German authorities. Dr. Ferenc Orsós, director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Budapest, was appointed team leader. The experts unanimously signed a report stating that Polish prisoners of war were executed in March and April 1940.
The culmination of the parallel construction of the Katyn lie was the Soviet “investigation” of the commission of surgeon Nikolai Burdenko, which “declared” that the crimes against Polish officers in the fall of 1941 had been committed by the Germans. Soldiers of the Soviet subordinate 1st Infantry Division named after Tadeusz Kościuszko, who took part in a mourning ceremony at the murder site in January 1944. Western correspondents and diplomats also arrived on the scene and were presented with fabricated evidence of the crime.
The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Katyn Crime was established on November 14, 2007 by a resolution of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland.
gah/PAP
Source: wPolityce