The Russian murder of Polish officers in Katyn was covered up, blamed on Nazis
03/22/2023
Disputes between historians about whether the village of Katyn was set on fire by the Germans or by the Russians continue to this day. The fact is, however, that March 22 marks the 80th anniversary of the tragedy of this small village, located in Belarus between Łagojsk and Pleszczenice. Katyń was inhabited by Poles, mainly Catholics. Almost all of them were cruelly and brutally murdered on the first day of spring 1943 by burning them alive.
Officially, the Russian authorities say that the village and its Polish inhabitants were completely burned down by the Germans. Unofficially, however, many experts are inclined to believe that Soviet partisans led by NKVD officers were behind it. The place was "chosen on purpose by the Chekists to obscure the issue of Katyn in international opinion and associate the massacre of Polish officers with the Germans", we read on the kresy24.pl portal.
The new Germans began exhumation works at the site of the discovery of the death pits in Katyn on February 18, 1943. So the Soviets knew that "at any moment, the case of the murder of thousands of Polish officers will see the light of day."
"They chose Khatyn, its name is spelled Khatyn in English, which is the same as Katyn" - we read.
The word "Katyn" is a symbol of the extermination of the Polish elite, but also a lie, which - according to the intention of the Soviet torturers - was to ensure that the truth about the crimes committed by the NKVD would never be discovered. It happened differently, and today the memory of Katyn is a universal warning.
In the spring of 1940, implementing the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) of March 5, 1940, the Soviet political police - the NKVD - murdered nearly 22,000 people, citizens of the Republic. There were 14,500 of them among them, prisoners of war—officers and policemen—from the camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov, and 7,300 prisoners arrested in the eastern part of Poland occupied by the Soviet Union.
Officers from the Koźle camp were shot in Katyn, prisoners from Starobielsk—in Kharkiv, and policemen from Ostashkov—in Kalinin. Further executions were carried out in prisons in Minsk, Kiev, Kharkiv, and Kherson. The authorities of the USSR decided to exterminate thousands of defenseless Poles, because they did not succumb to the propaganda conducted against them and remained patriots, ready to fight the Soviet occupier for a free Homeland.
This is what Katyn was like 82 years ago. And what does it symbolize now?
Today, Katyn is primarily a duty to remember people who paid with their lives for their steadfast loyalty to Poland. It is striving to learn the full truth about the mechanisms of crime and its perpetrators. Because not only the victims, but also the executioners cannot remain nameless.
Katyn is a place-word for Poles symbolizing the annihilation of the Polish elite in 1939, but also a symbol of lies and seeking the truth – said years ago the then president of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr. Hearings before the American Madden Commission in 1951-52".
As he recalled then, from the very first days after the disclosure of the crime, the Soviets tried to distort reality. The Soviet Union, being the perpetrator of the crime, used all possible means for several decades to prevent the truth about it from reaching the public opinion. It was not enough to kill these people, it was necessary to destroy all traces of them, stressed the president of the Institute.
It is our duty to make the memory of this unprecedented crime, which is our national tragedy, a part of European and world history. Only then can this crime become a warning for future generations.
In April, the Institute of National Remembrance is very intensively involved in commemorating the Katyn massacre.