Remembering the Katyn massacre
What each of us knows and doesn’t know is very varied and very personal, but I’ve been surprised and saddened at how few people I know have heard of the Katyn massacre of 1940.
The Wikipedia page on the subject introduces it as follows:
“The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, ‘Katyń crime’), was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated March 5, 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Beria.
The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21,768. The victims were murdered in the Katyn forest in Russia, the Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere. About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being “intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials.” Since Poland’s conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, and the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship.”
The reason I mention the subject of the Katyn massacre now is that an impressive and moving Polish film on the subject has just been given a very limited release in Britain and I have recently seen it. You probably won’t get the chance to see the film yourself, but you can read my review and I would encourage you to read more of the Wikipedia article.