Katyn, from the very moment in which the name of this small locality situated about 15 kilometers from Smolensk appeared in public circulation in 1943, became a symbol of one of the most repulsive and brutal crimes committed by the Soviet regime against almost 22 thousand Polish citizens, disarmed prisoners of war and also of a perfidious lie that accompanied this crime.
Originators of this monstrous crime – the supreme public and party authorities of the Soviet Union - from the beginning tried to hide the truth from the world. Already during the war and later over decades of Communist rule in this part of Europe the Soviet services, in cooperation with the services of other European countries remaining in the sphere of Soviet influences, relentlessly and consistently liquidated and by all means fought the witnesses of this crime and people telling the truth about its circumstances. They were doing everything in order to not only erase Katyn from historical awareness of Poles but also to prevent its wider recognition within societies of the free world.
Katyn is merely one of many Soviet sites where crimes were committed, nevertheless it became a symbol. By virtue of decision of the supreme public and party authorities of March 5th, 1940 21857 Polish citizens, carefully selected by the NKVD, were exterminated. They did not fall in battle nor were they sentenced after a legally valid trial. Soviet authorities, on the basis of decision of the Politburo of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the text of which had not been not disclosed until 15 years ago, literally massacred the elite of the Polish nation. The majority of policemen and officers murdered then by the NKVD were not professional soldiers. They were citizens who were called up to defend the country attacked in September 1939 by the two neighboring powers. In their civilian life they were university professors, teachers, lawyers, doctors, judges, businessmen, landowners, journalists, writers etc. They all perished because, as it was written in the “reasons” for this criminal decision, they were hardened, incorrigible enemies of Soviet authorities.
The document concerning liquidation of thousands of prisoners of war – citizens of another country with which the Soviet Union was not in the state of war – remains a particular, unambiguous and doubtless testimony that accuses the Communist system which, violating international law, did not hesitate to commit the most grave crime – war crime and crime against humanity. Typically, this politically motivated crime is among a few mass crimes of the World War II that until now were not judged and condemned by international community. It happened so because lying and putting political interests above supreme values – truth and justice - were always a part of the case. However, the struggle of Poles to inform the free world about the truth about the fates of their compatriots who fell victim of the Soviet regime and about this regime’s criminal face also became the dominating phenomenon of the “Katyn affair”.
Discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest and particularly the exhumation of corpses of victims, carried out in spring 1943 by the German commission and the Technical Commission of Polish Red Cross, demonstrated – to the extent possible in conditions prevailing in these days – the scale and cruelty of the Soviet crime. Declaration of the International Medical Commission, the body consisting of prominent specialists in anthropology and forensic medicine, was in fact the first – and for the long time the only – so unambiguous and unquestionable voice indicating the real perpetrators. Conclusions of the Medical Commission and results of the exhumation carried out by the Technical Commission of Polish Red Cross were highly convincing albeit inconvenient for the Allies. To accuse the ally bearing most of the war effort of a lie was beyond the possibilities of the Western powers. It gave the Soviet authorities a margin of freedom and let them start actions, of which the goal goal was to discredit findings of the International Commission. Almost immediately after taking Smolensk back from the Germans, the Soviets established their commission led by a member of the Soviet Academy of Science Nikolai N. Burdenko. They prepared a statement that was widely publicized in Soviet and foreign press and was published in thousands of copies as a separate brochure stating that Nazi Germany is responsible for this crime. Findings of the Soviet commission were binding in the Soviet Block until 1990 when the Soviet authorities admitted their responsibility.
In 1943 through European press published in states under German occupation and those not occupied and also in the USA and the whole continent of America there went a surge of publications about the discovery of the graves in the Katyn Forest. Most of them indicated the Soviet Union as responsible for the murder of Polish officers. Reports of British and American intelligence were also leaving no illusions as to the real perpetrators. The British and American authorities had full and well documented knowledge and many credible and competent expert opinions, inter alia a report of ambassador Owen O’Malley, which the British authorities rated confidential until 1972, expert opinion of admiral George Howard Erle (relegated to Samoa because of it) or a report of colonel John Van Vliet, eyewitness brought by Germans to Katyn from a POW camp. In spite of that the leaders of both powers tried to hush the affair – and they did it effectively. The Polish authorities in exile that wanted to find out what happened with their citizens were pressured by London and Washington. Poland remained alone: Europe and the world preferred to stay silent.
The Polish government in exile was accused of collaboration with the Third Reich by the authorities of the Soviet Union because of its efforts to explain the circumstances of death of thousands of Polish citizens. The price that Poland paid for an attempt to explain and disclose the truth about this crime was severance of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and practical elimination of Poland as a sovereign subject among the Allied States. Hypocrisy of the leaders of Great Britain and USA who were accepting Soviet actions and at the same time were exerting pressure on government of Poland to give up on investigation concerning the truth about tragic fate of its citizens for the sake of higher war goals, was also one of the reasons of elimination of knowledge about Soviet totalitarianism in the Western democratic societies.
The American Office of War Information (OWI) carried out an intensive propagandistic campaign aimed at support of the Soviet Union as war ally of the USA and presentation of Stalin as a faithful and wise ally. Leading American newspapers portrayed the Soviet dictator as a gentle, almost saintly figure with unusual military talent and “wonderful will to resist”. Deliberations of American journalists used to go so far that e.g. “Life” dedicated its whole issue totally to the Soviet Union describing it as a country similar to the USA, smoothly explaining the cruelties committed by Stalin with effectiveness of the program of collectivization. According to “Life” the NKVD - the secret Soviet political Police was just the state police much like FBI”, whose goal was to “look for traitors”. It is quite interesting that in 1943, the year of discovery of the Katyn graves, Stalin was nominated the Man of the Year both by “Time” and “Life”.
Of course, not all American newspapers and journalists joined in the chorus of those, who tried to compare the Soviet Union and Stalin to the Western democracies. One of such newspapers was the “Christian Science Monitor” (their Moscow correspondent was William Henry Chamberlin) which was indicating that the others are ignoring obvious facts from the Soviet history and whitewashing the man ‘whose register of crimes against his own people is longer than this of Hitler”.
In the USA it was clearly fashionable to praise and show in a positive light the Soviet Union, its achievements and Stalin himself. Influence of the leftist circles and skillful propaganda of the Roosevelt administration caused that even the biggest film companies were making movies praising the Soviet reality. Roosevelt and his government quite effectively were hiding brutalities and cruelties committed by the Soviets against Poles and societies of other countries subjected by them.
It was not different in Great Britain where Churchill’s pressure significantly expanded the scope of British war censorship which eliminated nearly all mentions critical about the Soviet ally. Vigorous governmental campaign was strengthening in dizzying speed the widespread respect among Britons for Russians, the Soviet Union and Stalin. No attempt to undermine the image of the Soviet ally was tolerated. When in 1943 George Orwell, the most prominent British political writer, submitted his Animal Farm to the publishers, it was rejected practically by all. Orwell, a militant socialist and an uncompromising champion of freedom and human rights at the same time, already accused British leftist intellectuals and press of whitewashing Soviet totalitarian methods.
The atmosphere of general acceptance and support for the Soviet Union in the European societies strengthened by defeat of the Third Reich caused that the issue of Katyn was practically absent on pages of the newspapers of the free world. It enabled the Soviet prosecutors to raise this issue during the trial of the leaders of the Third Reich in International War Court in Nuremberg. They accused Germans of murdering thousands of Polish officers qualifying it as an act of genocide. However the sentence pronounced by the Nuremberg Court on September 30th and October 1st, 1946 did not attribute responsibility for the Katyn crime to Germans and the Soviet party did not object.
At the same times the Soviets used their influence in Europe and with the help of the leftist circles exerted pressure on people involved in discovering the truth about the Katyn crime. Unusually brutal attack was launched against members of the International Medical Commission who, because of their presence in the Katyn Forest in 1943, became depositories of the horrible truth about the Soviet crime. Some of them were prosecuted and branded as Nazi collaborators. Of course the fate of members of the International Commission was different in countries that were directly dependent from the USSR, where they were subjected to direct pressures, and in the countries of so called free world. Fate of Italian professor Vincenzo Palmieri may serve as an example. In spite of pressures and brutal accusations of the leftist circles he did not withdraw his opinion concerning the Soviet responsibility for the Katyn crime.
Establishment of commission of the House of Representatives of US Congress was an extremely important element in the struggle for truth. This commission led by Ray S. Madden collected a huge number of documents and listened to dozens of witnesses. The result of their work, a report presented to the US Congress on July 12th, 1952 determined unarguably that the Soviet Union was to be blamed for the Katyn massacre. The collected material was submitted to the General Assembly of UN in order to launch legal proceedings before the International Court of Justice, nevertheless the case did not have any further course. The world or rather those who were ruling it, stayed indifferent to truth. Such situation lasted for dozens of years. Few dissidents in the Communist Block were making very risky attempts to clarify the circumstances of the crime and to inform the opinion of the world about it. There were also a few journalists and historians of the free world who were tackling this topic. All these attempts were fought off, fortunately not always effectively, by the Soviet secret services.
Nevertheless, the societies of the free world were not really aware of Katyn Massacre during the post-war period. Only the Polish authors were writing about it. In 1948 a book Katyn Crime in the light of documents was published in the West, a kind of “white book” concerning this crime. In 1949 a book by Józef Mackiewicz (he was in the Katyn Forest in 1943) Katyn – ungesühntes Verbrechen was published in Zürich in German and in 1962 Janusz Zawodny published in USA his book Death in the forest.
These were very important books but they were known mostly in the circles of Polish immigrants or researchers living in Western Europe and America, whose specialization was Kremlinology or crimes of the Communist system. Typical for the situation was publication of a novel Swallows of the spring 1943 by French Communist (and the former officer of Soviet Army) in France as late as in 1964. Later she also published an article in a popular historical magazine. The author of these two publications blamed the Germans for what happened in Katyn. Publication of such texts was possible many years after the war and they used to be well received by French opinion shaped largely by the leftist intellectual circles and the French Communist Party.
One of favorable exceptions was Henri de Montfort, a French historian and lawyer, but also a writer and publicist, who was interested in Polish history and culture. He devoted many years of his researches and creative work to collecting documentation concerning the Katyn massacre. His book Katyn Massacre published after his death in 1966 was the first comprehensive monograph of Katyn crime written by a foreigner and published in Western Europe. Józef Czapski, a prisoner of the NKVD camp in Starobielsk, one of the most important witnesses of Katyn tragedy wrote: “One may say it is the first book of this type and quality on Katyn that is at the same time so intelligible for foreign readers”.
The book of H. de Montfort was a significant event since it was the first monographic study of Katyn accusing Soviets published in the West and written by a non-Pole. Montfort acted against the majority of European opinion which over the decades was not convinced about the Soviet guilt and responsibility for the crime committed in Katyn.
Western public opinion willingly adopted the version that was blaming the Germans. Anyway, nobody wanted to search for the truth. The proof of that is the fact that there are not only any scientific studies but also journalistic descriptions of the case that was rather absent on pages of European magazines and popular newspapers. This sad ascertainment shows that influential circles of Western Europe practically erased this case from the awareness of the Europeans. Only persistence and consistence of few journalists and people with real knowledge of character of the Soviet empire prevented the case from falling into oblivion. The events that took place in 1980 and 1981 in Poland and in particular the already noticeable beginning of the end of Communism resulted in more frequent mentions of Katyn in newspaper articles. The new thing was pointing at the Soviet Union as the perpetrator that should be blamed for the death of over 20 thousand of Polish citizens.
For us, the Poles, Katyn became a symbol of crimes committed by the Soviet totalitarianism. It also became a symbol of struggle for truth. The truth always was and will remain a foundation of each free and democratic state. To strive for the truth and to know it is not only a challenge but also moral duty for each of us.
Andrzej Przewoźnik (1963-2010) – historian, long-term Secretary General of the Council for Protection of Memory Struggle and Martyrdom. One of originators of the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity. Killed in the plane crash in Smolensk.