Katyn Memory -Father and Son

Katyn massacre

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"Katyn" and "Katyń" redirect here. For other uses, see Katyn (disambiguation).

This article is about the 1940 massacre of Polish officers. For the 1943 massacre of the Belarusian village, see Khatyn massacre.

Katyn memorial

Mass graves at Katyn war cemetery

Graves of Generals Mieczysław Smorawiński and Bronisław Bohatyrewicz

Note of Lavrenty Beria accepted by members of Politburo of Communist Party of the Soviet Union - Document of decision of mass executions of Polish officers dated 5 March 1940

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, literally 'Katyń crime'), was a mass execution of Polish citizens ordered by Soviet authorities in 1940.[1] Estimates of the number of executed persons ranges from 15,000[2][3] to 21,768[4]). Polish POWs and prisoners were murdered in Katyn forest, Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere.[5] About 8,000 of the victims were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 invasion of Poland, the rest being Polish citizens who had been arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, spies, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests and officials."[4] Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer,[6] the Soviets were thus able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, as well as the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian[7] and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship.

The term "Katyn massacre" originally referred to the massacre at Katyn Forest, near villages of Katyn and Gnezdovo (about 19 km west of Smolensk, Russia), of Polish military officers confined at the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp. It is applied now also to the simultaneous executions of POWs from geographically distant Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps,[8] as well as executions of political prisoners from West Belarus and West Ukraine,[9] shot on Stalin's orders at Katyn Forest, at the NKVD (Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del) headquarters in Smolensk, at a Smolensk slaughterhouse,[1] as well as at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkiv, Moscow, and other Soviet cities.[4]

The 1943 discovery of mass graves at Katyn Forest by Germany, after its armed forces had occupied the site in 1941, precipitated a rupture of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London. The Soviet Union continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it acknowledged that the NKVD secret police had in fact committed the massacres and the subsequent cover-up.[4][10] The Russian government has admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres, although it does not classify them as war crimes or as acts of genocide, as this would have necessitated the prosecution of surviving perpetrators, which is what the Polish government has requested.[4][2] It also does not classify the dead as the victims of Stalinist repressions, in effect barring their formal posthumous rehabilitation.