Germans executed for Katyn

[Dan]

I finally got a few sources for Germans being executed for the Katyn murders, but I don't know how to go about checking them.

They are

Kommentare Zum Zeitgeschehen
A-1171 Wien, Postfach 543
Austria

and

AULA
Merangasse 13
A-8010 Graz
Austria

[Benoit Douville]

What a shame when we know now that the Soviet Union is responsible for this tragedy. If you have more info about it, please post it. I would like to know when they were executed and for what reasons.

Regards

[Hans]

I finally got a few sources for Germans being executed for the Katyn murders, but I don't know how to go about checking them.

Dan, these are both right wing Journals in Austria.

The website of Die Aula:

http://www.dieaula.at/

Kommentare zum Zeitgeschen:

http://www.geocities.com/Kommentareafp

[Dan]

Thanks, Hans

[Kunnar Kesküla]

There is one more from Montreal Gazette 5th november 1990:
TheInnocent executed
Doing my reading on the history of German war crimes, German war criminals and their adjudication by the victors after World War II, I came across a most interesting passage. In November 1945, seven officers of the German Wehrmacht (and I think it is reasonable to mention their names -- K.H. Strueffling, H. Remlinger, E. Böhom, E. Sommerfeld, H. Jannike, E. Skotki and E. Geherer) were tried by a court of the victorious allies, the Americans, the English, the French and the Russians. They were condemned to death for war crimes and subsequently hanged.

Three more were tried on the same charges (E.P. Vogel, F. Wiese, A. Diere), received sentences of 20 years of hard labor, were turned over to the Russians and never heard of again.

Most interesting about this particular war trial is the charge. The officers were charged and hanged for having shot thousands of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn after the defeat of Poland in 1939.
Now, with glasnost and all, it has been officially established and admitted by the Russians themselves that the murder of thousands of the gallant Polish officer corps in the forest near Katyn was committed by the bolsheviks of Stalin, not by the murderous Nazis, years before the German army invaded. The poor above-mentioned soldiers never got near the scene of the crime.

What evidence was used to hang these innocent soldiers? Who fabricated the "facts" that convinced the court that these men were guilty? Murderers? What do the judges, if they are still alive, have to say for themselves? What of the prosecutors? What were these people hanged for?

H. Famira
Professor of German
Concordia University
Montreal

[Dan]

Kunnar, thanks, but it was Dr. Famira whom I contacted. I have a hand written letter from him (he doesn't do computers) on my desk where he says those two publications were his source.

[Kunnar Kesküla]

Thank's Dan!

But i can't find from these links nothing? Can you help?

[David Thompson]

There are a number of factual errors in the 1990 Montreal Gazette article by Prof. H. Famira. The trial of Remlinger et al. was not held by "a court of the victorious allies, the Americans, the English, the French and the Russians," but by a Soviet military tribunal at Leningrad. The trial was not held in Nov 1945, but in Dec 1945 and Jan 1946.

Prof. Famira states: "Most interesting about this particular war trial is the charge. The officers were charged and hanged for having shot thousands of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn after the defeat of Poland in 1939." To the extent that Prof. Famira is suggesting that there was only one charge against these defendants -- Katyn -- he is mistaken. There were a number of other charges as well.

One defendant -- A. Diere (the Soviets spelled the name "Duere") -- apparently admitted participating in the Katyn forest massacre. The attached newspaper clippings do not make it clear whether all of the defendants were charged with participation in the Katyn massacre. (Generalmajor Heinrich Remlinger had been the German military commander of Pleskau [Pskov]).

[David Thompson]

Part 2:

[Dan]

Yes, I came across Farima's quote last year, when we were discussing the Leningrad trials, but as it wan't sourced, I asked on this board if someone knew anything about it. Charles said no Germans were killed because of Katyn, it was just another denier canard. So when someone on airphoto said there was proof, I asked to see it, and it hasn't come yet.

What suprises me is that with all the tallent on this board, and the fact that we have Russian speakers, why can't we find out?

[David Thompson]

Dan -- The Remlinger trial has been a source of frustration for a lot of people. Back when I was able to spend most of my time on the "Axis Biographical Research" part of the forum, I exchanged posts and private messages with other researchers who, like myself, were unable to locate any transcript of the trial.

My best guess is that the transcript is in the Central Archives of the Federal Security Services (Federalnaia sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossii -- the former KGB) of the Russian Federation records relating to war crime trials in the Soviet Union, 1939-1992. As I understand it, the archives are in Moscow.

The Central Archives of the Federal Security Services of the Russian Federation photocopied a number of records of war crimes trials and presented them as a gift to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives in 1996, but I couldn't find the Remlinger trial in the USHMM finding guides. Perhaps a Russian poster will have a look at the archives some day and let us know what he found.

[bf109 emil]

What they contain nobody knows, although the most popular rumour goes the evidence that Katyn Massacre was part of joint Russian-German operation aimed at extermination of Polish leadership(AB Aktion happened at the same time).

is this your conclusion as relating to this or did Germany also help with the "falsely alleged" Russia-German operation also at Tavda and Tomsk!! ...Then, in 1998, a Russian-Polish research team issued a series of previously classified secret police reports with the title Eyes Only for J.V. Stalin: NKVD Reports from Poland, 1944-1946. The reports detailed a second wave of terror unleashed during the postwar occupation, showing that the crimes committed during 1939-1941 were not an aberration but part of a single imperial design. Soon thereafter, a group of Polish members of parliament spent 10 days in Russia, trying unsuccessfully to obtain an official acknowledgment that the Soviet Government had engaged in genocide. In the meantime, more graves filled with Polish corpses were found near Tavda and Tomsk, east of the Urals.


Katyn was a strictly Russia affair.
-On 5 March 1940, Stalin signed their death warrant--an NKVD order condemning 21,857 prisoners to "the supreme penalty: shooting." They had been condemned as "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority."

source:
-For a translation of the order, see Allen Paul, Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection (Annapolis, MD; the Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 353-354. The same order identified an additional 18,632 prisoners, including 10,685 Poles, being held in NKVD jails in western Ukraine and Belorussia (formerly eastern Poland) for possible execution. A KGB memorandum of February 1959 cites 21,857 as the total number of executions during the April-May 1940 action. See Dmitri Volkogonov, Autopsy of an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (New York: The Free Press, 1998), p. 220.

this was determined by interrogation...

Official records, opened in 1990 when glasnost was still in vogue, show that Stalin had every intention of treating the Poles as political prisoners. Just two days after the invasion began on 17 September, the NKVD created a Directorate of Prisoners of War.2 It took custody of Polish prisoners from the Army and began organizing a network of reception centers and transfer camps and arranging rail transport to the western USSR. Once there, the Poles were placed in "special" (concentration) camps, where, from October to February, they were subjected to lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation. The camps were at Kozelsk, Starobelsk, and Ostashkov, all three located on the grounds of former Orthodox monasteries converted into prisons. The NKVD dispatched one of its rising stars, Maj. Vassili Zarubin, to Kozelsk, where most of the officers were kept, to conduct interviews. Zarubin presented himself to the Poles as a charming, sympathetic, and cultured Soviet official, which led many prisoners into sharing confidences that would cost them their lives.3

sourced
2. Nataliya Lebedeva, "The Tragedy of Katyn," International Affairs (Moscow), June 1990, p. 100.

3In October 1941, Stalin sent Zarubin to Washington as his NKVD rezident (station chief) with orders to cultivate agents of influence in the US Government. He remained until 1944, and he and his wife Elizabeth, an NKVD captain, launched the Soviet effort to penetrate the Manhattan Project and steal US atomic secrets. Zarubin's daughter, Zoya Zarubina, herself a former intelligence officer and translator, may be familiar to some readers from her appearance in the first segment of the CNN series Cold War.

the above articles and research and sources are from:The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field by Benjamin B. Fischer

[Sergey Romanov]

The real issue are 116 out of 183 volumes of files gathered during the Russian investigation that were declared to contain state secrets and were classified.

What they contain nobody knows, although the most popular rumour goes the evidence that Katyn Massacre was part of joint Russian-German operation aimed at extermination of Polish leadership(AB Aktion happened at the same time).

This is simply incorrect. Ex-military prosecutor Yablokov et al. have published a book based on these documents so we have a pretty good idea of what they contain. They contain interrogations of witnesses, expert reports etc.

Also, the Polish side knows pretty much what they contain because Russian prosecutors were unofficially giving them copies (info from ex-military prosecutor Tretetsky and other sources).

There is nothing sensational in these files, but they're quite "visual", so to say, and since the Russian side wanted to make Katyn "go away" for some time, they decided to classify all these interrogations and other materials, apparently so that they're not used, you know, to "dirty our glorious history".

There is zero evidence that Katyn was connected to AB-Aktion.

[bf109 emil]

There is nothing sensational in these files, but they're quite "visual", so to say, and since the Russian side wanted to make Katyn "go away" for some time, they decided to classify all these interrogations and other materials, apparently so that they're not used, you know, to "dirty our glorious history".

or is there...as 7 German officers where hung "Illegally" in November 1945 from evidence presented by the USSR...

In November 1945, seven officers of the German Wehrmacht (and I think it is reasonable to mention their names -- K.H. Strueffling, H. Remlinger, E. Böhom, E. Sommerfeld, H. Jannike, E. Skotki and E. Geherer) were tried by a court of the victorious allies, the Americans, the English, the French and the Russians. They were condemned to death for war crimes and subsequently hanged.

Three more were tried on the same charges (E.P. Vogel, F. Wiese, A. Diere), received sentences of 20 years of hard labor, were turned over to the Russians and never heard of again.

Most interesting about this particular war trial is the charge. The officers were charged and hanged for having shot thousands of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn after the defeat of Poland in 1939.

Now, with glasnost and all, it has been officially established and admitted by the Russians themselves that the murder of thousands of the gallant Polish officer corps in the forest near Katyn was committed by the bolsheviks of Stalin, not by the murderous Nazissourced H. Famira
Professor of German
Concordia University
Montreal

Perhaps even more troubling is the false claims by Russia and presented at Nuremberg to try and wash their hands of KATYN along with erroneous claims, which where taken as fact...here is an interesting read as to the sad plight of Russia trying to cover up the Katryn Massacre...hence perhaps the rumour as mentioned earlier was started and added as to include Germany by others as to deflect the blame from solely being Russian

14 Feb. 46

members of the Extraordinary State Commission-namely Academicians Burdenko, Alexis Tolstoy, and the Metropolitan Nicolas- this commission was composed of the President of the Pan-Slavonia Committee, Lieutenant General Gundorov; the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Union of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, Kolesnikov; of the People's Commissar for Education in the R.S.S.F.R., Academician Potemkin; the Supreme Chief of the Medical Department of the Red Army, General Smirnov; and the Chairman of the District Executive Committee of Smolensk, Melnikov. The commission also included several of the best known medicolegal experts.

It would take too long to read into the record that precise and detailed document which I now submit to you as Exhibit Number USSR-54 (Document Number USSR-54), which is a result of the investigation. I shall read into the record only a few comparatively short excerpts. On Page 2 of the document, which is Page 223 in your document book, we read-this passage is marked in your file:

"According to the estimates of medico-legal experts, the total number of bodies amounts to over 11,000. The medico-legal experts carried out a thorough examination of the bodies exhumed, and of the documents and material evidence found on the bodies and in the graves. During the exhumation and examination of the corpses, the commission questioned many witnesses among the local inhabitants. Their testimony permitted the determination of the exact time and circumstances of the crimes committed by the German invaders."

I believe that I need not quote everything that the Extraordinary Commission ascertained during its investigation about the crimes of the Germans. I only read into the record the general conclusions, which. summarize the work of the commission. You will find the lines read into the record on Page 43 of Exhibit Number USSR-54 if you turn to the original document, or on Page. 264 of your document book:

"General conclusions:

"On perusal of all the material at the disposal of the special communion, that is, the depositions of over 100 witnesses questioned, the data of the medico-legal experts, the documents and the material evidence and belongings taken from the graves in Katyn Forest, we can arrive at the following definite conclusions:

"1. The Polish prisoners of war imprisoned in the three camps west of Smolensk and engaged in railway construction before the war, remained there after the occupation of Smolensk by the Germans, right up to September 1941.

426

14 Feb. 46

"2. In the autumn of 1941, in Katyn Forest, the German occupational authorities carried out mass shootings of the Polish prisoners of war from the above-mentioned camps.

"3. Mass shootings of Polish prisoners of war in Katyn Forest were carried out by German military organizations disguised under the specific name, 'Staff 537, Engineer Construction Battalion,' commanded by Oberleutnant Arnes and his colleagues, Oberleutnant Rex and Leutnant Hott.

"4. In connection with the deterioration, for Germany, of the general military and political machinery at the beginning of 1943, the German occupational authorities, with a view to provoking incidents, undertook a whole series of measures to ascribe their own misdeeds to organizations of the Soviet authorities, in order to make mischief between the Russians and the Poles.

"5. For these purposes:

"a. The German fascist invaders, by persuasion, attempts at bribery, threats, and by barbarous tortures, endeavored to find 'witnesses' among the Soviet citizens from whom they obtained false testimony, alleging that the Polish prisoners of war had been shot by organizations of the Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940.

"b. The German occupational authorities, in the spring of 1943, brought from other places the bodies of Polish prisoners of war whom they had shot, and laid them in the turned up graves of Katyn Forest with the dual purpose of covering up the traces of their Own atrocities and of increasing the numbers of 'victims of Bolshevist atrocities' in Katyn Forest. "c. While preparing their provocative measures, the German occupational authorities employed up to 500 Russian prisoners of war for the task of digging up the graves in Katyn Forest. Once the graves had been dug, the Russian prisoners of war were shot by the Germans in order to destroy thus all proof and material evidence on the matter.

"6. The date of the legal and medical examination determined, without any shadow of doubt:

"a. That the time of shooting was autumn 1941.

"b. The application by the German executioners, when shooting Polish prisoners of war, of the identical method-a pistol shot in the nape of the neck-as used by them in the mass murders of the Soviet citizens in other towns, especially in Orel, Voronetz, Krasnodar and in Smolensk itself."

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now recess.

[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 Hours.]

sourcehttp://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-14-46.asp

[Sergey Romanov]

> or is there

No.

> as 7 German officers where hung "Illegally" in November 1945 from evidence presented by the USSR...

This is a well-known case.

> The officers were charged and hanged for having shot thousands of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn after the defeat of Poland in 1939.

This is not true. Arno Duere (or Diere) was the only one accused of being a Katyn accomplice. He recanted his absurd confession in 1954 (obviously, he wasn't hanged).

Sorry, but this case is rather irrelevant to the topic under discussion.

> Perhaps even more troubling is the false claims by Russia and presented at Nuremberg to try and wash their hands of KATYN along with erroneous claims, which where taken as fact...

And this is relevant to the classified files how? The issue of Katyn at Nuremberg has been scrupulously analyzed by lots of researchers. Nothing new there.