Katyn Massacre Documents

[Qvist]

Molobo: The same request goes to you - even an approximate english translation would be helpful, as otherwise most of the forum cannot follow the discussion.

cheers

[Molobo]

Qvist-the polish quote given by my was translated.
"W toku śledztwa ustalono z całą pewnością, że w wyniku decyzji "trójki" zginęło 1803 obywateli polskich, z czego udało się zidentyfikować 22"
Translation:
During the trial it was confirmed with all certainity, that due to decisions of "three" 1803 polish citizens perished from which 22 were identified.

You also missed the fragment:
Na początku marca 1940 roku zgodnie z wynikami śledztwa sprawy karne zostały przekazane do rozpatrzenia organowi pozasądowemu - "trójce", która rozpatrzyła sprawy karne dotyczące 14 542 obywateli polskich (10 710 osób na terytorium RSFRS, 3832 - na terytorium USRS), uznała ich za winnych przestępstwa przeciwko państwu i podjęła decyzję o ich rozstrzelaniu.
Translation:
In the begining of March 1940, according to the results of invistigation penal issues were transfered to decide to organ outside court system-"three" which decided penal issues of 14 542 polish citizens(10 710 on territory of RSRS. 3832 on territory of USRS), declered them guilty of crimes against the state and made decision to execute them by shooting.

[Qvist]

Ah, I see - sorry, I thought those passages were your own comments rather than the translation. Thank you! (both for the translation and the clarification )

cheers

[Rarog]

It doesn't say that.

That's why I said "presumably".

You also missed the fragment:

In the begining of March 1940, according to the results of invistigation penal issues were transfered to decide to organ outside court system-"three" which decided penal issues of 14 542 polish citizens(10 710 on territory of RSRS. 3832 on territory of USRS), declered them guilty of crimes against the state and made decision to execute them by shooting.

It actually suggests that the decisions were made by troika, and not by Politburo.

Also, I still do not see any word affirming there were any executions.

[Sergey Romanov]

> Wrong letterhead? The document executed in 1940 was performed on the letterhead of 1930.

As I'm not an active poster here anymore, I don't intend to engage in long debates here (anyone who wants to debate me on specific issues is welcome at RODOH), I just can't resist responding to this one. Actually, I count this Mukhin's argument as a piece of evidence FOR authenticity of the document. Moreover, I'm making a stronger claim: probably, any such document from this period was written on 1930s letterhead.
Here is another such document, which is not under suspicion:

http://stalin.memo.ru/pictures/t12-136.jpg

Should I explain why it is on 1930s letterhead? It seems fairly obvious to me.

[Reviewer]

Wasn`t there 17 German officiers that paid for the katyn case at nuremberg?

[David Thompson]

Reviewer -- You asked:

Wasn`t there 17 German officiers that paid for the katyn case at nuremberg?

No.

[Slavomir]

They were put on trial and executed in Soviet Union.
One survived, the strange thing is that it was the only one who pleaded guilty.

[David Thompson]

They were put on trial and executed in Soviet Union.
One survived, the strange thing is that it was the only one who pleaded guilty.

For this trial, and questions about the part played by Katyn charges see:

Germans Hanged for Katyn
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26603
Germans executed for Katyn
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=15730
A False Confession Made by a German POW under Torture?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=18473

For the Katyn allegations at the IMT trial at Nuernberg, see generally:

Katyn, Injustice and the IMT
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=44639

For more detail on Katyn and the IMT proceedings, see:

The Katyn testimony of Eugen Oberhauser
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=56995
The Katyn testimony of Boris Bazilevskiy
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=56997
The Katyn testimony of Victor Il’ich Prosorovski
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=57002
The Katyn testimony of marko Antonov Markov
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=57000
The Katyn testimony of Reinhard von Eichborn
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=56993
The Katyn testimony of Friedrich Ahrens
http://forum.axishistory
Katyn -- the IMT spat
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=57145

[Lit.]

I think it could be very interesting and important, especially for our Polish colleagues:

In 1950, in the Kolyma GULAG one Lithuanian political prisoner, as a big secret, told this story to another Lithuanian political prisoner Leonas Juskevicius, who put it in his memoirs (issued in Lithuania in 2005).

The man who told the story was working deep in some old mine in the "Dneprovsk" "kasterit" (tin) mines, in Kolyma, GULAG. The "brigadier" (brigade-leader) ordered him to dig in some old desolate mine. During his work there suddenly the hole opened, as entrance to the another old mine. When he came in there - it was fully packed with corpses of Polish officers. On the walls were their names and other writings about their fates. They were POW's from the year of 1939, when Russia and Germany started this war, and occupied Poland. These officers were murdered (somewhere in 1942-1943) by blowing up exit from this mine.

Lithuanian told about this terrible discovery only to the leader of his brigade (former officer) also some political prisoner of the Allies. Leader ordered to cover the hole and suggested better forget about finding (not to tell anybody), because otherwise both would be executed by NKVD.

To illustrate this information I'll add two drawings made by Leonas Juskevicius. There are more of such drawings in his memoirs.

(source: Leonas Juškevičius (Juskevicius) "Autoportretas artimiesiems" ("Self portrait for the love-ones") "Laisves kovu archyvas" No.37, 2005, Kaunas, ISSN 1392-0421, page 211)

[David Thompson]

Jammix -- You posted a non-English message, rendered in the cyrillic alphabet. We do not permit non-English posts without a translation into the common language of this international forum -- English -- so I have deleted it along with a response stating the post was offensive. We don't permit non-English posts without accompanying translations, and we don't permit insulting posts at all. See the forum and H&WC section rules at:

H&WC Section Rules
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

[David Thompson]

A follow-up post from Jammix, containing insults in English and an untranslated portion in cyrillic characters, was deleted by this moderator - DT.

[Globalization41]

[A transcription of English subtitles from a
German newsreel reporting the Katyn Massacre
follows. The title of the Katyn clip reads: "IN
WALD VON KATYN (In the Katyn Forest) (14
April, 1943)"] Far away in the eastern region of
Europe, the Dnieper flows through the war-torn
land. Meadows and fields seem to be sleeping
in peaceful twilight, but this soil hides
something horrible. Where the forest steeply
falls toward the river, there are several
buildings on the elevated ground. ... Their size
reveals that they are not peasant cottages.
The Soviet secret police had orgies with
rounded-up women here. Beside these brothels
the entrance to the small forest of Katyn
crosses sandy paths. [Somber background
music.] ... The reports of simple peasants
have given grounds for inquiries by German
military authorities. Yellow heaps of sand pile
up here. Under the young beech and fir trees,
pits filled with corpses were found carefully
covered with earth. Over 12,000 officers died
here. [Clips of locals digging up corpses.] ...
In several pits, 16 by 20 meters, these corpses
were found in all kinds of positions. A few cuts
with a spade suffice to uncover the boots of
dead soldiers and then their gruesomely
distorted bodies and heads. ... There was sand
in the windpipes of many corpses, an indication
that these men were buried alive. We can tell
by pieces of uniforms, shoulder straps and
buckles, that these are murdered officers of the
former Polish Army, of all ranks. They have
been missing for years. ... In response to
questions about their whereabouts, Stalin
officially declared that these officers had
become Soviet citizens. These alleged Soviet
citizens have been found piled up in 20-meter-
long pits. ... All valuable possessions of the
dead men are missing. There are no pocket
watches, no golden wedding rings. But these
objects [clips of documents, I.D.s, family
photos] were of no value to the Soviet secret
police henchmen. Personal documents and
family pictures: they are the evidence on the
basis of which the murdered men are identified
one by one. Only with deep emotion can one
look at these pictures [family photos shown],
so full of life, which are in the possession of
the dead men. ... General Smoravinski lies
over there; over here, a member of the Army
Medical Service; over there, an Army chaplain
and hundreds of officers. ... The autopsy [two
specialists examining a corpse and pointing out
an entrance wound] showed that the cause of
death was a shot in the back of the neck. ...
Committees from all European countries,
forensic experts, scientists from Bulgaria,
Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, and
deputies of the Red Cross in Geneva were
present at the excavations and identifications.
They asserted that 12,000 Polish officers had
been murdered here by the secret police in the
early spring of 1940 and buried in the Katyn
Forest to cover up all traces of this horrible
crime against European man. ... The former
Polish Prime Minister Koslovski, a member of
the delegation, stated that as a Pole he was
shocked at the sight of the blood of his one-
time comrades, while as a human being one
had to despair over the terrible consequences
of the barbarism of the Bolshevik terror for
every nation. ... Many representatives of the
European press [shown is a reporter taking
notes of an exhibit displayed by a German
officer] expressed their view of the gruesome
discovery. ... Members of the former Polish
Army who have come to Katyn look at the rows
of dead men with horror. They see their
comrades who in 1939 had of their own free will
put their fate into the hands of the Bolshevik
power-holders, only to be liquidated by Stalin's
henchmen. ... The number of officers murdered
by the Bolsheviks is 11 times higher than the
number of officers fallen in the war. But that
was a fair fight, man against man, while this
was the slaughter of defenseless victims. ...
The 72-year-old [grungy-looking] peasant
Kiselow and other residents of this area gave
an account of the secret of Katyn, and the
[well-dressed] members of the neutral
delegations were appalled at what they heard.
... These medical experts [shown touring the
rows of bodies] unequivocally proved the
Soviets' guilt. [The clip closes with a priest
reading prayers, a gathering of onlookers, and
the film panning across the piles of bodies.]

[Below are some links I checked out while
brushing up on the feud between the Poles
and Russians.]

Russia and Eastern Europe

Historical Geography of Poland

Bolsheviks Win Civil War

The Fight for Polish Independence

Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia

Battle of Warsaw

Early Cold War

General Josef Pilsudski

The General Langfitt Story

Russian Civil War, 1918-1919

Eastern Policy of Józef Pilsudski

The Fate of Poland

War of 1919/1920, Part I

War of 1919/1920, Part II

War of 1919/1920, Part III

Eastern Galicia

Partition of Belarus

Soviet Criminal Justice

Interwar Poland

Red Army POWs in Polish Captivity

Architects of the Restored Republic

Russia

History of Poland

Warsaw Uprising

U.S.S.R.

Historical Atlas of 1920 Europe

Migration as Result of the Great War

Appeasement

League of Nations

Between World Wars

Lenin

Polish-Russian Controversy

Polish Aviation 1918-1920

Globalization41

[David Thompson]

Thanks, Globalization41.

[Sergey Romanov]

Katyn "revisionists" claim that Shelepin's letter is fake based on several arguments, mostly having to do with factual mistakes in the document. As pointed out before, there is nothing surprising about these mistakes, considering that Shelepin personally had nothing to do with the massacre (indeed, he himself claimed to have learned about Katyn from newspapers). There is, however, a strong corroborating evidence (aside from the fact that Shelepin himself accepted the letter as authentic) of key claims Shelepin's letter makes about the Polish prisoners in UkrSSR and BSSR.

Shelepin (actually, his assistant) wrote that "7.305 persons were shot in other camps and prisons of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia". We don't know exactly where they were shot, so some of them might have been shot in camps, indeed, but most probably all were shot in prisons. Anyway, this was a new information for Katyn investigators, since other sources did not mention these victims.

This information from Shelepin's letter was corroborated when in Ukrainian archives the list of 3435 Polish prisoners was found. According to 25.11.1940 letter from the head of the 1st special section NKVD USSR, senior lieutenant of state security Tsvetukhin, he was sending to Bashtakov (one of troika members, according to Beria's letter) 3435 special acts of those arrested Poles who were mentioned in Bashtakov's orders no. 041, 042, 043 and others.

The list itself consists of the names of the Poles, their date of birth and the number in the list for transfer to NKVD.

E.g.:

1754. LUCIK Marek, son of Jon, b. 1911 66/3-47

The number "66/3-47" means that Lucik was transferred to NKVD according to list no. 66/3, in which he was 47th.

Now, the numbers in the list fit into the complete scheme of "transfer to NKVD" from Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov. We have the transport lists for these camps and the numbers of lists do indeed have gaps.

Thus, after the lists no. 040/1,2,3 (Kozelsk) there follow the lists 044/1,2,3 (Ostashkov).

The gap is filled by the Ukrainian list, which has the names of the prisoners from lists 041/1,2,3, 042, 043/1,2,3.

After the lists no. 054/1,2,3,4 (all three camps) there follow lists 058/1,2,3,4 (Ostashkov).

The gap is filled by the Ukrainian list, which has the names of the prisoners from lists 055/1,2,3,4,5, 056/1,2,3, 057/1,2,3.

There are also Ukrainian numbers after the last numbers for three camps, namely 064/1,2,3, 065/1,2,3, 066/1,2,3, 067/1,2, 071/1,2, 072/1,2.

The Belorussian list has not been found. But there are still gaps in the list of numbers!

The gaps are between 046/1,2,3,4 (Starobelsk) and 050/1,2,3 (Ostashkov), between 059/1,2 (Kozelsk, Starobelsk) and 062/2 (Ostashkov), between 062/2 (Ostashkov) and 064/1,2,3 (Ukraine), between 067/1,2 (Ukraine) and 071/1,2 (Ukraine).

This fits nicely with Shelepin's information about Polish prisoners in Belorussia.

The list also clarifies just what documents Shelepin meant in his letter by "uchyotnyje dela" regarding the prisoners.

The list has been published in 1994 as "Listy Katynskiej Ciag Dalzsy" (Zeszyty Katynskie, no. 4), Druk. Centralna Biblioteka Wosjkowa, Warszawa.