KATYN MEMORIAL WALL

INTRODUCTION

When Soviet Russia invaded Poland in September 1939 breaking treacherously several multilateral treaties as well as the existing Polish-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1932, the Polish Army's High Command ordered all Polish military units not to engage the advancing Soviet hordes unless absolutely unavoidable, or in self-defence. Despite almost full compliance with that order by the Poles, within days a number of Polish Army, State Police and Border Guard Corps' officers were murdered by the Soviets on the spot and thousands rounded up and incarcerated in prison camps.

Within next few months the prisons in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland were overflowing with Polish Army and State Police officers, government officials, members of the bar, landowners, intellectuals, prominent public figures and ordinary Polish citizens. They were brutally interrogated, tortured or simply murdered without a trial and reason.

From the beginning of the Soviet occupation in September, 1939 to the outbreak of Nazi-Soviet hostilities in June, 1941, almost 1.7 million of Polish citizens were deported by the Soviets - most of them to uninhabitable regions of the Soviet Union. Most of them never to see their homeland again.

The Evil Empire was taking revenge for its defeat in the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1920 and preparing ground for implementation of a communist regime on Polish soil.

Although limited in number and slow, pieces of mail from families were reaching those incarcerated in three prison camps: Starobielsk, Ostaszkow and Kozielsk. And the mail from prison camps was coming to the anxious families.

The correspondence stopped abruptly in April, 1940 and in April, 1943, a name of an inconspicuous Russian forest became a symbol of martyrdom - KATYN ! Almost five thousand corpses, most of them wearing Polish Army uniforms, were found there dumped in layers in several enormous pits. Mouths gagged with rags or sawdust, hands tied with cord or barbed wire... And the mark of execution - a bullet hole at the base of the skull.

Since the collapse of the Soviet empire several other locations have been uncovered to hide similar pits filled with layers of corpses wearing Polish uniforms - Mednoye... Pyatikhatky... Bykovnia... Kuropaty...

And finally, after half a century, the identity of the murderer has been officially confirmed:

Iosif Stalin

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