ABSTRACT

The Soviet Security Services (NKVD) massacred about 14700 Polish officers and policemen taken from three prisoner of war (PoW) camps called Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov in April-May 1940. At the same time another 7300 were killed in NKVD prisons in Belarus and the Ukraine as part of the same operation. We now know, definitely, from Soviet documents released under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and in particular the crucial decision of 5 March 1940 of the politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), that this massacre of almost 22000 Poles was decided on by Stalin himself. The operation was planned carefully in order to maintain total secrecy and implemented with ruthless efficiency through the transportation of the prisoners of war to three separate killing and burial sites. The Starobelsk officers were shot in the NKVD prison cellars in Kharkov and buried in a nearby forest-park while the policemen and border and prison guards from Ostashkov were killed in Kalinin (now Tver) NKVD prison and buried at Mednoe. The 4400 officers from Kozelsk were transported to the Katyn forest outside Smolensk and buried there. After the German invasion of the USSR Goebbels announced the discovery of the bodies at Katyn with much propaganda fanfare in April 1943. He used the issue as a smokescreen for Nazi war atrocities and as a wedge with which to attempt to break up the alliance between the Western Powers and their post-1941 Soviet ally as well as to scupper any residual chance of Polish-Soviet collaboration.