So who shot the Poles in Katyn? Our enkavedeshniki in the spring of 1940 - according to the current Russian leadership, or still the Germans in the fall of 1941 - as I found out at the turn of 1943-1944. a special commission headed by the Chief Surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko, the results of the examination of which were included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal?
In the book “Katyn. A Lie That Became History”, its authors, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin, tried to impartially, on the basis of documents, understand one of the most complex and confusing stories of the last century. And they came to a disappointing - for those who are ready to force Russia to repent for this "crime" - conclusion.
« If the reader remembers the first part (of the book) - write, in particular, the authors - then the Germans easily determined the ranks of the executed. How? And the insignia! Both in the report of Dr. Butz, and in some of the testimonies, stars are mentioned on the shoulder straps of the dead. But, according to the Soviet regulation on prisoners of war of 1931, they were forbidden to wear insignia. So shoulder straps with asterisks could not have been on the uniforms of prisoners shot by the NKVD in 1940. Wearing insignia in captivity was allowed only by the new Regulations adopted on July 1, 1941. It was also allowed by the Geneva Convention».
It turns out that our enkavedeshniki could not shoot the captured Poles in 1940, crowned with military insignia, which were found along with the remains of the dead. This could not be simply because these same insignia were torn off from all prisoners of war. There were no captured generals, captured officers or captured privates in our POW camps: according to their status, they were all simply prisoners, without insignia.
And this means that the Poles with "asterisks" could be executed by the NKVD only after 1 July 1941. But they, as Goebbels' propaganda announced in the spring of 1943 (a version of which was later picked up in Poland with slight variations, and now the leadership of Russia agreed with it), were shot back in 1940. Could this happen? In Soviet military camps - definitely not. But in German camps, this (the execution of prisoners marked with military distinctions) was, one might say, the norm: after all, Germany had already acceded (unlike the USSR) to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War.
The well-known publicist Anatoly Wasserman cites in his blog a remarkable document from an article by Daniil Ivanov “Did the non-signing of the Geneva Convention by the USSR affect the fate of Soviet prisoners of war?”:
“CONCLUSION OF THE CONSULTANT MALITSKY ON THE DRAFT RESOLUTION OF THE CEC AND SNK OF THE USSR “REGULATION ON PRISONERS OF WAR
Moscow, March 27, 1931On July 27, 1929, the Geneva Conference worked out a convention on the maintenance of prisoners of war. The government of the USSR did not take part either in drawing up this convention or in its ratification. Instead of this convention, the present Regulations have been developed, the draft of which was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on March 19, 2009. G.
This draft provision is based on three ideas:
1) create a regime for our prisoners of war that would not be worse than the regime of the Geneva Convention;
2) issue, if possible, a brief law that does not reproduce the details of all those guarantees that the Geneva Convention gives, so that these details form the subject of instructions executing the law;
3) to formulate the question of prisoners of war in accordance with Soviet principles of law (the inadmissibility of benefits for officers, the optional involvement of prisoners of war in work, etc.).Thus, this Regulation is based in general on the same principles as the Geneva Convention, such as: the prohibition of ill-treatment of prisoners of war, insults and threats, the prohibition of using coercive measures to obtain information of a military nature from them, granting them civil legal capacity and disseminating on them the general laws of the country, the prohibition of using them in a war zone, etc.
However, in order to harmonize this Regulation with the general principles of Soviet law, the Regulation introduces the following differences from the Geneva Convention:
a) there are no benefits for officers, indicating the possibility of keeping them separately from other prisoners of war (Article 3);
b) the extension of civil rather than military regime to prisoners of war (Articles 8 and 9);
c) granting political rights to prisoners of war who belong to the working class or who do not exploit other people's labor of the peasantry, on a common basis with other foreigners who are on the territory of the USSR (Article 10);
d) providing [opportunities] for prisoners of war of the same nationality, if they wish, to be placed together;
e) the so-called camp committees acquire broader camp competence, having the right to freely communicate with all bodies to represent all the interests of prisoners of war in general, and not only limit themselves to receiving and distributing parcels, the functions of a mutual benefit fund (Article 14);
f) prohibition to wear insignia and non-indication of the rules of saluting (Article 18);
g) prohibition of branching (art. 34);
h) the appointment of salaries not only for officers, but for all prisoners of war (Art. 32);
i) the involvement of prisoners of war in work only with their consent (Article 34) and with the application to them of the general legislation on labor protection and working conditions (Article 36), as well as the distribution of wages to them in an amount not lower than that existing in the given locality for the relevant category of workers, etc.Taking into account that this bill establishes a regime for the maintenance of prisoners of war no worse than the Geneva Convention, that therefore the principle of reciprocity can be extended without prejudice to both the USSR and individual prisoners of war, that the number of articles of the provision is reduced to 45 instead of 97 in the Geneva Convention that the principles of Soviet law are carried out in the Regulation, there are no objections to the adoption of this bill.
So, to summarize Anatoly Wasserman, another published by the Germans themselves material evidence of the impossibility of dating the execution of Polish prisoners in 1940. And since in July-August 1941, the Soviet law enforcement agencies obviously had neither the need nor the technical ability to destroy and bury thousands of Polish prisoners, the obvious was once again confirmed: the Germans themselves shot the Polish prisoners no earlier than the autumn of 1941.
Recall that for the first time the mass graves of Poles in the Katyn Forest were announced in 1943 by the Germans who occupied these territories. An international commission convened by Germany conducted an examination and concluded that the executions were carried out by the NKVD in the spring of 1940.
After the liberation of Smolensk land from the invaders, the Burdenko Commission was created in the USSR, which, after conducting its own investigation, came to the conclusion that the Poles were shot in 1941 by the Germans. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the deputy chief Soviet prosecutor, Colonel Yu.V. Pokrovsky, presented a detailed accusation in the Katyn case, based on the materials of the Burdenko commission and laying the blame for organizing the executions on the German side. True, the Katyn episode was not included in the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal itself, but it is present in the indictment of the Tribunal.
And this version of the Katyn massacre was official in the USSR until 1990, when Gorbachev took, and acknowledged the responsibility of the NKVD for their deeds. And this version of the Katyn events has since become official in modern Russia. An investigation conducted in 2004 into the Katyn case by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation confirmed the death sentences of 14,542 Polish prisoners of war by the "NKVD troika" and reliably established the death of 1,803 people and the identity of 22 of them. Russia continues to repent for Katyn and transfers to Poland all new declassified documents on these events.
True, these "documents", as it turned out recently, may very well turn out to be fake. The late State Duma deputy Viktor Ivanovich Ilyukhin, who was closely involved in restoring the truth in the “Katyn case” (for which, quite possibly, he paid with his life), told KM.RU how an “unnamed source” approached him (however, as Viktor Ivanovich clarified, for him this source is not only “named”, but also credible), who personally participated in the falsification of state archival data. Ilyukhin presented KM TV with blank forms of documents given to him by the source, corresponding to the late 1930s - early 1940s. The source bluntly stated that he and a group of other persons falsified documents on the Stalinist period of history, and on such forms.
« I can tell that these are absolutely real blanks- said Ilyukhin, - including those used by the 9th Directorate of the NKVD / NKGB at that time". Even the corresponding typewriters of the time, which were used in the central party institutions and state security organs, were provided in this group.
Viktor Ilyukhin also presented several samples of stamps and seals such as “Classified”, “Special folder”, “Keep forever”, etc. Experts confirmed to Ilyukhin that the stamps and seals that produced these impressions were made in the period after 1970- x years. " Until the end of the 1970s. the world did not know such a technique for making these fake stamps and seals, and our forensic science also did not know", - said Ilyukhin. According to him, the opportunity to produce such prints appeared only at the turn of the 1970-80s. " This is also the Soviet period, but already completely different, and they were made, as that stranger explained, in the late 1980s - early 1990s, when the country was already ruled by Boris Yeltsin ", - Ilyukhin noted.
From the conclusions of the experts, it followed that various stamps, cliches, etc. were used in the preparation of documents on the “Katyn case”. However, according to Ilyukhin, not all stamps and seals were fake, there were also genuine ones that “got, as they say, by inheritance when in August 1991 they stormed and entered the building of the Central Committee, and found a lot there. There were both clichés and clichés; I must say that a lot of documents were also found. Documents that are not filed, but were in folders; all this was scattered in a disorderly state. Our source said that then all this was brought into line in order to later, along with genuine documents, put false documents into the case.
Such, in brief, is the current state of the Katyn affair. The Poles demand more and more "documentary" evidence of the guilt of the then Soviet leadership in the Katyn "crime". Well, the leadership of Russia is meeting these wishes, declassifying more and more archival documents. Which, as it turns out, are fakes.
In the light of all this, at least two fundamental questions arise.
First concerns directly Katyn and Russian-Polish relations. Why is the voice of those who (very reasonably, by the way) exposes the current official version not taken into account by the Russian leadership? Why not conduct an objective investigation of all the circumstances revealed in connection with the investigation of the Katyn case? Moreover, the recognition by Russia as the legal successor of the USSR of responsibility for Katyn threatens us with astronomical financial claims.
well and second the issue is even more important. After all, if during an objective investigation it is confirmed that state archives(at least their smallest part) are forged, then this puts an end to the legitimacy of the current government of Russia. It turns out that she stood at the helm of the country in the early 1990s with the help of a forgery. How then can you trust her?
As you can see, in order to resolve these issues, it is required to conduct an OBJECTIVE investigation of the materials on the Katyn case. But the current Russian government does not intend to conduct such an investigation.
Katyn massacre - massacres of Polish citizens (mainly captured officers of the Polish army), carried out in the spring of 1940 by the NKVD of the USSR. According to documents published in 1992, the executions were carried out by decision of the troika of the NKVD of the USSR in accordance with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940. According to published archival documents, a total of 21,857 Polish prisoners were shot.
During the partition of Poland, the Red Army captured up to half a million Polish citizens. Most of them were soon released, and 130,242 people ended up in NKVD camps, including both members of the Polish army and others whom the leadership of the Soviet Union considered "suspicious" because of their desire to restore Poland's independence. The servicemen of the Polish army were divided: the highest officers were concentrated in three camps: Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky.
And on March 3, 1940, the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, proposed to the Politburo of the Central Committee to destroy all these people, since "They are all sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, full of hatred for the Soviet system." In fact, according to the ideology that existed in the USSR at that time, all nobles and representatives of wealthy circles were declared class enemies and were subject to destruction. Therefore, the death sentence was signed for the entire officer corps of the Polish army, which was soon carried out.
Then the war between the USSR and Germany began, and Polish units began to form in the USSR. Then the question arose about the officers who were in these camps. Soviet officials responded vaguely and evasively. And in 1943, the Germans found the burial places of the "missing" Polish officers in the Katyn forest. The USSR accused the Germans of lying, and after the liberation of this area, a Soviet commission headed by N. N. Burdenko worked in the Katyn forest. The conclusions of this commission were predictable: they blamed the Germans for everything.
In the future, Katyn has repeatedly become the subject of international scandals and high-profile accusations. In the early 90s, documents were published that confirmed that the execution in Katyn was carried out by decision of the top Soviet leadership. And on November 26, 2010, the State Duma Russian Federation by its decision, it recognized the guilt of the USSR in the Katyn massacre. Seems like enough has been said. But it's too early to make a point. Until a full assessment of these atrocities is given, until all the executioners and their victims are named, until the Stalinist legacy is overcome, until then we will not be able to say that the case of the execution in the Katyn Forest, which took place in the spring of 1940, is closed.
Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940, which determined the fate of the Poles. It states that “cases of 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landlords, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siegemen and jailers who are in the camps of prisoners of war, as well as cases of 11 arrested and in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus 000 members of various spyware and sabotage organizations, former landlords, manufacturers, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution.
The remains of General M. Smoravinsky.
Representatives of the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish Red Cross inspect the corpses removed for identification.
The delegation of the Polish Red Cross examines the documents found on the corpses.
Identity card of the chaplain (military priest) Zelkovsky, who was killed in Katyn.
Members of the International Commission interview the local population.
Local resident Parfen Gavrilovich Kiselev talks with a delegation of the Polish Red Cross.
N. N. Burdenko 
Commission headed by N.N. Burdenko.
Executioners who "distinguished themselves" during the Katyn execution.
Chief Katyn executioner: V. I. Blokhin.
Hands tied with rope. 
A memorandum from Beria to Stalin, with a proposal to destroy the Polish officers. On it are the paintings of all members of the Politburo.
Polish prisoners of war. 
The international commission examines the corpses.
Note from the head of the KGB Shelepin to N.S. Khrushchev, which says: “Any unforeseen accident can lead to the disclosure of the operation, with all the consequences undesirable for our state. Moreover, with regard to those shot in the Katyn Forest, there is an official version: all the Poles liquidated there are considered to be destroyed by the German invaders. Based on the foregoing, it seems appropriate to destroy all records of the executed Polish officers.
Polish order on the found remains.
Captured British and Americans are present at the autopsy, which is performed by a German doctor.
Excavated common grave.
The bodies were piled up.
The remains of a major of the Polish army (Brigade named after Pilsudski).
A place in the Katyn forest where burials were discovered.
Adapted from http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_ %D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB
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Archives reveal the secret: why exactly 22,000 Polish officers were shot in Katyn
The Polish-Soviet war began on April 25, 1920 with an attack by Polish troops. Kiev was captured on May 6. In the occupied regions, the Poles organized reprisals against those who, according to their data, belonged to the Red Army and especially to the communists. At the same time, Jews were equated with communists. "In the Komarovo volost alone, the entire Jewish population, including infants, was slaughtered."
In response to the perpetrated atrocities, desperate resistance arose, and on May 26 the Red Army launched a counteroffensive. On June 12, she liberated the capital of Ukraine, and in mid-August she reached Warsaw and Lvov.
However, as a result of a carefully prepared counterattack by the White Poles and the uncoordinated actions of the Soviet military leaders, the Red Army was forced to retreat with significant human, territorial and material losses.
Not having the strength to continue the war, both sides agreed to a truce on October 12, 1920, and on March 18, 1921, they concluded the Riga Peace Treaty, which consolidated all the losses suffered by Soviet Russia. The Polish invaders, led by Marshal Pilsudski, managed to annex to their lands large strategic spaces of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which belonged to Russia until October 1917.
Such an unfair outcome of the war on long years became the cause of tense Soviet-Polish relations, which should have led to the restoration of the lost and the punishment of the brutal invaders at the first opportunity. What happened in 1939-1940.
The truce of October 12, 1920 was very unfavorable for the then Russia ... and especially for Stalin, who took this defeat as his own.
Strictly speaking, this battle was lost by the future Marshal Tukhachevsky under the military leadership of Trotsky, but politically, Lenin (as head of the Soviet government) pinned hopes for victory in this war primarily with Stalin. Not only that, the Poles then significantly cut Russian territories in their favor. Even more tragic was the fact that, having captured tens of thousands of the “red guardsmen” most loyal to Stalin (including from the 1st cavalry army of Budyonny), the White Poles condemned them to martyrdom in concentration camps.
Death - from torture, disease, hunger and even thirst ...
There were also civilians among the prisoners, and among them many Jews, whom the White Poles considered the main distributors of the Bolshevik infection.
Hushed up to this day, Polish, and Russian archives store many ominous confirmations of this Wielkopolska conceit. For example, in the lists of prisoners taken to Poznan from Ukraine, among the Soviet employees, there is a boy “Shekhtman Matel, a Jew, a minor, caught red-handed while posting Bolshevik proclamations in Kyiv” ... About others sent to Polish concentration camps, it says: “There is no evidence of the guilt of these people . But it is undesirable to leave them free in Poland.” All these are civilians, arrested and taken to prisons and camps in Poland for political reasons. One of them, 15-year-old Bogin, wrote on May 30, 1921: “Suspicious of me belonging to an underground organization, but having no evidence, the Polish authorities interned me. I have been in a military prison for ten months now, the regime of which operates in an oppressive way.”
Modern high-ranking Polish leaders do not talk about such violations of human rights and, perhaps, do not know.
But they cannot forget about the "red revenge" in Katyn!
How many were there?
On June 22, 1920, Piłsudski’s personal secretary K. Switalski wrote: “An obstacle to the demoralization of the Bolshevik army through desertion to our side is the difficult situation as a result of the fierce and merciless destruction of prisoners by our soldiers ...”
About how many Soviet prisoners of war shot and tortured by the Poles in question? Without entering into a discussion of whose figures (Polish or Russian) are more accurate, we will simply give their extreme values indicated by both sides. Russian historians, referring to archival sources, insist on a minimum of 60 thousand people. According to the data prevailing in Poland, this is a maximum of 16-18 thousand. But let there be even fewer Russian victims than the smallest official Polish confessions! And in this case, 8 thousand (according to other sources, 22 thousand) shot by the NKVD and Polish officers buried in Katyn fully explain what happened - as Stalin's Katyn retribution! Let me emphasize: they explain - it does not mean that they justify!
Shot in Katyn were primarily officers, gendarmes, who showed sadism against Soviet citizens in 1919-22. Ordinary from the Polish common people (and they were the majority - according to various sources, from 100 to 250 thousand), misled by their lords, basically, avoided execution.
Stalin would not have been Stalin if he had forgotten to the Polish officers their brutal mockery of his, Stalin, "brothers in arms"!
Of course, it would be more correct for those fascist Polish officers to be judged by the Polish people themselves, and not by the NKVD ... (However, the Polish people have every right to do so even today! Especially since Russia, setting an example, has already repented for its fundamental memorial complex in Katyn and ... continues to repent! The queue, as they say, is for Poland ...)
The archives have spoken
For a long time I did not dare to defile the hearing and sight of the Russian and Polish beau monde with what the gentlemen Polish officers did with Russian prisoners. But since my common words about violations of human rights aroused clear distrust and even suspicion of slandering “innocent Polish gendarmes”, I have to cite (for starters!) at least such an “ordinary” specific example from a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Habicht (a Pole who has not lost his conscience) to the head of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland to General Gordynsky:
"Mr. General!
I visited the prison camp in Bialystok and now, under the first impression, I dared to turn to Mr. General, as the chief doctor of the Polish troops, with a description of the terrible picture that confronts everyone arriving in the camp ...
In the camp, at every step, dirt, untidiness that cannot be described, neglect and human need, crying out to heaven for retribution. There are heaps of human feces in front of the doors of the barracks, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The sick are so weakened that they cannot go to the latrines; on the other hand, the latrines are in such a state that it is impossible to approach the seats, because the floor is covered with several layers of human feces.
The barracks themselves are overcrowded, among the "healthy" there are a lot of sick people. In my opinion, there are simply no healthy people among those 1400 prisoners. Covered with rags, they huddle together, warming each other. Stench from dysentery patients and gangrene affected, swollen from hunger legs. In the hut, which was about to be vacated, lay among other sick people two especially seriously ill in their own feces, oozing through shabby trousers, they no longer had the strength to get up to lie down on a dry place on the bunk. What a terrible picture of grief and despair ... Moans are rushing from all sides.
General Gordynsky's note:
“The reader of this report involuntarily comes to mind the words of our immortal prophet Adam (Mickiewicz):
“If a bitter tear did not flow from the stone, prince!”
Is there any kind of control for this and what kind? Or should we, realizing our helplessness, fold our hands and, following Tolstoy's commandment of "non-resistance to evil", be silent witnesses of the sad harvest of death and the devastation that it produces, putting an end to human torment, so long until the last captive and the last soldier of the guard fall asleep in a cemetery grave?
If this were to happen, then it would be better not to take prisoners than to let them die by the thousands from hunger and infection.
And after that, they ask Stalin: how did he dare to arrange the Katyn massacre for the Polish officers who arranged THIS?
However, it would be more accurate to say all the same: Katyn retribution ...
Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the future Red Marshal, whose troops defeated the Poles on the Vistula. Photo taken in 1921.
Photo: RIA Novosti
WHAT LEADED THE GOVERNMENT OF THE USSR BEFORE THE DECISION ON THE SHOOTING OF POLISH OFFICERS IN KATYN IN 1940
Data from closed official Polish and Soviet sources (given in abbreviated form)
First, the documentation:
On October 8, 1939, the People's Commissar of the NKVD, Beria, instructed: under no circumstances should the captured Polish generals, officers and all persons who were in the police and gendarmerie service be released until the investigation established whether they were involved in bullying and destruction (in 1919-1922) prisoners of war of the Red Army and Soviet citizens of Jewish origin (including Ukraine and Belarus)!
On February 22, 1940, Merkulov's special Directive 641/b appeared regarding captured Poles. It said: “By order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Comrade. Beria, I propose all the former jailers, intelligence officers, provocateurs, judicial workers, landowners, etc., who were kept in the Starobelsky, Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky camps of the NKVD. transfer to the investigative units of the UNKVD for investigation.
Addresses and codes of storage of materials from the Polish archives are given in Latin, from the Soviet archives - in Russian.
Ministry of Military Affairs Sanitary Department No. 1215 T.
To the Ministry of Military Affairs, Warsaw
In connection with the increasingly serious and justified accusations and complaints about the situation in the prisoner camps, repeated from all over the country, in connection with the votes foreign press, keenly interested in this issue ...
All the reports of the inspection bodies faithfully tell in horror-filled words the fate and life of prisoners who were forced to spend long days of deprivation and bodily and moral torment in the camps, which in many reports of the delegates of the Sanitary Department are called "cemeteries of half-dead and half-naked skeletons", "a hotbed of pestilence and killing people by starvation and want”, which they condemn as “an indelible stain on the honor of the Polish people and army”.
Ragged, covered with torn remains of clothing, dirty, lice-ridden, emaciated and emaciated, the prisoners are a picture of extreme misfortune and despair. Many without shoes and without underwear ...
The thinness of many prisoners eloquently testifies that hunger is their constant companion, a terrible hunger that makes them feed on any greenery, grass, young leaves, etc. Cases of starvation are not something extraordinary, and for other reasons, death gathers its victim in the camp. In the "Bug-Schuppe" 15 prisoners died in the last 2 weeks, and one of them died in front of the commission, and the remnants of undigested grass were visible in the feces given after death.
This sad image of human misfortune...
Due to the lack of ceilings, two huge barracks, capable of accommodating about 1,700 people, stand empty, while the prisoners choke like herrings in a barrel in smaller barracks, partly also without frames and without stoves or only with small room stoves, warming themselves with their own heat.
The prison camp in Pikulitsa became a hotbed of infection, even worse, a cemetery of prisoners
Bolshevik prisoners, dressed in rags, without underwear, without shoes, emaciated like skeletons, they roam like human shadows.
Their daily ration consisted of a small amount of pure, unseasoned broth and a small piece of meat that day. This would be enough, perhaps, for a five-year-old child, and not for an adult. The prisoners receive this dinner after they have been starving all day.
In rain, snow, frost and ice every day, without making the necessary supplies in time, about 200 ragged unfortunates are sent to the forest for firewood, a significant part of which lies on the deathbed the next day.
Systematic killing of people!
In overcrowded wards, patients lie on the floor on shavings. In the ward with 56 patients with dysentery, there is one room closet with one vessel, and since the prisoners do not have the strength to get to the closet, they go under themselves in shavings ... The air in such a room is terrible, finishing off the prisoners. Therefore, every day they die in this infirmary and in the barracks, on average 20 or more.
The camp of prisoners does not want to deal with the burial of corpses, often sends them to the district hospital in Przemysl even without coffins on open carts, like cattle ...
CAW. cabinet minister. I.300.1.402.
5 December1919 G.
Command of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front Head of Sanitation No. 5974 /IV/ San.
Main office in Warsaw
In the CEP Vilna, there is often no water due to a faulty pump within the camp.
CAW. NDWP. Szefostwo Sanitary. I 301.17.53.
MinistrymilitaryaffairsPoland to the SupremecommandTroopsPolishaboutarticle (“Is it true?”)innewspaper"Couriernew"about abusedesertersfromRedArmy.
Ministry of Military Affairs Presidial Bureau No. 6278/20S. P. II. Pras.
High CommandBP
All this was nothing compared to the systematic torture of Latvians. It began with the appointment of 50 blows with a barbed wire rod. Moreover, they were told that the Latvians as "Jewish hirelings" would not leave the camp alive. More than ten prisoners died due to blood poisoning. Then, for three days, the prisoners were left without food and forbidden under the threat of death to go out for water ... Many died due to illness, cold and hunger.
CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. 1.301. 10.339.
ATNKIDRSFSRabout bullyingPolishtroops over prisonersthe Red Armyandpartisans
To the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs
In forwarding this note about the atrocities of the Polish White Guards, I inform you that I received this information from the most reliable source.
It seems to me that this cannot be left without protest.
G.L. Shkilov
7/ II1920.
Atrocities of the Polish Whites
Among the victims - the assistant to the head of the detachment, comrade, who was wounded in battle. The mustache, whom the bandits overtook, first gouged out his eyes and killed him. The wounded secretary of the Rudobelsky executive committee, comrade Gashinsky, and the clerk Olkhimovich were taken away by the Poles, and the latter was brutally tortured, and then tied to a cart and forced to bark like a dog. ... After that, reprisals began against the families of partisans, Soviet workers and peasants in general. First of all, they burned the house of Comrade Levkov's father in the village of Karpilovka, and then set fire to the village ... The same fate befell the villages of Kovaly and Dubrova, which were completely burned down. Families of partisans are almost without exception slaughtered. Up to a hundred people were thrown into the fire during the fire. Women were raped, starting from minors (one four-year-old girl was named among them). Victims of violence were pinned with bayonets. The dead were not allowed to be buried. On January 19, on Epiphany, during a service in a surviving church in the village of Karpilovka, the Poles threw 2 bombs there, and when the peasants began to scatter in a panic, they opened fire on them. The priest also got hurt: his property was looted, and he himself was thoroughly beaten, saying: "You are a Soviet priest."
WUA RF. F. 122. Op. 3. P. 5. D. 19. L. 8-9, 9v.
FrommemorandummilitaryandcivilprisonersinPolish prisons
Tov. David Tsamtsiev reports on the massacre in the village of Grichin, Samokhvalovichi volost, Minsk district, over captured Red Army soldiers. The regiment commander ordered to gather all the inhabitants of the village. When they gathered, they brought out the arrested with their hands tied back and ordered the inhabitants to spit and beat them. The beating by those who had gathered lasted about 30 minutes. Then, after finding out their identity (it turned out that there were Red Army soldiers of the 4th Warsaw Hussars), the unfortunates were completely naked and began to abuse them. Whips and ramrods were used. Having poured water three times, when the arrested were already near death, they were placed in a ditch and shot, also inhumanely, so that even some parts of the body were completely torn off.
Tov. Tsamtsiev was arrested along with a friend not far from the Mikhanovichi station and sent to headquarters. “There, in the presence of officers, they beat me anywhere and with anything, doused me with cold water and sprinkled with sand. This abuse continued for about an hour. Finally, the chief inquisitor appeared, the brother of the regiment commander, staff captain Dombrovsky, who, like an angry beast, rushed and began to beat him in the face with an iron rod. Having stripped naked and searched, he ordered the soldiers to spread us out, pulling our arms and legs, and give us 50 with a whip. I don’t know if we wouldn’t be lying in the ground now if the cry “commissar, commissar” had not distracted their attention. They brought in a well-dressed Jew named Khurgin, originally from the town of Samokhvalovichi, and although the unfortunate man assured that he was not a commissar and that he had not served anywhere at all, all his assurances and pleas came to nothing: he was stripped naked and immediately shot and abandoned, saying that a Jew is not worthy of burial on Polish soil...
T. Kuleshinsky-Kowalsky was brought to the hospital, who had already lost his human appearance. The arms and legs were swollen... It was impossible to make out parts of it on the face. There were wires in the nostrils, also in the tips of the ears. With great difficulty he pronounced his last name. Nothing more could be obtained from him. As they put me in bed, I lay like a nightstand - to death. A few days later, a rumor spread that a commission was coming from Warsaw to inspect the prison, and that same night counterintelligence agents appeared and, after many tortures, strangled him.
It was one of our best comrades left for underground work in Minsk.”
Tov. Vera Vasilyeva writes about the torture of a young vedochka (healer), comrade Zuymach: “Comrade. Zuymach was taken out of prison at night, as if to be shot, brought to the gendarmerie, beaten, put to the wall and pointed the muzzle of a revolver at her, shouting: “Confess, then we will spare, otherwise there are only a few minutes left to live.” They were forced to write dying farewell letters to relatives. They ordered to put the head on the table and ran a cold blade of checkers over the neck, saying that the head would fly off if it was not recognized. When she was returned to prison, she was shaking all night, as if in a fever ... She, one might say, is still a child, and her head was already covered with gray hair. Finally, naked and barefoot, she was sent to the camp...
Tov. Epstein writes: “Drunken detectives enter the cell and beat anyone. Women are beaten just like men. They beat fiercely, mercilessly. For example, Goldin was beaten with a log on the head and sides. They use revolvers, whips, iron springs, and various other instruments of torture...”
In Bobruisk prison, the same thing was done as in Minsk.
Tov.X. Khaimovich reports: “The Bobruisk gendarmerie, having arrested me, interrogated me twice a day, and each time they beat me mercilessly with butts and whips. Investigator Eismont inflicted beatings and called the gendarmes to his aid. Such torture continued for 14 days.
When I fainted, they poured cold water over me and continued to beat me until the torturers got tired. Once, in the gendarmerie, my hands were tied and hung from the ceiling. Then they beat me with anything. They took him out of town to be shot, but for some reason they didn’t shoot him.”
Tov. Giler Wolfson reports that after his arrest in Glusk on 6 September in prison, he was stripped naked and beaten with whips on his naked body.
Tov. Georgy Knysh reports: “They brought me to the gendarmerie, they mocked me, beat 40 pieces with whips, I don’t remember how many butts, ramrods - 6 pieces - in the heels; they tried to prick their nails, but then they left ... "
From the statement of the hostages.
We were escorted from prison under heavy escort, and if relatives or acquaintances turned to any of the departing with any conversation, the gendarmes uttered the most selective curses, threatened with weapons and even beat some, as, for example, Iosif Shakhnovich was hit by the gendarme for he walked carelessly, according to the gendarme.
The treatment by the gendarmes along the way was terrible, they didn’t let anyone out of the car for two days, they forced them to clean the dirty cars with hats, towels or anything else, if the arrested refused, they forced them by force, as, for example, the gendarme hit Libkovich Peisakh in the face because he refused to clean the dirt in the restroom with his hands ...
RGASPI.F.63. Op.1 D.198. L.27-29.
Command of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front
№3473/ San.
Major Medical service dr Bronislaw Hackbeil
Deputy head of sanitation
Report
Prisoner camp at the collection station for prisoners - this is a real dungeon. No one took care of these unfortunates, so it is not surprising that a person unwashed, undressed, poorly fed and placed in unsuitable conditions as a result of infection was doomed only to death.
The current commandant of the prison camp resolutely refuses to feed them. Next to them, in free barracks, there are entire families of refugees ... Women with venereal diseases infect both military and civilians ...
CAW. Oddzial IV NDWP. I.301.10.343.
StatementsreturnedfromcaptivityBUT. P. Matskevich, M.FridkinandPetrova
Andrei Prokhorovich Matskevich
The first duty was a general search... For example, I received only two slaps in the face, while other comrades, such as Bashinkevich and Mishutovich, were beaten not only in the carriage, but even on the field, when we were escorted from Bialystok to the camps... Everyone when we were taken out of the city to Bialystok, they stopped us in the field only to beat Bashinkevich and Mishutovich a second time.
1920: The Poles lead captured Red Army soldiers.
Some time later, the Jewish community sent us a hot lunch from Bialystok, but our escorts did not let us have lunch, and those who brought it were beaten with rifle butts.
The food in the camps is such that not a single most healthy person will be able to survive for more or less a long time. It consists of a small portion of black bread, weighing about 1/2 pound, one shard a day of soup, which looks more like slop than soup, and boiling water.
These slops, called soup, were served unsalted. On the basis of hunger and cold, diseases reached incredible proportions. There is no medical assistance, and the neighborhood exists only on paper. Dozens of people die every day. In addition to starvation, many die from beatings by barbarian gendarmes. One Red Army soldier (I don’t remember his last name) was beaten so badly by a corporal in the barracks with a stick that he was unable to get up and stand on his feet. The second, a certain comrade Zhilintsky, received 120 rods and was placed in the okolodok. T. Lifshits (former chairman of the trade union of art workers in Minsk) died completely after various tortures. Fain, a very old man, a native and resident of the Pleschenichskaya volost, Borisov district, was daily subjected to torture in the form of cutting off his beard with a cleaver, striking his naked body with a bayonet, marching at night in one linen frost between barracks, etc.
M. Fridkina
We were taken to the Brest-Litovsk camp. The commandant turned to us with the following speech: “You Bolsheviks wanted to take our lands away from us, all right, I’ll give you land. I have no right to kill you, but I will feed you in such a way that you yourself will die! And indeed, despite the fact that we had not received bread for two days before, we did not receive such a thing that day either, we ate only potato husks, sold the last shirts for a piece of bread, the legionnaires pursued us for this and, seeing how they collect or they boiled this husk, dispersed it with whips, and those who, due to weakness, did not run away in time, were beaten half to death.
For 13 days we did not receive bread, on the 14th day, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but very rotten, moldy; everyone, of course, greedily pounced on him, and the diseases that had existed before that time intensified: the sick were not treated, and they died by the dozens. In September 1919, up to 180 people died. in a day…
Petrova
In Bobruisk there were up to 1600 captured Red Army soldiers, most of them completely naked ...
Chairman Budkevich
RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 198. L. 38-39.
Reportabout inspectioncampsStrzalkovo
19/ IX-20 g.
They are buried in the cemetery, not far from the camp, naked and without coffins.
RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.8-10.
Main sorting room for the sick and wounded of the Polish Army
Report
To the Hygiene Section of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs
According to the chief, the prisoners give the impression of being very exhausted and hungry, as they break out of the cars, look for leftover food in the garbage and greedily eat potato peels that they find on the tracks.
S. Gilevich, Major of Medical Service
Head of the main sorting of the sick and wounded of the Polish Army
CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. 1.301.10.354.
Bacteriological Department of the Military Sanitary Council
№ 405/20
To the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs,IVsection, Warsaw
All prisoners give the impression of being extremely hungry, since straight out of the ground they rake and eat raw potatoes, collect in the dumps and eat all kinds of waste, such as: bones, cabbage leaves, etc.
Dr. Shimanovsky, Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Service,
Head of bacteriological department
Military Sanitary Council
CAW. MS Wojsk. Dep.Zdrowia.I.300.62.31.
The result of the inspection of the camps of our prisoners of war in Poland.
90% are completely naked, naked, and covered only with rags and paper mattresses. They sit crouched on the bare boards of the bunk. They complain of insufficient and bad food and bad treatment.
RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.20-26.
to the High Command.
section of prisoners. Warsaw.
The command of the Warsaw General District - a copy.
The main causes of the disease are the prisoners eating various raw cleanings and the complete absence of shoes and clothes.
Malevich. Modlin Fortified Area Command
CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. I.301.10.354.
DelegateconnectionsRVSWesternfrontRedArmy at18- thdivisionsTroopsPolish Comrade Postnekaboutvisiting prisoners of warRed Army soldiers.
Report
The sick, completely naked and barefoot, are so emaciated that they can barely stand on their feet and then their whole body is shaking. Many, when they saw me, cried like children. Each room accommodates 40-50 people, they lie on top of each other.
4-5 people die every day. All without exception from exhaustion.
GARF.F.R-3333.Op.2.D.186.L.33
ProtocolinterrogationValuevAT. AT. - a Red Army soldier who escaped from Polish captivity
Communists were chosen from our composition, command staff commissars and Jews, and right there, in front of all the Red Army soldiers, one Jewish commissar (I don’t know his last name and part) was beaten and then immediately shot. Our uniforms were taken away from us, those who did not immediately follow the orders of the legionnaires were beaten to death, and when they fell unconscious, then the legionnaires dragged the boots and uniforms from the beaten Red Army soldiers by force. After we were sent to the Tuchol camp. There lay the wounded, not bandaged for whole weeks, their wounds wormed. Many of the wounded died, 30-35 people were buried every day.
RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 198. L. 40-41.
RepresentativeRussiansocietiesRedCross StephanieSempolovskayaPolishsocietyRedCross on bullyingcapturedcommunistsandJews inPolishcampsStrzalkovo, rottenandDombe
Exceptional laws against Jews and "communists" in prison camps
In the camps in Strzalkovo, Tucholi, Domba, Jews and "communists" are kept separately and are deprived of a number of rights enjoyed by other categories of prisoners. They are kept in the worst quarters, always in "dugouts", completely devoid of straw bedding, dressed worst of all, almost without shoes (in Tucholi, almost all Jews were barefoot on 16/XI, while shod ones predominate in other barracks).
These two groups have the worst moral attitude - most complaints about beatings and ill-treatment.
In Strzalkovo, the authorities simply stated that it would be best to shoot these groups.
During the lighting in the camp, the barracks of Jews and communists were left without lighting.
Even in Tucholi, where in general the attitude towards prisoners is better, Jews and communists complained about beatings.
From Dombe, I also receive complaints about the treatment of Jews - the beating of Jewish men and Jewish women and violation of the norms of decency by soldiers when bathing Jewish women.
The communists also complained that during a short walk, officers commanded him to lie down and stand up 50 times.
In addition, I was complained that when Jewish communities send donations for Jews to Strzalkovo, they are not always distributed to Jews.
CAW. 1772/89/1789pt.l
Telegram to A.A. Ioffe Comrade Chicherin, Polburo, Tsentroevak.
The situation of prisoners in the Strzhalkovo camp is especially difficult.
The death rate among prisoners of war is so great that, if it does not decrease, they will all die out within six months.
In the same regime as the communists, they keep all the captured Jews of the Red Army, keeping them in separate barracks. Their regime is deteriorating due to the anti-Semitism cultivated in Poland. Ioffe
RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 199. L. 31-32.
From a telegramG. AT. ChicherinaBUT. BUT. Ioffeaboutposition of the Red ArmyinPolishcaptivity.
Ioffe, Riga
In the Komarovo volost alone, the entire Jewish population was slaughtered, including infants.
Chicherin
RGASPI. F. 5. Op. 1. D. 2000. L. 35.
Chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation A.Ioffe
Chairman of the Polish delegation J. Dombsky
In the same conditions as the communists, all captured Red Army Jews are kept.
In Domba, there were cases of prisoners of war being beaten by officers of the Polish army; in Zlochev, prisoners were beaten with whips made of iron wire from electric wires.
In the Bobruisk prison, a prisoner of war was forced to clean the latrine with his hands when he took a shovel, as he did not understand the order given to Polish, then the legionnaire hit him with a butt on the arm, which is why he could not raise his arms for 3 weeks.
Instructor Myshkina, taken prisoner near Warsaw, testified that she was raped by two officers who beat her and took away her clothes ...
Topolnitskaya, a Red Army field theater performer, captured near Warsaw, testifies that she was interrogated by drunken officers; she claims that she was beaten with rubber bands and hung from the ceiling by her feet.
Not allowing even the thought of the possibility of such conditions of existence for Polish prisoners of war in Russia and Ukraine, even on the basis of reciprocity, the Russian and Ukrainian Governments, nevertheless, if the Polish Government fails to take the necessary measures, will be forced to apply repressions to Polish prisoners of war in Russia and Ukraine.
Ioffe
WUA RF. F. 122. Op. 4. D. 71. P. 11. L. 1-5.
RGASPI. F. 5. Op. 1. D. 2001. L. 202-204
Soviet commission for prisoners of war
(Excerpts from a letter)
Two Jews were taken from under arrest to the room of the Polish soldiers, where they were thrown blankets over their heads and beaten with whatever they could, to the accompaniment of singing and dancing, in order to drown out the screams of those being beaten.
The fact remains that in addition to the mighty influence of the Owls. No one can help Russia through repressions against Polish officers.
Watering the fields inside the camp with sewage ...
In the last epidemic of typhus and dysentery, up to 300 people died in the Strzhalkov camp. per day, of course, without any help, because they did not even have time to bury them: the constantly replenished gravediggers did not have time to fulfill their duty once they died. In the dead, the corpses lay in piles, eaten by rats, and the serial number of the list of the buried exceeded the 12th thousand, while for all the time German war it only reached 500.
The chronic absence of dressing materials forced the surgical department not to do dressings for 3-4 weeks. The result is a mass of gangrene and amputations.
Dies from typhus and cholera 80-190 people. daily. Patients are placed two by two on the bed, there is an exchange of diseases. Due to the lack of places, patients are discharged the next day after the temperature drops. New attacks - and the result: in the dead to the ceiling of corpses and mountains around it. The corpses lie for 7-8 days.
Graves were dug in the frozen ground, two shovels deep. There are thousands of such graves.
WUA RF.F.384.Op.1.D.7.P.2.L.38-43 rev.
Camp survey results
In the Shchelkovo camp, prisoners of war are forced to carry their own feces instead of horses. They carry plows and harrows.
WUA RF.F.0384.Op.8.D.18921.P.210.L.54-59.
WUA RF.F.0122.Op.5.D.52.P.105a.L.61-66.
Report of Moisei Yakovlevich Klibanov, who returned from Polish captivity
As a Jew, I was persecuted at every turn.
24/5-21 years. Minsk.
RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.48-49.
Report of Ilya Tumarkin, who returned from Polish captivity
First of all: when we were taken prisoner, the felling of the Jews began, and he got rid of death by some strange accident. The next day we were driven on foot to Lublin, and this crossing was a real Golgotha for us. The bitterness of the peasants was so great that little boys threw stones at us. Accompanied by curses and scolding, we arrived in the city of Lublin at the feeding point, and here the most shameless beating of Jews and Chinese began ...
RGASPI.F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.46-47.
From the statement of captured Red Army soldiers
former camp Strzhalkovo
now the 125th working department. Warsaw citadel
The prisoners in the camp were stripped of all clothing, dressed in Adam's costumes...
He (Lieutenant Malinovsky), as a sadist, corrupted morally, was pleased with our torments of hunger, cold and illness. Besides that, por. Malinovsky walked around the camp, accompanied by several corporals who had wire whips in their hands, and who he liked ordered to lie down in the ditch, and the corporals beat as much as was ordered; if the beaten groaned or asked for mercy, then. Malinovsky took out a revolver and shot.
If the sentries (posterunks) shot the prisoners of war. Malinovsky gave 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks as a reward. Repeatedly it was possible to observe such phenomena: a group led by pores. Malinovsky climbed onto machine-gun towers and from there fired at defenseless people, driven like a herd behind a fence
Genuine signed:
Martinkevich Ivan, Kurolapov, Zhuk, Posakov,
Vasily Bayubin
WUA RF. F. 384. Op. 1. P. 2. D. 6. L. 58-59 with ob.
Mr. Chairman of the Polish Delegation
Russian-Ukrainian-Polish Mixed Commission
There were cases when prisoners of war were not released from the barracks for 14 hours, people were forced to send their natural needs to pots, from which they then have to eat ...
WUA RF. F. 188. Op. 1. P. 3. D. 21. L. 214-217.
Supremeemergencycommissioneronwrestling affairswithepidemicsColonel of Medical Service Prof. Dr.E. GodlevskymilitaryMinister of PolandTo. Sosnkovskyaboutprisoners of warXinPulawachandWadowice
Top secret
Mr. Minister!
I consider it my duty of conscience to bring to the attention of Mr. Minister my observations, which I made in some of the camps and places of deployment of prisoners of war I visited. I am compelled to do so by the feeling that the situation there is simply inhuman and contrary not only to all requirements of hygiene, but of culture in general.
Here are the facts: during my stay in Puławy on Sunday, November 28, I was informed that in the bathhouse that the Commissariat for Combating Epidemics had installed in the local barracks, several prisoners were dying every day. Therefore, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, accompanied by doctors Captain Dr. Dadej and Lieutenant Dr. Vujcicki, I went to the indicated bathhouse and found a corpse on the table used for folding things, next to which other prisoners were undressing for bathing. In another room of the same bath, a second corpse lay in the corner, and two people in agony. The prisoners in the bath were trembling in their appearance: to such an extreme they were starved, emaciated and exhausted.
The head of the camp, Major Khlebovsky, in a conversation with me, said that the prisoners were so unbearable that "from the dung heap that is in the camp" they constantly choose potato peelings to eat them: therefore he was forced to put a guard near the manure. However, he argues that this is not enough and believes that this dunghill surround with barbed wire - to protect the purifications thrown there.
There were 4 days during which people were not given food at all.
It is absolutely unacceptable that dying people be dragged to the bathhouse, and the corpses then taken to hospital beds for the sick.
It is necessary to feed the prisoners better, because the situation that exists now, for example in Puławy, simply means starvation of the people we have taken prisoner. If the former situation continues there, then, as it clearly follows from the above figures, in 111 days everyone in the Puławy camp will die out.
... I ask you to believe, Mr. Minister, that the motive of this letter was not a desire to criticize the military authorities or your government. I know very well that various difficult trials for people are connected with the concept of war, I have been watching them for 6 years now. But as a Pole and a man who has been working for 19 years in the oldest Polish school, I perceive with pain what I see in our camps of prisoners who are unarmed and today they can no longer harm us.
CAW. Oddzial I Sztabu MSWojskowych. 1.300.7.118.
№ 1462 inf. III. C.1/2 22
In the office of the minister of military affairs
... The camp in Tukholi, called the “death camp” by the internees, is especially famous (about 22,000 prisoners of the Red Army died in this camp).
BossIIDepartment of the General Staff Matushevsky, lieutenant colonel attached to the General Staff.
CAW. Oddzial II SG. I.303.4.2477.
P. S. Was it not this recognition of a high-ranking Polish official that turned out to be the reason for the retaliatory measures of the USSR Government, when in 1940 (according to documents recently declassified by the Kremlin) exactly22005 Polish officers?!
(These and other unknown materials about Stalin’s time will see the light in the book “STALIN and CHRIST”, which I promised, which will be an unexpected continuation of the book “HOW STALIN WERE KILLING”. A new book wouldn't make sense)
What happened in Katyn
In the spring of 1940, in the forest near the village of Katyn, 18 km west of Smolensk, as well as in a number of prisons and camps throughout the country, thousands of captured Polish citizens, mostly officers, were shot by the Soviet NKVD for several weeks. The executions, the decision on which was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March 1940, took place not only near Katyn, but the term "Katyn execution" is applied to them in general, since the executions in the Smolensk region became known first of all.
In total, according to data declassified in the 1990s, NKVD officers shot 21,857 Polish prisoners in April-May 1940. According to the Russian Chief Military Prosecutor's Office, released in 2004 in connection with the closure of the official investigation, the NKVD filed cases against 14,542 Poles, while documenting the death of 1,803 people.
The Poles executed in the spring of 1940 were taken prisoner or arrested a year earlier, among (according to various sources) from 125 to 250 thousand Polish military personnel and civilians, whom the Soviet authorities, after the occupation of the eastern territories of Poland in the autumn of 1939, considered "unreliable" and were moved to 8 specially created camps on the territory of the USSR. Most of them were soon either released to their homes, or sent to the Gulag or to a settlement in Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, or (in the case of residents of the western regions of Poland) transferred to Germany.
However, thousands of "former officers of the Polish army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, members of exposed counter-revolutionary insurgent organizations, defectors, etc.", the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, proposed to consider them "hardened, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power" and apply to them capital punishment - execution.
Polish prisoners were executed in many prisons throughout the USSR. According to the KGB of the USSR, 4,421 people were shot in the Katyn forest, 3,820 in the Starobelsky camp near Kharkov, 6,311 people in the Ostashkov camp (Kalinin, now Tver region), and 7 in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus 305 people.
Investigations
The name of the village near Smolensk became a symbol of the crimes of the Stalinist regime against the Poles also because it was from Katyn that the investigation of the executions began. The fact that the first evidence of the guilt of the NKVD was presented by the German field police in 1943 predetermined the attitude towards this investigation in the USSR. Moscow decided that it would be most plausible to lay the blame for the execution on the Nazis themselves, especially since the NKVD officers used Walthers and other weapons that fired German-made cartridges during the execution.
After the liberation of the Smolensk region Soviet troops a special commission conducted an investigation, which established that the captured Poles were shot by the Germans in 1941. This version became official in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries until 1990. The Soviet side also filed accusations about Katyn at the end of the war as part of the Nuremberg Trials, but it was not possible to provide convincing evidence of the Germans' guilt, as a result, this episode did not appear in the indictment.
Confessions and apologies
In April 1990, Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski came to Moscow on an official visit. In connection with the discovery of new archival documents indirectly proving the guilt of the NKVD, the Soviet leadership decided to change its position and admit that the Poles were shot by officers of the Soviet state security. On April 13, 1990, TASS published a statement, in particular, which read: “The revealed archival materials in their totality allow us to conclude that Beria, Merkulov were directly responsible for the atrocities in the Katyn forest ( Vsevolod Merkulov, who in 1940 headed the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD) and their henchmen. The Soviet side, expressing deep regret in connection with the Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism.
Mikhail Gorbachev handed over to Jaruzelsky the lists of officers sent along the stage - in fact, to the place of execution, from the camps in Kozelsk. Ostashkov and Starobelsk, and the Soviet Prosecutor General's Office soon began an official investigation. In the early 1990s, during a visit to Warsaw, Russian President Boris Yeltsin apologized to the Poles. Representatives of the Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that they share the grief of the Polish people for those killed in Katyn.
In 2000, a memorial to the victims of repressions was opened in Katyn, a common one - not only for Poles, but also for Soviet citizens, whom the NKVD shot in the same Katyn forest.
At the end of 2004, the investigation opened in 1990 was terminated by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation on the basis of paragraph 4 of part 1 of Art. 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation - in connection with the death of suspects or accused. Moreover, out of 183 volumes of the case, 67 were handed over to the Polish side, since the remaining 116, according to the military prosecutor, contain state secrets. The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in 2009.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in an article published in the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza on the eve of his working visit in August 2009: to rid Russian-Polish relations of the burden of distrust and prejudice that we inherited, to turn the page and start writing a new one."
According to Putin, "the people of Russia, whose fate was distorted by the totalitarian regime, are well aware of the heightened feelings of the Poles associated with Katyn, where thousands of Polish soldiers are buried." "We are obliged together to preserve the memory of the victims of this crime," the Russian prime minister urged. Chapter Russian government I am sure that the "Katyn" and "Mednoye" memorials, as well as tragic fate Russian soldiers taken into Polish captivity during the war of 1920 should become symbols of common sorrow and mutual forgiveness."
In February 2010, Vladimir Putin, his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk, will visit Katyn on April 7, where memorial events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre will be held. Tusk accepted the invitation, Lech Walesa, the first prime minister of post-communist Poland Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as well as family members of the victims of the NKVD executions, will come to Russia with him.
It is noteworthy that on the eve of the meeting of the prime ministers of Russia and Poland in Katyn channel "Russia Culture" showed a film that and .
Rehabilitation Requirements
Poland demands that the Poles executed in 1940 be recognized in Russia as victims of political repression. In addition, many there would like to hear from Russian officials an apology and recognition of the Katyn massacre as an act of genocide, and not a reference to the fact that the current authorities are not responsible for the crimes of the Stalinist regime. The termination of the case, and especially the fact that the decision to terminate it, along with other documents, was classified as secret and was not made public, only added fuel to the fire.
After the decision of the GVP, Poland launched its own prosecutorial investigation into the "mass murder of Polish citizens committed in the Soviet Union in March 1940." The investigation is headed by Professor Leon Keres, head of the Institute of National Remembrance. The Poles still want to find out who ordered the execution, the names of the executioners, and also give a legal assessment of the acts of the Stalinist regime.
Relatives of some officers who died in the Katyn forest in 2008 appealed to the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation with a demand to consider the possibility of rehabilitating the executed. The GVP refused, and later the Khamovnichesky Court dismissed the complaint against her actions. Now the demands of the Poles are considered by the European Court of Human Rights.
Under Soviet rule, schools and institutes told about Katyn like this: during the occupation of Smolensk, the Germans, dressed in uniform Soviet soldiers they shot Polish prisoners of war in order to blame everything on the peaceful and kind Soviet government, which never killed anyone and in any case is beyond suspicion. Under Soviet rule, there was only one and exclusively truthful point of view, there could not be another. Everyone believed.
In 1988, by the will of fate, I ended up and settled in Optina Pustyn, and already there I learned new circumstances of the Katyn story, about which we were not told anything: it turned out that in November 1939, the Kozelsk-1 concentration camp was set up in the famous monastery, in which about 5,000 Polish officers. In the spring of 1940, they were put on trains at the Mekhzavod station and sent to the Smolensk region, where they were shot. Local residents told me this story: one old man was present when they boarded the wagons, one elderly woman told me that she had seen Poles in the monastery, a few more were known in the retellings of other residents of Kozelsk and the village of Optino.
My world has received another crack: it turns out that it was not the Germans who shot the Poles, but we. Of course, the locals were not present at the execution and only heard from some of their friends and acquaintances about what happened 250 kilometers from their home. Simple people, they had no doubts and embarrassments about the execution: they shot, so for the cause, the authorities know what is right and what needs to be done. War is on the verge, why keep some foreign military capable of raising an uprising and hitting us from the rear. This was the position of my interlocutor (the woman did not comment on the murder, referring to the indifference where they were taken).
One novice lived in Optina, the son of a very famous and respected Moscow archpriest. We were friends, you could say we were friends. Once upon a time, his archpriest father was well acquainted with Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich), who was a member of the government commission investigating the Katyn case. The Metropolitan repeatedly talked about his participation in the work of the commission and assured everyone, including my friend's father, that Katyn was unambiguously German villainy.
I was then a romantic young man, I didn’t know much about the church history of the 20th century, Yarushevich’s authority inclined me more towards the Soviet version. Very soon, in 1990, our country recognized that the executions were carried out by the NKVD on the personal order of Beria. After recognition at the highest state level, the investigation was closed for me personally. Moreover, under Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev, no reassessment followed - the Russian state recognized the guilt of the Soviet government in this crime. But there are quite a few people (and now there are more of them) who question the official position of the Russian Federation. They assure that Gorbachev and Yeltsin are enemies of Russia, deliberately causing rehearsal damage to the country, Putin and Medvedev were forced to repeat their lies, they have no serious evidence, Beria's signatures are fake, documents are fake, witnesses are deceivers.
1. 1939 Good friends.
The version and arguments of almost all opponents of the modern Russian official version are almost the same, but I came across the most striking evidence of the side of non-recognition in the article “Polish prisoner of war camp in Optina Pustyn”, written by an employee of the St. Petersburg diocese L. Sokolova (the article was first published in Optinsky almanakh", 2013, pp. 63-69. I quote from the publication "Russian People's Line", 06/10/2013). So, the NKVD could not shoot the Poles because:
1) (Be sure everyone starts from afar): since ancient times, the Poles have been our worst enemies. “All this bastard, in the era of troubled times,” writes Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin) in 1876, “mercilessly tormented the Kaluga region, filling it for several years with murders, robberies and fires.”
- I.e. Poles are bad. A long time ago.
2) After the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1921. tens of thousands of Russian prisoners of war remained in Poland and they were turned into real slaves. The Poles tortured and killed many thousands of our citizens
- I.e. The Poles committed far greater crimes and did not repent of them in any way.
3) Until 1939, the Poles agreed with the Germans that they would attack the USSR together. I will quote Sokolova further: “The ultimate plan of this policy, according to the directive of the Polish General Staff, was the destruction of Russia, regardless of its political system. Due to the difficult international situation, arrests took place in the USSR, including people of Polish origin. The Poles themselves actively spied and engaged in sabotage on the territory of the USSR. Stalin turned out to be wiser and more far-sighted, concluded a non-aggression pact with Hitler and, according to the pact, invaded the territory of Poland, thus inflicting a preemptive strike on the Polish enemies. “This operation is a “liberation campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.” Poland was unable to wage war on two fronts, and the commander-in-chief of the Polish army gave the order not to engage in battle with the Soviet troops. ... The Red Army, having entered the territory of Poland, captured about 200 thousand Poles, including Polish military personnel. Some of them were soon sent home, those who, according to the NKVD, mocked the Red Army in the years civil war, shot: they were enemies of the Soviet government, counter-revolutionaries, spies, agents of foreign states. The rest remained in captivity. These were people serving in the police, gendarmes, jailers and so on. According to some data, about 25 thousand Polish prisoners remained in the camps, according to others 22 thousand, ”writes an employee of the St. Petersburg diocese.
- I.e. the Poles should attack us, but we simply outwitted them and therefore won. Not many hundreds of thousands were arrested, but only about 200, and 22-25 thousand notorious enemies of the Soviet government and the working people were put in camps.
2. Partition of Poland. 
3. Official version for the people. 
4) The captured Poles were settled in the Optina and Nilo-Stolobenskaya deserts and in the former convent of "Joy of All Who Sorrow" near Luhansk. Some of the prisoners were in prison Western region.
5. The scheme is very bad. She has nothing to do with Optina. 
According to Sokolova, the Poles were not kept in a concentration camp, but in former House rest them. M. Gorky, located on the territory of Optina. Dogs were not used for protection, they were fed three times a day, looked after, organized cultural activities, arranged several shops. The Poles were free to visit Kozelsk and even a Polish military doctor operated in Kozelsk. “At their leisure, the prisoners made crafts: toys, whistles, figurines of animals and birds. They often gave them to Russian children.” Correspondence was not limited. “The camp had a laundry, a hairdresser, a bathhouse. Order reigned in the premises, all the prisoners bought bed linen for themselves. They worked on clearing roads, in the subsidiary farm, and on the preparation of firewood. “All eyewitnesses unanimously assert that relations between the Poles and Russians were peaceful, there was no discontent, anger, it was not felt that they were enemies. The Poles treated our people with trust, sympathy, bribed us with their politeness and culture of communication. And our residents paid them with sympathy, tried to help at least somehow. “These facts, collected by the monastics of Optina Pustyn, are confirmed by the surviving witnesses. Many of them remembered the unusual farewell of the Poles from the camp. They walked in columns to the Kozelsk station on foot. Birds sat on their arms, hats, shoulders, as if they were seeing off good friends.
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This is such a joyful, touching picture. It is only strange that earlier it was written about the enemies of the Soviet regime. Not so terrible, who were immediately shot, but not so that they could be released. Gendarmes, policemen, with weapons in their hands, resisting arrest by the Red Liberator Army. But despite their class enmity, the Kozel residents looked after them, cared for them, one might say they lived in a rest home. Everyone loved them, they loved everyone. Gifts-toys-cultural leisure.
Also pay attention to the facts collected by the monastics, which are confirmed by local residents. From whom did the monastics find facts that were confirmed by the locals? There is no archive for the Soviet period in the monastery, no one handed over the files on Katyn to them. Who, where and what facts could the nameless monastics find?
9. Here is the very document that the Stalinists categorically refuse to recognize. They assure that the entire document was made and the signatures were forged on Gorbachev's orders. 
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5) In April-May 1940, all Poles were sent to Smolensk, entered the disposal of the NKVD, received from 3 to 5 years and were used for construction work.
- I.e. numerous authors of this version are convinced that all the Poles were sent to the construction site and therefore could not be shot.
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6) July 16, 1941 Smolensk was occupied by German troops. Since we could not organize the evacuation of the Poles, they fell into the hands of the Nazis and were shot by them. To hide the atrocity, the Germans dressed in Soviet uniforms and carried out executions at a closed former Soviet military training ground next to the NKVD dacha. Thus, all suspicions were bound to fall on the Communists. On April 13, 1943, Goebbel propaganda reported the discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners. Two days later, on April 15, the USSR resolutely denied the allegations. The German investigation is false, the Soviet side immediately declared its non-involvement in the massacre of prisoners.
- I.e. shot by the Germans, dressed in Soviet uniforms. Why was all this masquerade needed in 1943, when so much blood had already been shed and so many cities had been destroyed that plus or minus 10-20 thousand Poles would definitely not have made Nazi Germany a darling and a sweetheart.
15. The landfill was arranged next to the dacha, the NKVD rest house. People used to go there for holidays. Everyone has their own way of relaxing. Shot since the late 20's. The greatest peak came in 1937. NKVD officers write that there was so much work that they came home at 2 am. 
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7) After the liberation of Smolensk in October 1943, a closed commission of the NKVD was created. She conducted her own investigations and found that “in the spring of 1943, the Germans dug up the graves and seized from there all the documents dated later than the spring of 1940, and the Soviet prisoners who carried out these excavations were shot. Local residents were forced to give false evidence by force and threats.” On January 12, 1944, the ChGK announced the creation of a "Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of War by the Nazi Invaders in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk)," whose chairman was appointed Chief Surgeon of the Red Army, Academician N.N. Burdenko (the commission included the writer A.N. Tolstoy and Metropolitan Nikolai Yarushevich). On January 26, 1944, the official conclusion of the commission was published in the Pravda newspaper.
- I.e. we unequivocally proved to the whole world that the Nazis killed.
17. In a black coat with a white beard - Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich). 
8) From November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946, the Nuremberg Trials took place. The Soviet side brought irrefutable evidence and witnesses of the execution by the Germans. But the international commission, under pressure from the United States, refused to accept convincing arguments, and the Katyn episode is absent in the final verdict of the tribunal.
- I.e. it is not known who shot. But this does not mean that our guilt has been proven. The Poles were shot by the Germans. All.
Now let's see another version of the story, which is accepted all over the world, including officially in our country:
We skip the "weighty" arguments about the crimes of the Poles in the Time of Troubles and in the 20s of the twentieth century and immediately get down to business.
On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland. For his part, he invaded the territory of the "former" Polish state. On September 28, the so-called. the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which provides for the division of the territories of several states, primarily Poland.
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20. There are already a lot of such photos with German brothers. 
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We took prisoner 454,700 soldiers and officers of the armed forces of Poland, soldiers and officers of the KOP, policemen, gendarmes and persons captured with weapons in their hands. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were deported to remote lands on the territory of the USSR.
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To resolve the issue of prisoners, the Polyutburo of the Central Committee created a commission headed by Zhdanov. It included Beria and Mekhlis (then head of the State Control). On October 2, the commission proposed that most of the prisoners be sent home, leaving 25,000 for the construction of the Novograd-Volynsky-Lvov road, and sending the natives of the "German part of Poland" to the NKVD special camps until the end of negotiations with Germany on their sending home.
So about 15 thousand Polish prisoners of war ended up in three former monasteries, and total number arrested (by November 19, 1939) was 39.6 thousand people.
Apparently, the attitude towards the Poles in the Kozelsky camp was humane. They were even allowed to send letters home.
"After the German attack on the USSR, Stalin established diplomatic relations with the Polish government in exile. On August 8, 1941, captured and interned Polish citizens were granted amnesty and the right to free movement throughout the territory of the Soviet Union. The formation of the Polish army in the USSR (Anders Army) began ".
"On December 3, 1941, Stalin and Molotov met with the head of the Polish government, General Sikorsky and General Anders. At the same time, the following dialogue took place (quoted from the Polish official record):
“SIKORSKY: I declare to you, Mr. President, that your amnesty order is not being carried out. A large number of our people, and the most valuable for the army, are still in camps and prisons.
STALIN (writes down): That's impossible, since the amnesty applied to everyone, and all Poles were released. ( Last words addressed to Molotov. Molotov agrees.)(...).
SIKORSKY: I have with me a list of about 4,000 officers who were forcibly taken out and are currently in prisons and camps, and even this list is incomplete, because it contains only those names that are named from memory. I instructed to check whether they are in Poland, with which we have constant contact. It turned out that none of them were there; the same as in the POW camps in Germany. These people are here. None of them returned.
STALIN: It's impossible. They ran away.
ANDERS: Where could they have gone?
STALIN: Well, to Manchuria.
23. Coincidence. 
We return to Katyn. The Poles really were until April 1940 in three concentration camps and several prisons. After April, there were no letters or any information from them. They kind of disappeared. As Comrade Stalin said, "they fled to Manchuria."
July 16, 1941 Smolensk was occupied by German troops. It was not possible to take out the archive of the regional party committee and the extent of the Red Terror (in a separate Western region) was revealed, including the execution of Poles near Smolensk.
Not far from the village of Katyn, before the war, an NKVD dacha was arranged and a closed training ground was built. Access there was completely closed, none of the locals knew what was happening there, but everyone guessed: from the end of the 20s, enemies of the people were brought to the training ground and they disappeared behind barbed wire. There were local residents who worked in the protection and maintenance of the landfill and they knew exactly what was happening there. According to modern data (perhaps they are not final), 6.5 thousand Soviet citizens were shot there.
In April-May, 4415 prisoners of the Optina camp were added to them.
It was the locals who pointed out to the German police the place of execution. In February 1943, the Germans began an investigation, on March 29 the exhumation began, and on April 13 it was officially announced that the graves of the executed Polish officers had been found.
On our part, there is a failure in history - since April 1941, the Poles have disappeared into the air and there is no trace of them (they fled to Manchuria).
The Germans have almost a year and a half of silence. For some reason, this story surfaced years later and after the defeat at Stalingrad, when it was necessary to divert the attention of the world community and create an image of the enemy in the form of the USSR. Our people took advantage of this moment: the Germans had been in Smolensk for 1.5 years, so they shot us.
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25. Another "fake" document. 
26. Our official version. 
In order to give an international character to the investigation, the German government brought together representatives of different countries (of course, members of the Nazi coalition), Poland and Switzerland, and organized an international investigation. Germany really wanted the commission to be headed or attended by an official representative of the International Red Cross, but here already Soviet Union made a strong protest and forbade representatives of the IWC to participate in the commission (“in accordance with the Charter, the IWC cannot act on the territory of the state, even if it is occupied, without the consent of its official authorities”). Now the protest is perceived as the actual recognition of the USSR in this war crime.
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Then there was the release, the NKVD commission, the Burdenko commission, Nuremberg. For 55 years we have stood our ground. In 1990, Gorbachev decided to open some of the documents and acknowledged our responsibility for the murder of prisoners. As Sokolova writes: “Gorbachev admitted our guilt in their death and expressed hope for an improvement in relations between the two countries. But there was no improvement, and the pressure on the USSR intensified. In September 1992, secret documents were allegedly found in the archives of the president (the former archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU), from which it followed that the Polish officers were shot by the NKVD. ... August 25, 1993 B. Yeltsin with the words "forgive us" laid a wreath at the monument to the victims of Katyn. ... The documents that Gorbachev positioned as evidence of Stalin's repression, at the suggestion of Alexander Yakovlev, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, turned out to be fake. It was not possible to confirm the fact of Stalin's guilt in this execution. Stalin's signatures on the death warrant were forged. ... So the leadership of our country absolutely in vain repented of the crime. The Poles were shot by the Germans,” Mrs. Sokolova draws an unambiguous conclusion.
There are words in her article that surprised me:
“Since 1989, visiting the monastery as pilgrims, bikers and various delegations, the Poles, disturbing the peace of the brethren with not always correct behavior, are trying to impose the installation of a memorial plaque about those events.”
I lived in Optina for almost four years and I can confidently say that no Poles disturbed the peace of the brethren. The Poles did come, but it was extremely rare and without scandals, except for the visit of one of the few surviving prisoners of the camp in the early 90s. As it turned out it was about. Zdzisław Pieszkowski, chaplain of John Paul II. He was then not allowed to perform a memorial mass for the dead and was expelled from the skete. But that's another story.
I don’t understand why it is impossible to install a memorial plaque on the wall of the monastery in memory of the Poles killed in Katyn. In any case, it was a war crime and people were executed without trial or investigation. As for the main culprit of the tragedy, in the end, we must give an unambiguous and clear answer to our citizens: who and why shot 6.5 thousand Soviet people in Katyn and find out how many were actually shot. After all, the Polish burials were thoroughly studied, while ours were only slightly affected. How many more mass graves in Katyn we do not know. It must be clearly and clearly stated that the communists were engaged in mass terror and the lawless murder of our citizens. It is necessary to publish all the documents of our investigation: out of 183 volumes of the case, 67 were handed over to the Poles, the remaining 116, "according to the military prosecutor, contain state secrets." Nevertheless, in 2010, by decision of the President of the Russian Federation Medvedev, the Poles were given copies of 137 volumes. Poles, but not us. As a result, for the Polish side, the answer to the question of who killed the prisoners is obvious, but for us it still causes some controversy. Particularly surprising are such Orthodox employees of the commission for the canonization of the St. Petersburg diocese, as Mrs. Sokolova. Thousands of our innocently murdered citizens lie in the Katyn Forest, several of whom were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. Or do we want to attribute these people to the Germans, and recognize the documents with signatures and seals as fake?
Now there is a wonderful museum in Katyn. For public viewing, copies of hundreds of documents are on display, for employees and local residents the answer to the question "who are the killers?" obvious and unambiguous.
I asked a museum employee:
- There are people who still question the official version of Russia.
- So let them come to us and see for themselves.
- How many people come?
- Lot. But there are more Poles and Belarusians. (Just in my presence, a large group of the Polish diaspora from Belarus arrived to honor the memory of those killed). You know, different people come, - the employee continued. - There are those who are convinced that they shot for the cause. One lady read the Jewish name of the victim and the profession of an accountant, and immediately said that “we need to figure it out, maybe they’ve knocked on the case.” And there are people who come with understanding, sorrow, pain. And there are those, more often Poles, who are angry with us, consider us all murderers.
- Yeah, why would suddenly - I tried to joke badly.
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And then I went by taxi to Smolensk and got into a conversation with the taxi driver.
- Have you been to the museum?
- No, but what to do there, - answers a young guy of more than thirty years. This is a Polish cemetery.
- Poles there are 4.5 thousand, and ours are 6.5. Why did it suddenly become Polish?
- Well, I don't know, all Poles stop there. Even ordinary Polish truckers do not pass by, they stop all the time and come in to pray. And there are a lot of buses coming from there.
- A our until their affairs there is no? The Polish authorities arranged a memorial, but we only have fences over the ditches and a lone cross, albeit a large one.
- Well, what should I do there? What do I need from this whole story? That it will help me earn more money or improve my life?