Katyn Massacre

Katyn Massacre

Mass killing of Polish military officers by the Soviet Union in World War II. After the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939) and Germany's defeat of Poland, Soviet forces occupied eastern Poland and interned thousands of Polish military personnel. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union (1941), the Polish government-in-exile agreed to cooperate with the Soviets against Germany, and the Polish general forming the new army asked to have the Polish prisoners placed under his command, but the Soviet government informed him in December 1941 that most of those prisoners had escaped to Manchuria and could not be located. In 1943 the Germans discovered mass graves in the Katyn forest in western Russia. A total of 4,443 corpses were recovered; the victims had apparently been shot from behind and then piled in stacks and buried. The Soviet government claimed the invading German army had killed them, but it refused Polish requests to have the Red Cross investigate. In 1992 the Russian government released documents proving that the Soviet secret police were responsible for the executions and cover-up.

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Katyn Massacre

mass murder of 4250 Polish officers during WWII (c. 1939). [Polish Hist.: NCE, 1457]

See : Massacre