A shot in the back of the head

Joseph Stalin hated Poland and the Poles for ideological and personal reasons. He did not forgive them for stopping the march of the Bolsheviks in 1920 and considered them a constant threat to the USSR. In the context of having lost the war, the killing of the officers should be interpreted as his personal vendetta; it is also possible that it was part of a plan to eliminate the Polish intellectual elite, with the prospect of making it easier for him to have Poland dominated. It can be assumed with a high degree of probability (if not certainty) that the Katyń massacre was carried out for ideological and nationalistic reasons. If we assume the latter classification, this would mean that it should be considered as genocide.

 

The decision to execute the officers was taken by Stalin and Beria on 5 March 1939. Their consciences appeared to be soothed by the report of the head of the NKVD: they [the Polish prisoners of war - author's note] are all stubborn enemies of the Soviet power, with no prospects for improvement. [...] They are trying to continue counter-revolutionary activity, they are carrying out anti-Soviet agitation. Each of them expects to be set free so that they can actively join the resistance against the Soviet rule. NKVD organs in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus detected a number of counter-revolutionary insurgent organisations. In all of them [...] the leadership role was played by former officers of the former Polish army, former policemen and gendarmes. Beria also suggested that the cases of 14,700 people from the three prisoner-of-war camps and 11,000 inmates in prisons in the western districts of Ukraine and Belarus should be considered under a special procedure with the highest penalty applied to them - shooting. The idea of this 'special procedure' was that the decision to murder the entire 'contingent', was to be taken by the 'troika' (instead of the Special Council): Vsevolod Merkulov, Bakhcha Kobulov and Leonid Bashtakov. Of course, the presence of the arrested and the presentation of the charges against them were not planned. Initially, Beria was to sit on it, but at the last minute his name was manually crossed out and Kobulov was added instead. This is an incomprehensible twist - it is hardly likely that the removal of the name of the head of the NKVD was based on anything other than purely practical reasons. The members of the 'troika' were senior officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and close associates of Beria - perhaps their boss had more important matters on his mind. The document that sealed the fate of the Polish prisoners of war was signed by (and in the following order): Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoyan and a secretary submitted his initials on the margin, in place of Kalinin and Kaganovich.

Three days earlier, the USSR leadership had decided to resettle the families of 22,000 prisoners from the sites in Western Ukraine and Belarus, as well as prisoners of war from three special camps. This was the second of the planned deportations. The first one took place on 10 February 1940: almost 140,000 people were deported from western Ukraine and Belarus to 21 regions and countries (including the Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Irkutsk and Omsk districts, as well as the autonomous republic of Komi and Krasnoyarsk Krai). Approximately 4,000 people died during the transport and the first days at the settlement site due to the cold, lack of housing and food.

 

The killing 

At the end of March/April 1940, there were 3895 prisoners of war in the Starobelsk camp, 4599 in Kozelsk and 6364 in Ostashkov. Prisoners from the aforementioned camps were transported in batches - as the troika signed the "orders" (nariads), which meant execution - to the sites of shooting. Those from Kozelsk were transported in special railway isolation vans (wagonzaks) to the Gnezdovo railway station near Smolensk, from where special isolation vans (avtozaks) delivered them to the NKVD dacha in the Katyń
Forest. Most were tied up and killed with a shot below the occipital bone next to pre-digged pits. Very few were executed in the dacha building (some prisoners of war from the Kozelsk camp were murdered in the internal prison of the UNKVD of the Smolensk district). The same was true for the prisoners of war from Starobelsk and Ostashkov. The first ones were transported to Kharkov by rail and then, by avtozaks, to the local UNKVD internal prison, where they were murdered. The bodies were buried 1.5 km from the village of Pyatichatki, near the UNKVD dacha. The Ostashkov victims were transported to Kalinin by rail and then by truck to the NKVD building. When they got there, they were murdered using the tried and tested method and their bodies were buried in previously prepared pits near the village of Mednoye.

The operation of murdering Polish prisoners of war involved officers of the NKVD central apparatus sent from Moscow, as well as security personnel of the Ukrainian and Belarusian SSR, NKVD district divisions (Smolensk, Kharkiv and Kalinin) and NKVD convoy and military units. The role of executioners was fulfilled by special NKVD firing squads, assisted by employees of the Interior Ministry's local prisons (in Kalinin the squad of murderers and their assistants in, for example, binding a prisoner of war included 30 people, in Kharkov and Katyń - 23 each). German Walther pistols with 7.65 mm calibre ammunition were used in the executions. Approximately 25 per cent of the officers had their hands bound at the back with a double loop of wire or rope, and in one of the Katyń graves, corpses were found that had overcoats on their heads, wrapped around their necks with a rope connected to a loop restraining their hands.

 

You are going where I too would very much like to go

Of the three listed camps, 97 per cent of officers, policemen and other prisoners were executed. 395 prisoners remained alive: all but two were housed in Juchnov. There was one general among them - Jerzy Wołkowicki, a former officer of the Tsar's navy, who exhibited exceptional bravery at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russian-Japanese War. He became famous thanks to Alexei Novikov-Priboy's book Tsushima, which was reprinted many times in the Soviet Union: when asked by the NKVD interrogator if he was a relative of the famous michman Wołkowicki, he is supposed to have replied: It is I!

These captives were most likely selected by the 5th Division of the Main Board of the BP NKVD of the USSR (intelligence) as useful because of their willingness to cooperate or because they possessed valuable information. 47 individuals were spared their lives thanks to their influential family members or acquaintances who intervened with the Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich, which, acting through its representative in Moscow, succeeded in forcing the Soviets to transfer them to the Yuchnov camp. Some examples include landsman Włodzimierz Piątkowski and Count Józef Czapski, in whose case Count Ferdinand du Chastel intervened. The only officer designated for execution who avoided being killed was Vilnius University professor Stanislaw Swianiewicz, an expert on the economy of Germany and the USSR, who was transported to the station in Gryazovets at the end of April. He was removed from the truck transport to the Katyń forest at the last minute and escorted to an empty wagon.

The captives were convinced that they would be sent back to neutral countries. The Soviets reassured them by cleverly spreading rumours. The commander of the Starobelsk camp said his goodbyes to successive batches of departing prisoners: You are going where I too would very much like to go. They waited for their turn impatiently - not only that, but many asked to be transported faster. Information about the true destination of the transports was to be provided by the first departing prisoners, who, on leaving the camp, threw away notes in matchboxes and left inscriptions in the wagons indicating the final station. On 7 April, someone left an inscription in Polish language inside
the empty carriages returning from Smoleńsk, reading ‘Second batch - Smoleńsk,
6 Apr – 1940’. The guards were quick to detect these message attempts and meticulously reviewed the isolation rooms. During the transports, the prisoners kept notes, which were later found with their corpses, until the very end.

 

Reward for the crime

The preparation and implementation of the shooting of Polish prisoners of war from special camps and prisons in the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine lasted almost three months - from 5 March to the end of June 1940 (the 'unloading' of the three special camps continued from 3 April to 16 May). According to the findings of historians, in the spring of 1940 the Soviets murdered 22,079 or 23,109 citizens of the Second Polish Republic, including 14,463 military prisoners of war, policemen and KOP officers from three special camps and, according to various data, between 7,616 and 8,646 prisoners from the territories of western Belarus and Ukraine (the executions were committed in prisons in Kiev and Minsk), among them approximately 1,000
Polish officers.

Once the operation had been completed, Beria awarded
rewards amounting to one month's salary to the 125 employees of the ministry who had taken a direct part in the shooting, under a special order of 26 October 1940 ('for the successful completion of special tasks'). The other side of this NKVD coin was downright horrifying: the reports that kept coming to Moscow showed that the shooters were losing their humanity during the 'unloading operations' of the three special camps - after each execution they soothed their nerves with huge amounts of spirits, and several of them committed suicide.

The 'unloading' of the Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps was not the end of the ordeal of the Polish prisoners of war. Soon, new contingents were brought to the camps: these included Polish Army officers and soldiers who had been interned in Lithuania and Latvia in September 1939 (both countries were taken over by the USSR in June 1940). In total, it was more than 6,000 soldiers and officers.

 

Missing without a trace

The families of the murdered captives did not even imagine that the Soviets could have been capable of such a horrendous crime. Their letters sent to the camps came from the German occupation zone, Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and even from the distant Kazakhstan, where tens of thousands of Poles from the lands occupied by the USSR were resettled in early 1940. The correspondence stopped in the spring of 1940. In an act of desperation, the closest relatives of the victims sent desperate and humiliating letters to the administration of the individual camps and higher authorities, and even to Stalin himself. Given below are examples: Paulina Singer, who was deported from Lviv to Kokpiekt in the Semipalatinsk district of Kazakhstan in April 1943, asked the People's Commissar of Defence of the USSR, Semyon Timoshenko, for help in finding out the whereabouts of her husband Ludwik, a military doctor and second lieutenant in the Polish Army's Sanitary Officers Corps: Dear Comrade Timoshenko! My husband Ludwik Singer, son of Emanuel, worked as a doctor in Lviv. On 6 September, the former Polish authorities recruited him into the army. On 20 September, the Red Army took him into captivity, from where he corresponded with me from the village of Kozelsk, in the Smolensk region, post box 12. I received my last letter on 16 March in Lviv. I, Paulina Singer, daughter of Eliasz, had been working in the bank as an accountant since 1922, and on 13 April the NKVD came to me and resettled me in Kokcekta in the Semipalatinsk district, where I live at present. I am asking you, Dear Comrade Timoshenko, to allow me to find out my husband's address, if possible, so that I can correspond with him (find out my husband's address). I look forward to your favourable response. Your servant Paulina Singer. Like thousands of others, worried about the lives of their fathers, sons and brothers, she has not lived to see the answers.

Although signals of deportations of civilians and the disappearance of prisoners of war from the camps at Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk were reaching the Polish authorities in exile, there was not much that they could do. Following the severance of diplomatic relations in September 1939, the Polish government did not maintain contact with the Soviet regime.

The situation did not change until the German invasion on the USSR in June 1941. On 30 July in London, Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief Władysław Sikorski and USSR Ambassador to the UK Ivan Mayski signed a treaty to establish diplomatic relations and cooperation in the war against the Third Reich. A Polish army subordinate to the Soviet command in operational matters was to be established in the territory of the USSR. The supplementary protocol stated that, upon the restoration of diplomatic relations, the Soviet government would grant amnesty to all Polish citizens - both prisoners of war and civilians - who were detained in the Soviet Union. On 12 August, the Soviets declared an amnesty, and two days later, General Zygmunt Bohusz-Szyszko and General Aleksander Wasilewski signed an agreement to create a Polish army in the USSR under the command of General Władysław Anders.

The mixed military commission operating in Moscow (which included generals: Szyszko-Bohusz, Anders, Alexei Panfilov and Georgy Zhukov) was to determine matters such as the whereabouts of the prisoners of war. The Soviets provided a list of 1,650 officers. When asked where the others remained (Polish military officials estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 Polish officers were kept in Soviet captivity), Zhukov avoided answering the question, saying that it was difficult to determine their fate due to the war operations. The efforts of Polish generals and the Polish ambassador in Moscow, Prof. Stanislaw Kot, who intervened with the NKVD and Stalin on the matter, were to no avail. The dictator claimed that the officers may have fled to Manchuria, which was under Japanese occupation; later on, he implied that they may have been murdered by the Germans. Since the NKVD was the most efficient institution in the USSR, it was hard to believe that Stalin knew nothing about the fate of the missing individuals. The search for the missing prisoners of war was further complicated by a breakdown in Polish-Soviet relations in early 1942. Ultimately, their fate remained a mystery until the spring of 1943. 

 

 

Box 1

Smolensk NKVD employee Petr Klimov, in a letter to the Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Repression of the Smolensk region about the shooting of Poles in the inner prison: 'There was a tiny basement room with a sewer manhole. They would bring the victim in and open the manhole, lay their head on its edge and shoot them in the back of the head or in the temple. [...] They would shoot almost every God's day from the evening onwards, transport them to the Goat Mountains and return before 2 at night. [...] In addition to the chauffeur, two to three men and the commandant would leave. [...] As far as I can remember, they shot the following: Gribow, Stielmach, Gwozdowski, Riejson Karl. [...] Poles were brought to the executions in wagons, using the railway branch to Gnezdovo station. The execution site was guarded by an NKVD convoy regiment'.('Moskovskiye Novosti', 16 September 1990)

 

 

Box 2

Professor Swianiewicz's testimony on the death transport: '... When I was officially called to be transported, I took a sack with my miserable belongings and presented myself at the indicated place. [A rather brutal but efficient personal search was carried out [...] Then, with a much more powerful convoy than we were used to, we were escorted to the trucks that were waiting in front of the camp gate. [...] We were brought to a side track, where six ready [...] prison wagons were already waiting. [...] The normal capacity of a compartment was eight people [...] we travelled exceptionally fast. In the morning dawn, we reached Smolensk. [...] After a short stop, the train moved again, and after travelling several kilometres, the train stopped. We heard the sound of more people moving from outside, the whirr of a motorbike, the broken words of a command. [...] I saw an opening in the ceiling, through which we could see what was happening outside. [...] In front of us there was a square partly covered with grass, [...] densely cordoned off by NKVD troops with bayonets on their weapons. This was new compared to our previous experience. [A bus pulled out of the road into the passenger square. [...] The windows were smeared with lime [...] it pulled up backwards towards a neighbouring carriage, so that the prisoners could walk out directly over the steps of the carriage without stepping on the ground. [...] After half an hour the bus was returning to take the next batch. [Nearby there was a big car in the shape of a black box without any windows [...] the famous 'chornyi voron', or 'black raven', which is used to transport prisoners'. S. Swianiewicz, In the shadow of Katyn

 

Box 3

Excerpts from the minutes of the interrogation of retired state security captain Dmitry Tokariev, from 1939 to 1940 - head of the NKVD Board of the Kalinin district, one of the managers of the operation to "unload" the Ostashkov camp (interrogated by Anatoly Yablokov, military prosecutor, lieutenant colonel of the justice service, 20 March 1991, Vladimir Volynsky): Yablokov: Dmitry Stepanovich, for what purpose - at the request of Blokhin [head of the NKVD unit sent from Moscow to carry out the executions in Kalinin - author's note] - were you present at the examination of the Polish prisoners of war before their execution? [...] Tokariev: When personal details were compared in the red common room [...]. I spoke not at the request [of Blokhin - author's note], but the three of them came in to see me: Siniegubov, Blokhin and Krivinko. I was sitting in the office. Well, we will go, we will go! Yablokov: Was it on the first day already? Tokariev: This was already the case on day one. So off we went. And that's when I saw the horror. We came there. Several minutes later, Blokhin put on his special clothing: a brown leather cap, a long brown leather apron and leather gloves with cuffs above the elbows. It has made an enormous impression on me - I saw an executioner! Yablokov: Is that how they were all dressed? Tokariev: No, just him. The others did not have any attitude towards the shootings, but he did. This must have been his special outfit. It's such a small thing, yet it made an impression on me. Yablokov: What did they tell you? Did they want you to be present at the questioning or, as you stated, at the interrogation? Tokariev: No, he did not question anyone. He only asked about: surname, first name, year of birth, held position. That is all, no more - four questions. [...] Yablokov: You say that you were present during two or three interrogations, is that right? How many people did you interview then? Tokariev: Yes, but I didn't question anyone, I only asked one boy: ‘How old are you?’ He said: 18. 'Where did he serve?' 'In the border guard'. What did he do? He was a telephone operator. [...] Yablokov: About the border guard boy - what kind of uniform did he wear? Tokariev: I believe he came in without any headwear. He walked in and smiled, yes, a boy, just a boy, 18 years old, and how long had he been working? He started counting in Polish - 6 months. [...] (Ministry of Justice - National Prosecutor's Office. Materials of the investigation of the Katyń crime, Tokariev's testimony was published in 'Katyń Notebooks', 1994, no. 3, pp. 7-71)

 

 

Tomasz Bohun, historian, editor of the historical magazine 'Mówią wieki' ('Centuries speaking'), specialises in the history of Russia

 

Note from People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria of 5 March 1940, with a proposal to execute Polish prisoners of war and NKVD prisoners. It bears the signatures of Stalin and the members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b), to express their approval.

Some of the Polish officers were tied up with rope or wire by the NKVD executioners before they were killed.

NKVD dacha in Katyń - the Poles were probably murdered in its cellars

Kozelsk railway station used for transporting Polish prisoners of war destined for death in Katyń.

Poster distributed by the Germans in occupied Europe - here in French version