Spring of 1943

From the first days of April 1943, the first, still unconfirmed, information about the graves of Polish officers murdered with a shot to the back of the head found near Smolensk reached the inhabitants of the larger cities of the General Government. The Germans decided to give the issue more publicity.

Before the official radio information was broadcast, the Germans had already carried out the first exhumations, including the bodies of Generals Mieczysław Smorawiński and Bronisław Bohatyrewicz. On 10 April, a Polish delegation made up of representatives of the Polish Welfare Committee, the Main Welfare Council, doctors and journalists and writers headed to Smolensk. They included mostly writers who were well-known before the war: Ferdynand Goetel and Jan Emil Skiwski; doctors Dr Konrad Orzechowski and Dr Edward Grodzki, and Edmund Seyfrid - director of the RGO. The official delegation was completed by journalists from the Nazi-controlled press: Władysław Kawecki ('The Kraków Courier') and Brunon Widera ('The New Voice of Lublin'). Kazimierz Didura, Hans Frank's personal photographer in his daily life, was the photojournalist;
Dr Grodzki also took photographs. Each of them was given a specific task to perform. The Germans assumed that the diverse composition of the committee would lend credibility to the messages conveyed from the crime scene. They also expected that envoys of the Polish Underground State would appear in Katyń (they were not mistaken, as Goetel, Orzechowski and Didura were in touch with the underground circles). Not only that, but the Germans were willing to invite a delegation of General Władysław Sikorski's government (even including the Prime Minister himself) to Katyń, guaranteeing its immunity.

Another important episode should be linked to the visit of this delegation. The Germans sent a film crew to prepare documentary material on Katyń, with active Polish participation. They expected the Poles to be not very keen to make official statements in front of the camera - only Wladyslaw Kawecki gave an official interview. The film crew hid a number of microphones in the cemetery area, mainly around the site of the medical panel. As the German officers guided the Poles around the excavated graves, they tried to choose the route of the march in such a way that the microphones would record their comments, opinions and statements, which could later be used in the film. The film premiered in Kraków on 22 April 1943. Later, it was regularly screened in other cities in the General Government and incorporated into the Reich (Bydgoszcz, Łódź, Poznań and Toruń).

THE NAZI PRESS IS SCREAMING

In the General Government, the Germans started searching for families of the Poles murdered in Katyń. They immediately reached General Smorawiński's brother (of course, the case was duly publicised). Katyń was visited by more Poles representing various institutions, or on their own initiative.

On 13 April 1943, the German authorities officially informed about the discovery of graves of 10,000 Polish officers murdered in Katyń. Adolf Hitler personally ordered this information to be spread worldwide. The propaganda apparatus was gaining momentum. As early as the morning of 14 April, the Nazi-controlled press produced the first articles on Katyń. The 'New Warsaw Courier' published a text entitled 'The Bolsheviks have murdered thousands of Polish officers. A delegation of Poles headed by Ferdinand Goetel viewed the shocking cemetery'. The article was signed mysteriously to readers: tp. In fact, it was Wladyslaw Kawecki, who published the largest number of articles and interviews on the Katyń crime in April and May of 1943. It is noteworthy that, apart from Kawecki and Skiwski, the other participants of the delegation avoided making public statements about Katyń. The texts signed with the initial G. (suggesting Ferdinand Goetel) and the interview with, among others, Dr Marian Wodziński are a deception by Kawecki, who meticulously noted down the statements of the members of the Polish delegation to Katyń and used them later without their knowledge.

One or two days after the first publication about Katyń, other Nazi-controlled titles printed in the General Government followed in the footsteps of the 'New Warsaw Courier'. Some sent their correspondents and, in addition to the texts produced by Telpress, printed articles on regional issues related to the Katyń massacre (for instance, the 'New Voice of Lublin' published an article by Bruno Widera entitled 'Lublin residents among the Bolshevik victims'). The 'Lviv Daily' headed by Stanislaw Wasylewski was one of the few Nazi-controlled titles that did not send its journalist to Katyń, although the editors provided up-to-date information on the progress of the exhumation work.

The press printed the first lists of the victims' names, which were the only source of knowledge on the subject. At the same time, the editors of the titles carefully followed the directives of Joseph Goebbels, who wanted to divide the Allies and make the image of the Germans more positive. It is noteworthy that the German-controlled press had an advantage over the underground press in this case. Above all, they were more easily accessible and had much more information about the crime itself. This is not to say that underground publications have not taken a stand on the issue. On 15 April 1943, the 'Information Bulletin' reported on Soviet responsibility for the deaths of Polish officers in the text 'A grave near Smolensk' and recalled that those who discovered the graves at Katyń were to blame for other Polish victims from Palmiry, Wawer, the Western Territories and concentration camps. In the spring of 1943, another brochure was published, entitled: Katyń. The Murdered. The Murderers. The Accusers, which presented the official position of the Polish Government and the Polish Underground State. Only the PPR-friendly 'Voice of Warsaw' wrote about a heinous German provocation.

SITE VISITS TO THE KATYŃ FOREST

On 14 April 1943, a second Polish delegation made up of several doctors and journalists headed to Katyń. It included representatives of the Polish Red Cross (including Kazimierz Skarżyński, Dr Tadeusz Pragłowski, Dr Hieronim Bartoszewski, Dr Stanisław Plappert
and Dr Adam Szebesta, Ludwik Rojkiewicz, Jerzy Wodzinowski and Stefan Kołodziejski), Father Stanisław Jasiński of Caritas (as
Cardinal Adam Sapieha's personal delegate) and journalist Marian Maak.
Afterwards, the Polish Red Cross team was expanded; it was joined by Dr Marian Wodziński and laboratory technicians and paramedics from the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Jagiellonian University's Department of Pathological Anatomy. Some members of this delegation also drafted reports for underground institutions, the Catholic Church and the Red Cross.

In mid-April, Katyń was visited by the first delegations of foreign journalists from many countries, including Sweden, Switzerland and Spain. Jimenez Cabarello and Christer Jagerlund, authors of dozens of articles and brochures published in Spanish and Swedish, were the most active participants at the time. In the following days, publicists and reporters also arrived from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Norway, Portugal, the Protectorate of Czech Republic and Moravia, Romania, Slovakia and Italy, among others. Foreign delegations made their way to Smolensk and Katyń for practically the entire second half of April and the first days of May 1943.

After the second Polish delegation left, the Germans brought Polish prisoners of war from several oflag camps to the scene. Among them were Lt Col Stefan Mossor, Capt Konstanty Adamski, Capt Stanislaw Cynkowski, Capt Eugeniusz Kleban, Lt Stanislaw Gostkowski and Lt Pilot Zbigniew Rowiński. Colonel Mossor firmly refused to make any official statements, but prepared a detailed report for the Polish government, which reached London, perhaps with the tacit approval of the Germans, who turned a blind eye to any initiative to publicise the Katyń case. The prisoners of war secretly removed some uniform buttons and fragments of ropes used to bind the victims' hands from the Katyń cemetery. Col. Mossor, upon his return, was immediately sent to Berlin and began visiting Poles deported to Germany for labour. On 28 April 1943, the International Medical Commission arrived in Katyń; its members, with the exception of the Swiss Dr François Naville, all came from German-controlled countries. The experts carried out a meticulous medical examination and, based on that, determined the approximate date of the crime committed against the Polish officers. They pointed to the spring of 1940 beyond any doubt. The final document they signed was soon distributed throughout the occupied Europe. Upon their return from Katyń, the committee members gave extensive reports on the exhumation work in their respective countries and produced individual reports.

Journalist Władysław Kawecki arrived in Katyń for the second time in mid-May 1943. On site, he was instructed by the Germans to verify the list of victims, which was being prepared on an ongoing basis by the Technical Committee of the Polish Red Cross. Soon enough, the list of victims was made public in the General Government, in the form of a brochure entitled List of members of the former Polish Army murdered by the Bolsheviks, 1943. The Germans also brought a group of Allied prisoners of war, including American and British officers, to Katyń. Dr Marian Wodzinski recorded that he spoke to a British officer who inquired about the circumstances of the murder. 'I told him,' the doctor recalled, 'that so far I had not come across any evidence that could charge the Germans, while all the circumstances that had come to light and the evidence that had been found supported the conclusion that the crime had been committed by the Soviets.

In May 1943, Katyń was visited by yet another important journalist who devoted the rest of his life to explaining the circumstances of the Katyń crime. This was Jozef Mackiewicz, a journalist from Vilnius who came to Smolensk primarily as a secret envoy of the Polish Home Army. Upon his return to Vilnius, he published
a shocking interview entitled 'I saw it with my own eyes'. Mackiewicz was passed by a delegation of workers (Włodzimierz Ambroż, Edmund Killer, Leon Kowalewicz, Stanisław Kłosowicz, Mikołaj Marczyk and Jan Symon) from the General Government. Stanisław Kłosowicz was a well-known figure; before the war he was a cyclist and represented Poland at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. It is not unlikely that in bringing him to Katyń, the Germans were motivated precisely by his sporting biography and popularity. In addition to the Poles, other journalists from European, neutral and occupied countries, as well as officers from armies friendly to the Germans, were also in Katyń at the same time. The last Poles to leave Katyn were members of the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross. They worked on site until 3 June 1943.

A total of fifty-something Poles from the General Government, lands incorporated into the Third Reich and prisoners of war visited the Soviet crime scene between April and June of 1943.
Their knowledge and observations undoubtedly contributed to clarifying the circumstances of the crime committed by the NKVD in April and May of 1940.

Tadeusz Wolsza, historian of contemporary history, employed at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Institute of Political Science of Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz