Germans in Katyn

Germans in Katyn. Documents on the execution of Polish prisoners of war in the autumn of 1941.
Compiled by: R. I., Kosolapov, V. E. Pershin, S. Yu. Rychenkov, V. A. Sakharov

Responsible for the issue: S. A. Lozhkin.

Moscow: ITRK Publishing House, 2010 - 280 p. ISBN 978-5-88010-266-2

Statement of the Polish government of April 17, 1943, published in London on April 18, 1943, on the discovery of the graves of Polish officers near Smolensk.

Germans in Katyn. M.: ITRK. pp. 33-35

Not a single Pole is left with anything but to be deeply shocked by this news - now widely publicized by the Germans - about the discovery of the bodies of Polish officers who went missing in the USSR in a collective grave near Smolensk, and the mass execution of which they were victims .

The Polish government instructed its representative in Switzerland to demand that the International Red Cross in Geneva send a delegation to investigate the true state of affairs on the spot. It is desirable that the findings of this human rights institution, which should be trusted to clarify the issue and identify those responsible, be published immediately.

At the same time, however, the Polish government, in the name of the Polish nation, denies the Germans any right to base their own defense on the crime they attribute to others. The deeply hypocritical indignation of German propaganda should not succeed in hiding from the world so many cruel and repeated crimes still committed against the Poles.

The Polish government remembers such facts as: the withdrawal of Polish officers from prisoner of war camps in the Reich, followed by their execution for political crimes allegedly committed before the war; mass arrests of reserve officers, followed by deportation to concentration camps to die a slow death there - only from Krakow and the region about 6000 were sent in June 1942; mandatory recruitment into the German army of Polish prisoners of war from territories illegally annexed to the Reich; the forced conscription of approximately 200,000 Poles from the same territories, with the execution of the families of those who managed to escape; massacre of one and a half million people by executions and in concentration camps; the recent imprisonment of 80,000 military-age officers and men; torture and murder

Not in order to allow the Germans to make bold claims and pose as defenders of Christianity and European civilization, Poland makes its enormous sacrifices, fighting and enduring suffering. The blood of Polish soldiers and Polish citizens, wherever it is shed, calls for redemption before the consciences of all the free peoples of the world. The Polish government condemns all crimes committed against Polish citizens and denies the right to capitalize on these victims for political capital to anyone who is himself guilty of such crimes.