Word: katyn
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Washington last week, a special House committee resumed the investigation it began last fall into the wartime massacre of more than 4,000 Polish officers in Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia (TIME, Nov. 26). The issue: Was Katyn just another Nazi atrocity, or did the Russians do it and then dupe the Western world into blaming the common enemy...
...Army Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr., who made a forced visit to Katyn as a German prisoner in 1943, testified that, despite his hatred for the Nazis, he formed an immediate "unshakeable opinion" that the Russians were guilty. Henry Cassidy, former Associated Press correspondent in Moscow, testified that he suspected the Russians of rigging the evidence when they took him to view the mass graves at Katyn in 1944. An exPolish diplomat said that his exile government in London asked Moscow fruitlessly more than 50 times about the fate of the missing officers. Two former Polish soldiers testified that...
...possibility of an investigation into Communist plans for sabotage of U.S. industry. ¶ The House Armed Services Committee is preparing a report on the death of OSS's Major William Holohan in Italy (TIME, Aug. 27). ¶ A special House committee will soon hold open hearings on the Katyn Forest massacre (TIME, Nov. 26). ¶ A Senate Subcommittee on the District of Columbia will look into crime in the nation's capital. ¶ A Senate Subcommittee on the Post Office & Civil Service will study the government's manpower situation, probing for wasteful use of personnel...
...Missing Report. One of the first things they investigated was a report made by Lieut. Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr. As a wartime prisoner in Germany, West Pointer Van Vliet had been one of four Allied officers forced by the Germans to go under guard to Katyn. When he was liberated in 1945, Van Vliet promptly made a report to Major General Clayton Bissell, chief of War Department Intelligence in Washington. Bissell had him dictate a full account of the trip, marked it "Top Secret," and swore him to silence. Then, somehow, the Top Secret report disappeared. Bissell said...
...Russians were indeed responsible for the Katyn massacre as such preliminary findings indicated it would be clear evidence that the Kremlin had planned the extirpation of Polish army leadership far in advance (some 11,000 other Polish officers had simply disappeared without trace in Russia). The Kremlin's rule in Poland today is maintained through the Communist party and through Red Army Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who is Poland's Defense Minister. Russian control is greatly facilitated by the fact that the major part of Poland's officer corps is either dead or in exile...