Word: katyn
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Ever since 1943, when the Berlin radio charged that the Russians had murdered thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn (rhymes with sateen) Forest near Smolensk, all Communists and many non-Communists have dismissed the accusation as Nazi propaganda. Nine months ago, however, a special committee of the House of Representatives headed by Indiana's Democratic Ray Madden launched its own investigation of the Katyn massacres (TIME, Nov. 26). Last week, after questioning witnesses in the U.S., Britain...
Germany and Italy, Madden's group announced its verdict: "This committee unanimously agrees . . . that the Soviet NKVD committed the massacre of Polish army officers in the Katyn Forest. . . not later than the spring of 1940." Total number of Polish officers, intellectuals and clergymen believed to have been slaughtered by the Russians at Katyn and similar mass executions...
...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...
...third Polish army veteran offered even graver evidence. He testified that he watched from hiding in a nearby tree in October 1939, when 200 Polish officers were slaughtered by Red army soldiers at Katyn. It was night time, he said, and the victims were led two by two to the edge of a huge ditch illuminated by floodlights. "First," he continued, "they tied the [victim's] hands together and then tilted the head back, and they packed sawdust into the victim's mouth. If he showed signs of collapsing while in their hands, they just kicked him into...