Word: katyn
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...black marble monument stands in a grove in the Katyn Forest outside Smolensk, a memorial to the more than 4,000 Polish officers massacred at that spot during World War II. But the dedication etched in the marble tells a lie that mocks the very lives it memorializes: "To the victims of Fascism -- the Polish officers shot by the Hitlerites...
Forensic evidence showed that the slaughter occured in 1940--well before the Germans occupied Katyn...
...massacre itself is tragic; the subsequent cover-up is tragi-comic. Despite almost incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the USSR has consistently maintained that the Germans were responsible for the massacre. The Soviets, at least until recently, served up duplicity and intimidation when faced with questions about Katyn...
...could the USSR possibly need? The Poles know, as the Soviets must, that fifty years doesn't make a confession stale or irrelevant. Not irrelevant to the windows of the dead officers. Not to Solidarity, nor even to the Polish communist party, both of which lost potential leaders at Katyn...
...course, appeals to moral decency have rarely carried much weight with the Soviet government. But an appeal to self-interest might. Never has Polish opposition to Soviet domination been so brazen as it is today. A Soviet apology for the Katyn massacre would be an important symbolic step towards the construction of a more cooperative and less autocratic Warsaw Pact...