Polish director Wajda makes film on Katyn atrocity

Reuters ^ | Wed 15 Feb 2006 | Erik Kirschbaum

[lizol]

RusIvan actually has said something like that.

[kaiser80]

yaeh...he even took some numbers out of space. 100.000 to be precise. I had to do some research to prove he is totaly wrong about it. Yet he still posted it several times, why? As he said once: "to piss of vox_pl". What a menda (polish word, don't ask me to translate it...)

[kaiser80]

of=off

[68skylark]

Unless he's a really talented filmmaker, this could be a very difficult movie to watch. I'm not sure I'd want to see such a terrible story on film.

On the other hand, if it's true (as Borges says) that Mr. Wajda has done great work in the past, and that he's given some credit for being an influence on Schindler List -- which is a great movie about a difficult subject -- maybe he's just the man to make this movie.

[Niuhuru]

This is great. Finally an atrocity committed by Communists will finally be more than just a name. It will be made real in this film, a film I hope will be as widely known as Schindler's List.

[XR7]

Katyn Massacre Was Not Genocide — Russian Military Prosecutor

"Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov said that criminal case was closed because investigators didn’t find any evidence of genocide in the 1940 Katyn killings. According to Savenkov, the case consists of 183 volumes, 116 of which contain state secrets. The remaining 67 volumes are open for study and the Polish side has already been informed that Russia is ready to hand them over."
____________________________________________________

Of course.

[Heyworth]

To tell the truth, I'm not sure that the executions could be honestly termed "genocide" against the Poles any more than the French Revolution could be termed genocide against the French aristocracy. Katyn was a systematic effort to wipe out the Polish political elite, which was closely tied to their officer class. It was purely political and not ethnic or racial. It's still a crime, make no mistake, and the Russians are clearly hiding a lot, but is it genocide by any meaningful definition?

[XR7]

To tell the truth, I'm not sure that the executions could be honestly termed "genocide" against the Poles...Katyn was a systematic effort to wipe out the Polish political elite...It was purely political

Main Entry: geno·cide
Pronunciation: 'je-n&-"sId
Function: noun: the deliberate and systematic destruction
of a racial, political, or cultural group
- geno·cid·al /"je-n&-'sI-d&l/ adjective

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/genocide

[lizol]

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Approved and proposed for signature and ratification or accession by

General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948 entry into force 12 January 1951, in accordance with article XIII

Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,… as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Those officers definitely were Polish cultural, intelectual, social elite. As such they were a crucial part of the Polish nation.

And they were killed because of that.

To make it more "funny" - the Soviets tried to assign Katyn massacre to Germans before the Nurnberg Tribunal considering it as ... a genocide.

Something must have changed in Moscow since then.

Oooops, it's the perpetrators.

[SunkenCiv]

This is a "Thoroughly Modern Miscellany" topic for the GGG digest.

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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