The treachery of the Soviets to the Poles, from the ‘39 partition, to the Katyn massacre, to holding its armies in check while the Nazis wiped out the Warsaw Uprising, to the seizure of eastern Polish territories after the war, are an indelible stain on the communist regime and its post-communist imperialist successor, Russia.
The Germans have had long, if imperfect, reckoning of the barbarity of their nation in the war. The Russians have not.
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Probably the ONLY THING good the nazis did when they made this find public.
I have a copy of THE UNKNOWN WAR on DVD in which Brut Lancaster narrating blames Katyn on the nazis.
Vasily Blokhin was Stalin's chief excecutioner. He personally murdered most of the officers in the Katyn Massacre.
That monument was built by Russia because the site is in Russia today. Putin was the first Russian leader to admit it was the NKVD, and literally released the long denied to exist order, signed by Stalin, to murder them.
When the Polish delegation was killed in the plane crash, they were flying in to a ceremony the Russians were throwing to honor the murdered Poles.
After the tragedy, Putin order the Polish made movie “Katyn” to be shown without commercials on Russian public TV stations and historian discussion panels followed it.
They always forget that part. It’s more fun to keep the grievance alive to help beat the war drums.
A good friend of our family, Roman Pucinski, was chief investigator for the US Congressional Special Committee which investigated the Katyn Massacre back in 1952. (I was only 9 or 10 at the time.)
Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Pucinski