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THE HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF KATYN

For the West, the Katyn Massacre was a signal, inceptive incident in the wartime doubt in Western minds about the motives and methods of the Soviet Union. The visualized image of prisoners-of-war, bound and gagged, being forced down onto stacks of fresh corpses of their murdered friends--heaped like so much garbage--then to be shot through the back of their heads was a specter which could not be comfortably or completely ignored and forgotten.

Such wartime disturbance and distrust served as a foundation for the postwar East-West antagonism which became known as "the cold war." Katyn was also important for its subsequent, periodic use as a compelling example of Marxist-Leninism's threat to liberal, Western society and institutions.

History
Under the German-Soviet pact Poland was divided; the Soviets took, and absorbed into the Soviet Union, the eastern half (Byelorussia and the West Ukraine), the Germans incorporated Pomerania, Posnania and Silesia into the Reich whilst the rest was designated as the General- Government (a colony ruled from Krakow by Hitler's friend, Hans Frank).

In the Soviet zone 1.5 million Poles (including women and children) were transported to labour camps in Siberia and other areas. Many thousands of captured Polish officers were shot at several secret forest sites; the first to be discovered being Katyn, near Smolensk.

The Germans declared their intention of eliminating the Polish race (a task to be completed by 1975) alongside the Jews. This process of elimination, the "Holocaust", was carried out systematically. All members of the "intelligentsia" were hunted down in order to destroy Polish culture and leadership (many were originally exterminated at Oswiencim - better known by its German name, Auschwitz).

Secret universities and schools, a "Cultural Underground", were formed (the penalty for belonging to one was death). In the General Government there were about 100,000 secondary school pupils and over 10,000 university students involved in secret education.

The Polish Jews were herded into Ghettos where they were slowly starved and cruelly offered hopes of survival but, in fact, ended up being shot or gassed. In the end they were transported, alongside non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and Soviet POWs, to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka; at Auschwitz over 4 million were exterminated. 2000 concentration camps were built in Poland, which became the major site of the extermination programme, since this was where most of the intended victims lived.

Many non-Jewish Poles were either transported to Germany and used as slave labour or simply executed. In the cities the Germans would round-up and kill indiscriminately as a punishment for any underground or anti-German or pro-Jewish activity. In the countryside they kept prominent citizens as hostages who would be executed if necessary. Sometimes they liquidated whole villages; at least 300 villages were destroyed. Hans Frank said, "If I wanted to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not suffice to produce the paper for such posters."

Despite such horror the Poles refused to give in or cooperate (there were no Polish collaborators as in other occupied countries). The Polish Underground or AK (Armia Krajowa or Home Army) was the largest in Europe with 400,000 men.

Long Live Poland!

The Jewish resistance movement was set up separately because of the problem of being imprisoned within the ghettos. Both these organisations caused great damage to the Nazi military machine. Many non-Jewish Poles saved the lives of thousands of Jews despite the fact that the penalty, if caught, was death (in fact, Poland was the only occupied nation where aiding Jews was punishable by death).

Monument at Katyn

Katyn Forest Mass Graves

Clic on the map graphic above to reach a clickable interactive map (once there, use scroll bars) with further details on the mass killings at Katyn

Katyn Monument in New Jersey
The bronze soldier, bayoneted rifle sprung from his back, stands atop a granite base which holds Katyn soil. The statue's effect is as its creator wished it to be: "Like an explosion."

Today's Educational Sources and suggestions for further reading:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/history/marshall/military/wwii
http://archives.ubalt.edu
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/
http://www.battlefield.ru/library/archives/
http://www.katyn.org.au/n1.html

Today's classic warship, USS Alabama (BB-8)

Illinois class battleship
displacement. 11,565 tons
length. 374'10"
beam. 72'5"
draft. 25'0"
speed. 16 k.
complement. 536
armament. 4 13", 14 6", 16 6-pdrs., 4 1-pdrs., 4 .30-cal. mg., 4 18" tt.

The USS Alabama (Battleship No. 8) was laid down on 1 December 1896 at Philadelphia, Pa., by the William Cramp and Sons Ship and Engine Building Co.; launched on 18 May 1898; sponsored by Miss Mary Morgan, daughter of the Honorable John T. Morgan, United States Senator from Georgia; and commissioned on 16 October 1900, Capt. Willard H. Brownson in command.

Though assigned to the North Atlantic Station, Alabama did not begin operations with that unit until early the following year. The warship remained at Philadelphia until 13 December when she got underway for the brief trip to New York. She stayed at New York through the New Year and until the latter part of January 1901. Finally, on 27 January, the battleship headed south for winter exercises with the Fleet at the drill grounds in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Fla. Alabama's Navy career began in earnest with her arrival in the gulf early in February. With a single exception in 1904, each year from 1901 to 1907, she conducted Fleet exercises and gunnery drills in the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies in the wintertime before returning north for repairs and operations off the northeastern coast during the summer and autumn. The exception came in the spring of 1904 after the conclusion of winter maneuvers when she departed Pensacola in company with Kearsarge (Battleship No. 5), Maine(Battleship No. 10), Iowa (Battleship No. 4), Olympia (Cruiser No. 6), Baltimore (Cruiser No. 3), and Cleveland (Cruiser No. 19) on a voyage to Portugal and the Mediterranean. After a ceremonial visit to Lisbon honoring the entrance of the Infante into the Portuguese naval school, Alabama and the other three battleships cruised the Mediterranean until mid-August. Returning by way of the Azores, she and her traveling companions arrived in Newport, R. I., on 29 August. Late in September, the warship entered the League Island Navy Yard for repairs. Early in December, Alabama left the yard and resumed cruising with the North Atlantic Fleet.

Near the end of 1907, the battleship set out upon a special mission. On 16 December 1907, she stood out of Hampton Roads in company with what became known as the Great White Fleet. Alabama accompanied the Fleet on its voyage around the South American continent as far as San Francisco. On 18 May 1908 when the bulk of the Fleet headed north to visit the Pacific northwest, she remained at San Francisco for repair at the Mare Island Navy Yard. As a consequence, the warship did not participate in the celebrated visit to Japan. Instead, Alabama and Maine departed San Francisco on 8 June to complete their own, more direct, circumnavigation of the globe. Steaming by way of Honolulu and Guam, the two battleships arrived at Manila in the Philippines on 20 July. In August, they visited Singapore and Colombo on the island of Ceylon. From Colombo, the two battleships made their way, via Aden on the Arabian Peninsula, to the Suez Canal. Through the canal early in September, Alabama and Maine made an expeditious transit of the Mediterranean Sea, pausing only at Naples at mid-month. Following a port call at Gibraltar, they embarked upon the Atlantic passage on 4 October. They made one stop, in the Azores, on their way across the Atlantic. On 19 October as they neared the end of their long voyage, the two battleships parted company. Maine headed for Portsmouth, N.H.; and Alabama steered for New York. Both reached their destinations on the 20th.

Alabama was placed in reserve at New York on 3 November 1908. Though she remained inactive at New York, the battleship was not decommissioned until 17 August 1909. The warship underwent an extensive overhaul that lasted until the early part of 1912. On 17 April 1912, she was placed in commission, second reserve, at New York, Comdr. Charles F. Preston in command. At that point, she became an element of the newly established Atlantic Reserve Fleet. According to that concept, the Navy organized a unit that comprised nine of the older battleships as well as Brooklyn (Armored Cruiser No. 3), Columbia (Cruiser No. 12), and Minneapolis (Cruiser No. 13) for the purpose of keeping those ships constantly ready for active service using the fiscal expedient of severely reduced complements that could be filled out rapidly by naval militiamen and volunteers in an emergency. The unit as a whole possessed enough officers and men to take two or three of the ships to sea on a rotating basis to test their material readiness and to exercise the sailors at drill.

Alabama was placed in full commission on 25 July 1912 and operated with the Atlantic Fleet off the New England coast through the summer. She was returned to reserve status-in commission, first reserve-at New York on 10 September 1912. Late in the spring of 1913, the Navy added a new dimension to the concept of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet by having the warships of that unit embark detachments of the various state naval militias for training afloat in a manner similar in many respects to the contemporary Navy's selected reserve program. During the summer of 1913, Alabama cruised along the east coast and made two round-trip voyages to Bermuda to train naval militiamen from Maryland, the District of Columbia, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, North Carolina, and Indiana. She ended her last training cruise of the year at Philadelphia on 2 September. The battleship was placed in ordinary on 31 October 1913 and in reserve on 1 July 1914.

Though still in commission, she passed the next 30 months in relative inactivity with the Reserve Force, Atlantic Fleet, at Philadelphia. America's shift toward belligerency in World War I, however, brought Alabama out of the doldrums of the peace-time reserve at the beginning of 1917. On 22 January, she became receiving ship at Philadelphia, embarking drafts of recruits for training. In mid-March, the battleship moved south to the lower reaches of the Chesapeake Bay and began transforming landsmen into sailors. She took a brief respite from her rigorous training schedule on 6 April 1917 for the announcement of the United States declaration of war on the Central Powers. Two days later, Alabama became flagship of Division 1, Atlantic Fleet. For the remainder of World War 1, the warship conducted recruit training missions in the lower Chesapeake Bay and in the coastal waters of the Atlantic seaboard, though she made one visit to the Gulf of Mexico in late June and early July of 1918.

After the armistice on 11 November 1918, her recruit training duties continued but began to diminish somewhat in intensity. During February and March of 1919, the battleship steamed south to the West Indies for winter maneuvers. She returned to Philad elphia in mid-April for routine repairs before heading for Annapolis to embark Naval Academy midshipmen for their summer training cruise. On 28 and 29 May, Alabama made the short trip from Philadelphia to Annapolis. She left Annapolis on 9 June with 184 midshipmen embarked. During the first part of the cruise, Alabama visited the West Indies and made a trip through the Panama Canal and back. In mid-July, she voyaged to New York and the New England coast. August saw her return south or maneuvers at the drill grounds. Alabama disembarked the midshipmen at Annapolis at the end of August and returned to Philadelphia.

After more than nine months at Philadelphia lingering in a sort of naval purgatory, the battleship was finally decommissioned on 7 May 1920. On 15 September 1921, Alabama was transferred to the War Department to be used as a target, and her name was struck from the Navy list. Subjected to aerial bombing tests in Chesapeake Bay by planes of the Army Air Service, the former warship sank in shallow water on 27 September 1921. On 19 March 1924, her sunken hulk was sold for scrap.

On This Day In History

Birthdates which occurred on October 13:
1537 Jane Grey, Queen of England for 9 days
1754 Mary Ludwig Hayes American Revolutionary War heroine Molly Pitcher.
1769 Horace H Hayden cofounded 1st dental college
1853 Lillie Langtry [Jersey Lily], vaudevillian actress
1885 Harry Hershfield Cedar Rapids Iowa, cartoonist (Can You Top This?)
1889 Douglass Dumbrille Hamilton Ont, actor (Mr Deeds Goes to Town)
1890 Conrad Richter writer (The Light in the Forest)
1891 Irene Rich Buffalo NY, actress (Beau Brummell, Champ)
1902 Arna Bontemps Louisiana, black author (100 years of negro freedom)
1902 Franco Giorgetti Italy, cyclist (Olympic-gold-1920)
1909 Herblock (Herbert L Block) political cartoonist
1911 Ticker Freeman Paterson NJ, pianist (Dinah Shore Show)
1912 Hugo Weisgall Ivancice Moravia, composer (4 Impressions)
1915 Cornel Wilde actor (High Sierra, 5th Musketeer)
1917 Burr Tillstrom Chic Ill, puppeteer (Kukla, Fran & Ollie)
1917 Laraine Day Roosevelt Utah, actress (Dr Kildare, I've Got a Secret)
1920 Albert Hague Berlin Germany, actor (Mr Shorofsky-Fame)
1920 Nipsey Russell Atlanta Ga, comedian (Car 54, Barefoot in the Park)
1921 Harper MacKay Boston Mass, orch leader (NBC Follies)
1921 Yves Montand France, actor/singer (Z, Napoleon, Grand Prix)
1922 Alan Scott Haddonfield NJ, TV host/songwriter (Spin the Picture)
1924 Terry Gibbs Brooklyn NY, orch leader (Steve Allen Comedy Hour)
1925 Frank Gilroy American writer (Subject Was Roses)
1925 Lenny Bruce comedian, arrested on obscenity charges
1925 Margaret Thatcher (Tory) British PM (1979-90) Iron Lady
1927 Anita Kerr Memphis TN, singer (Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour)
1931 Ed Matthews Hall of Famer/Milwaukee Brave/HR hitter (512)
1936 Cliff Gorman Jamaica NY, actor (Boys in the Band, Angel)
1938 Jim McMullan Long Beach NY, actor (Dr McDaniel-Ben Casey)
1939 Melinda Dillon Hope Ark, actress (Close Encounters, Slap Shot)
1942 Pamela Tiffin Oklahoma City, actress (Viva Max!)
1942 Paul Simon Newark NJ, singer/actor (Kodachrome, 1 Trick Pony)
1946 Demond Wilson Valdosta Ga, actor (Sanford & Son, Baby I'm Back)
1946 Lacy J Dalton country singer (Blue Eyed Blues)
1948 Leona Mitchell Enid Okla, soprano (Musetta-La Boh‚me)
1949 Sammy Hagar singer-musician (Van Halen-Jump)
1959 Marie Osmond Ogden Ut, singer/actress (Paper Roses, Goin' Coconuts)
1961 Jerry Rice NFL receiver (SF 49ers) (Super Bowl XXIII, XXIV, XXIX); NFL individual record: touchdown receptions: career [131], season [22]; Super Bowl records: career: yards gained [215], points scored: [42], touchdowns scored [7], TDs in one game [3]...and counting
1962 Kelly Preston Hawaii, actress (Mischief, Twins, A Tigers Tale)
1965 Cherelle rocker (Affair-First Bite)
1969 Cady McClain Burbank Calif, actress (Dixie Martin-All My Children)

Deaths which occurred on October 13:
54 Claudius Roman Emperor, dies
1601 Tycho Brahe greatest naked-eye observer, dies in Prague
1795 William Prescott American Revolutionary soldier, dies
1974 Ed Sullivan TV host (Ed Sullivan Show), dies at 73
1979 Clarence Muse actor (Sam-Casablanca), dies at 90
1988 Mike Venezia jockey, dies in 5th-race fall at Belmont Race Track, NY
1989 Jay Ward animator (Rocky & His Friends), dies at 69 of cancer

Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1966 BORDEN MURRAY L.---GOLDSBORO NC.
1966 MEADOWS EUGENE T.---HIDDENITE NC.
[REMAINS RETURNED 11/94]
1967 MILLER EDISON WAINRIGHT---CLINTON IA.
[02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV INJURED]
1967 WARNER JAMES H.---YPSILANTI MI.
[03/73 RELEASED BY DRV "ALIVE IN 98 "HONORABLE JAMES WARNER"]
1968 HUNT JAMES D.---MISSOULA MT.
1968 MASTERSON MICHAEL J.---EPHRAYA WA.
1968 ORELL QUINLEN R.---BARNESVILLE OH.
1969 GETCHELL PAUL E.---PORTLAND ME.
1970 CHESTNUT JOSEPH L.---MURFREESBORO TN.
[REMAINS RETURNED/IDENTIFIED 07/25/95]

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

On this day...
1307 French king Philip IV convicts Knights Templar of heresy
1399 Henry IV of England is crowned
1483 Rabbi Issac Abarbanel starts his exegesis on the Bible
1629 Dutch West Indies Co grants religious freedom in West Indies
1775 Continental Congress orders construction of a naval fleet
1792 Washington lays cornerstone of the Executive Mansion (White House)
1812 Battle of Queenston Heights
1843 B'nai B'rith founded in NY
1845 Texas ratifies a state constitution
1860 1st aerial photo taken in US (from a balloon), Boston
1864 Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby robs train near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
1903 Pirates beats Pilgrims (Red Sox) 5 games to 3 in 1st World Series
1914 Boston Braves sweep Phila A's, 1st sweep in World Series history (World Series #11)
1915 Boston Red Sox beat Phila Phillies, 4 games to 1 in 12th World Series
1919 Race riot at Elaine Arkansas
1921 NY Giants beat NY Yankees, 5 games to 3 in 18th World Series
1941 Nazis kill 11,000 Jewish children/old people
1943 Italy declares war on former ally Germany
1944 US 1st army begins battle of Aachen
1947 "Kukla, Fran & Ollie" premieres
1947 NHL All Star Game - All Stars beat Toronto Maple Leafs
1953 Burglar alarm-ultrasonic or radio waves-patented-Samuel Bagno
1957 German Dem Rep recalls the East Mark & issues new currency
1960 3rd presidential debate with Nixon in Hollywood & Kennedy in NY
1960 Pirate's Mazeroski's bottom of 9th lead off HR beats NY Yankees 10-9 in game 7 of 57th World Series
1960 Opponents of Fidel Castro executed in Cuba
1962 "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opens on Broadway, with Uta Hagen
1963 "Beatlemania" is coined after the Beatles appear at the Palladium
1964 Voskhod 1 crew returns
1969 Soyuz 8 is launched
1970 Angela Davis arrested in NYC
1971 1st world series night game (Pittsburgh 4-Baltimore 3) (World Series #68)
1972 Aeroflot Il-62 crashes in large pond outside Moscow, 176 die
1972 Uruguay to Chile plane crashes in Andes Mountain, (12/23 rescue)
1973 Teri Garr appears on Bob Newhart Show in "Emily in for Carol"
1978 James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King weds Anna Sandhu
1978 Tiros N, US's 1st 3rd generation weather satellite, is launched
1978 Graig Nettles at 3rd makes many spectactular plays in WS game 3 as Guidry beats Dodgers, after trailing 2 games to 0 Yanks win next 4
1980 Unprovoked slayings of 6 blacks in Buffalo, NY
1981 Vice President Hosni Mubarak elected president of Egypt
1982 IOC restores 2 gold medals from 1912 Olympics to Jim Thorpe
1982 NJ Devils 1st short handed goal-Don Lever
1984 Blackhawk Bill Gardner scores on 10th penalty shot against Islanders
1984 John Henry becomes 1st thoroughbred to win $6 million
1984 STS 41-G mission; lands at Kennedy Space Center
1986 25th NY, NL appearance in World Series (Mets vs A's) (World Series #83)
1987 1st military use of trained dolphins (US Navy in Persian Gulf)
1987 Costa Rican Pres Oscar Arias wins Nobel Peace Prize
1988 Concert at Masada ends Israel's 40th-anniversary fest
1989 Dow Jones down 190.58 points
1990 1st Russian Orthodox service in 70 yrs held in St Basil's Cathedral
1991 Blue Jay Cito Gaston is 1st manager ejected in a playoff game

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Burundi : Hero of the Nation Day
Western Samoa : White Sunday (2nd Sunday) (Sunday)
Canada : Thanksgiving Day (Monday)
Florida : Farmers' Day (1915) (Monday)
Hawaii : Discoverer's Day (Monday)
US : Columbus Day (1492) (Monday)
Virgin Is & Puerto Rico : Friendship Day (Monday)
US : Sweetest Week (Day 2)
Home-Based Business Week Begins
Polish-American Heritage Month
Spinal Health Month

Religious Observances
Ang, RC : Commem of St Edward the Confessor, king of England (1042-66)

Religious History
539 (BC) The Persian armies of Cyrus the Great captured Babylon. (Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, was the former military scourge which had taken Judah into exile in 586 BC (see 2 Kings 25).
1670 In Virginia, slavery was banned for Negroes who arrived in the American colonies as Christians. (The law was repealed in 1682.)
1843 B'nai B'rith ("Sons of the Covenant") was established in New York City by a group of German Jews. It is both the oldest and the largest of the Jewish fraternal organizations.
1917 The Virgin Mary last appeared to three shepherd children near Fatima, Portugal. Six visions had occurred between May and October, each on the 13th of the month. (This last vision was attended by over 50,000 pilgrims.)
1988 The Bishop of Turin, Italy announced that the Shroud of Turin, long believed to be Christ's burial sheet, did not withstand scientific testing. It dated back only to 1280, and not to the time of Jesus' crucifixion (ca. AD 30-33).

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

Thought for the day :
"He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet."

You Might Be a Redneck if...
You think a woman who is "out of your league" bowls on a different night

Murphys Law of the day...
Never stand between a fire hydrant and a dog.

Astounding fact #79,037...
Tennessee is bordered by more states than any other.
The eight states are Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

On a related note.
A long Walk The True Story of a Trek to Freedom
by Slavomir Rawicz
(A book Review)
Galllery Books | Tony Miksak

This week I want to talk with you about two extraordinary books that deal with the twin themes of survival and freedom.

Was it fate? Kismet? The Luck of the Polish? Two outstanding books arrived at my house in the same week. Both recount true stories of hardship and survival in the Gulag of Soviet Russia. Both are told by Poles -- one Jewish, one not -- who patriotically fought the Nazi invaders in 1939 and for their trouble were arrested, tortured and jailed by the Soviets. Both lived to tell about it -- one escaped from a Siberian work camp and walked 4,000 miles to freedom; the other survived one of the most deadly of the work camps.

There is so much history, so much heroism, so much horror in these books it's difficult to know where to begin in telling you about them.

The Long Walk, The True Story of a Trek to Freedom was first published in 1956 by Slavomir Rawicz, and this spring it is being republished in paperback by The Lyons Press.

It's an amazing, true story. The author escaped with five others from Soviet Labor Camp #303 near the Arctic Circle. They spent a year living off the land, walking south over 4,000 miles of the most forbidding terrain on Earth. They braved the desolate Siberian tundra, icy rivers, the great Gobi Desert and the Himalayas, always close to death. Most of the time they had to hide from the civilian population and their pursuers. They had no map, no compass -- only an ax head, a homemade knife, and the unswerving determination to survive.

Rawicz writes, "In 1939 I was Lieutenant Rawicz of the Polish Cavalry, aged 24, slim and smart in my well-tailored uniform and whipcord breeches and shining riding-boots." After his arrest by the Soviet secret police everything changed: "Here in Moscow, shambling through the echoing narrow corridors of the Lubyanka (prison) between my two guards, I was a man almost shorn of identity, ill-fed, abysmally lonely, trying to keep alive some spark of resistance in the dank prison atmosphere of studied official loathing and suspicion of me."

From the comfort of soft sheets and full refrigerators, and the safety of half a century on, The Long Walk could be just one more survival story from a long-gone war, on a shelf full of similar stories. But this one is different -- more chilling, more inspirational. The London Times reviewer called it "Positively Homeric."

My copy is book marked with a dozen post-it notes, each pointing to a passage so compelling or extraordinary that I wanted to be able to find it again. It's not that this book is great literature -- it is very plain, journalistic in style. It is rich in incident. Like all good books it forces the reader to reflect on his own history, his own survival stories.

Rawicz is still alive, in his eighties, living with his second family in England, answering all letters and raising money for orphans in Poland.

He sums it up: "There are many other stories. I am not the only one.... What is most important is the deeply felt conviction that freedom is like oxygen, and I hope The Long Walk is a reminder that when lost, freedom is difficult to regain."

The Long Walk begins with the show trial in Moscow. Rawicz writes, "It was a crazy trial, run by madmen. It became in the end a test of endurance between one weak, half-starved, ill-used Pole and the powerful, time-squandering State machine."

From Moscow Rawicz was transported in a sealed cattle car with thousands of other prisoners on a slow and secret 3,000 mile train trip to Siberia. The final slog to the prison camp was accomplished this way: the prisoners were handcuffed to frozen chains and forced to drag fully loaded trucks through several Siberian blizzards all the way to the camp. Rawicz counted the casualties by noting how many handcuffs became vacant as the prisoners were moved up the chain to fill empty slots. One in ten died along the march. More died in the first weeks in camp.

Within a few months at the prison camp Rawicz had arranged an escape with several other hardy souls. After all the privations, the worst part was about to begin.

I was reminded, reading this memoir, of the novel Cold Mountain which also concerns a fearsome trek through the wilderness to the putative safety of home. Cold Mountain, although a first rate novel, lacks the abundant chilling details of The Long Walk.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/911313/posts

HIGHLY RECOMENDED!! A ripping good tale.

They Shall Not Be Forgotten: Remembering the Victims of Katyn

They Shall Not Be Forgotten:
Remembering the Victims of Katyn

by Michael Whitcraft

Whittaker Chambers recounts feeling that Communism had crushed his will.

Reflecting on the sad state to which Communism had reduced him one cold autumn evening in 1948, Whittaker Chambers describes feeling that he no long had the will to continue his struggles against the Communist party. “It was that death of the will which Communism, with great cunning, always tries to induce in its victims.”¹

To bring this reality to the forefront, over 100 Polish Americans gathered at the National Katyn Memorial in Baltimore, Md. on April 24, 2005 to remember a massacre, in which 20,000 Polish military officers (mostly reservists) were brutally killed in and around Russia’s Katyn Forest in 1940. These included priests, doctors, professors, school teachers, lawyers, judges, civil servants and others.

The massacre was directed against Poland’s religious, cultural and intellectual elite, exemplifying Mr. Chamber’s words with one important difference. The Katyn Massacre was not only an attempt to kill the will of an individual, but that of an entire nation.

The National Katyn Memorial in Baltimore stands at the intersection of President and Aliceanna Streets.

A Yearly Remembrance
This year’s event was the fifth annual remembrance at the National Katyn Memorial in Baltimore. The day’s events began with a Mass at Holy Rosary Parish in downtown Baltimore. After coffee and doughnuts, attendees went to the nearby National Katyn Memorial at the intersection of President and Aliceanna Streets.

The monument consists of a large gold-colored flame, a symbol of rebirth or transformation. Amid the flames stand statues of great personages from Poland’s history, including: Boleslaw Chrobry, the first crowned king of Poland and King Jan Sobieski, who led his winged hussars to defeat the Turks and lift the siege of Vienna.

Despite a frigid wind, the attendees remained committed to carry on to the end. One jovial middle-aged man commented: “Every time we plan an event at the memorial, we can be sure there will be bad weather. At least it did not rain this year.”

The impressive list of guest speakers included a representative from Gov. Robert Erlich’s office and U.S. Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D).

Fifteen young girls, dressed in beautiful traditional Polish dresses, added life to the event by dancing national folk dances.

After the memorial at the monument, attendees were invited for a meal at the Polish National Alliance building a few blocks away. During the meal two aluminum plaques were unveiled: one explaining the Katyn Massacre and another describing the monument were unveiled. These will be placed at the base of the monument to explain its significance to passers-by.

During the meal, members of the National Katyn Memorial Foundation spoke on the importance of remembering the Katyn Massacre and spreading awareness so that such a tragedy never occurs again.

The bodies of 20,000 Polish officers were thrown into mass graves, in Russia's Katyn Forest and nearby areas.

The Massacre
To fully understand the significance of the Katyn Massacre, it helps to look back to the beginning of World War II. On September 11, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, an event which sparked the outbreak of the war. A couple of weeks later, the Soviet Union, at that time allied with the Nazis, invaded from the east. Sandwiched by this Soviet-Nazi alliance, Poland fought valiantly before falling to the two invaders.

The Soviets rulers terrorized Poland, sending 1.5 million citizens to Siberia, capturing 250,000 military personnel and sending over 20,000 border-guard officers to three Soviet prison camps.

These 20,000 (most of them reservists) were composed of priests, professors, judges, civil servants and others. In the words inscribed on the Katyn monument’s new plaque, “They were Poland’s leaders and thinkers, the flower of Polish intelligentsia…to hardened Communists they were class enemies and, therefore, enemies of the Soviet Union.”

After months of interrogations and attempted indoctrination, they were put on trains under the false impression that they were being returned to Poland. From the trains, they were transferred to prison buses which drove them into remote areas of the Russian forest, where they were bound, shot in the back of the head and thrown into mass graves.

In 1941, Nazi Germany turned against its Communist ally and invaded the Soviet Union. Subsequently, the Soviet Union attempted to blame the Katyn Massacre on the Germans.

The Soviet Union only admitted guilt in 1989 after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The body of a Polish officer pulled from a mass grave in Katyn.

Almost Worse Than Genocide
During the memorial, one young man said: “The massacre at Katyn was a crime that was almost worse than genocide. Rather than trying to exterminate all the Polish, they tried to destroy their cultural and intellectual elite, thus facilitating the imposition of an anti-natural lifestyle that is at the core of communist ideology.”

His point calls to mind a fact that after the fall of the Iron Curtain is not popular to vocalize. Communism is a parasitic evil that saps the life blood from the civilizations upon which it preys. The history of communism in Cambodia, Russia and China demonstrate the extent of this truth.

Unfortunately, the world has never publicly acknowledged this evil. There was never a Nuremberg trial to call the perpetrators of Communism to task. Therefore, it is important that events like this memorial take place.

When memorials are forgotten, history threatens to repeat itself. Is this happening today? Far from dying, Communism continues to live. A large part of the world still lives under its yoke and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to lament the fall of the Soviet Empire.²

This is incomprehensible. Communism should not be lamented, but publicly repudiated as one of the greatest errors of modern history. Only then will its rebound be certainly averted.

This is the true value of the Katyn Memorial in Baltimore. As the event’s organizers stated, by spreading awareness of these tragedies, the risk of their recurring is lessened. Therefore, the victims of Katyn must not be forgotten. Their remembrance strengthens the will to resist and neutralizes Communism’s desire to kill that will in individuals and nations.

__________________

1. Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Regenery Gateway, Washington, D.C. 1980) p. 21.
2. http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/04/26/
in_remarks_putin_laments_soviet_fall/

Remembering Katyn

Brian Crozier

In Soviet documents recently obtained by the Hoover Institution, the details of one of the bloodiest crimes of Stalin's reign of terror have come to light.

For those who lived through World War II, and for many who did not, the Katyn Massacre carries a sinister resonance. The most notorious of Stalin's wartime atrocities, the massacre was falsely attributed to Hitler through a scarcely credible but widely believed piece of Soviet disinformation.

In April 1940, nearly twenty-two thousand Polish prisoners were rounded up, transported to Katyn and various other sites, and executed. They included army officers, civil servants, landowners, policemen, ordinary soldiers, and prison officers. They were lined up, made to dig their own mass graves, and shot in the back of the neck. The victims were never tried or presented with any charges. The executions were ordered personally by Stalin in a memorandum dated March 5, 1940, to Lavrenti Beria, the head of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB). Per Stalin's instructions, the prisoners were to receive the "supreme measure of punishment—shooting."

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The full facts became widely accessible to researchers with the acquisition of millions of sheets of Soviet secret documents by the Hoover Institution, known as Fond 89. Many of these documents were made available to me while I was at work on The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. The full story is worth telling.

The mass grave in Katyn Forest was discovered by the occupying Nazi forces in 1943. The disinterment of more than four thousand corpses was an unexpected gift to Goebbels's propaganda machine, which broadcast the story to the outside world—to the embarrassment not only of Stalin but of his wartime allies Roosevelt and Churchill. Roosevelt dismissed the Nazi claims as "German propaganda and a German plot." Churchill was less explicit: "The less said about that the better."

There the matter lay—until March 3, 1959, when Aleksandr Shelepin, then head of the KGB, gave full details in a secret memo to Krushchev of the numbers executed. The total was 21,857 killed:

4,421 in the Katyn Forest (Smolensk region)
3,820 in the Starobelsk camp (near Kharkov)
6,311 in the Ostashkovo camp (Kalinin region)
7,305 in other camps and prisons in western Ukraine and western Belorussia

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A curious but related episode deserves notice. In 1972, a private group in London resolved to build a monument to the victims of Katyn. The original plan was to place the monument in Kensington, one of London's best-known tourist areas. At first, the Council of the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea gave permission for the plan to go ahead. Permission was withdrawn, however, under pressure from the Foreign Office.

It is now known, through the Hoover Institution's Soviet archives, that the Foreign Office pressure was itself the outcome of pressure from Moscow. There was an exchange of telegrams on September 7, 1972, between the Soviet Politburo and the Soviet ambassador in London. The Kremlin's message started as follows:

Reactionary circles in England are again undertaking attempts for anti-Soviet purposes to stir up the so-called "Katyn Affair." To this end the campaign to collect funds for the construction of a "Memorial to the Victims of Katyn" in London is being made use of.

In his reply, the Soviet ambassador stated that the attention of the British government had already been drawn to attempts to whip up an anti-Soviet campaign based on "the inventions—long ago exposed—of the Goebbels propaganda machine concerning the so-called 'Katyn affair.'"

Stalin's orders were unambiguous. The Polish prisoners were to receive the "supreme measure of punishment—shooting."

On September 8 the Politburo drafted a further statement, which contained the following passage:

The above-mentioned anti-Soviet campaign cannot but arouse justified feelings of profound indignation in the Soviet Union, whose people made enormous sacrifices for the sake of saving Europe from fascist enslavement.

Foreign Office pressure on the borough resulted and permission was withdrawn. Four years later—in 1976—the Katyn memorial was in fact built, in the cemetery at Gunnersbury on the outskirts of London. The project was supervised by the National Association for Freedom (later, the Freedom Association). Presumably under pressure from the Foreign Office, the British Defense Ministry forbade former members of the British armed forces to don their uniforms for the launching ceremony. This negative order was ignored by several ex-servicemen, without further consequences.

On April 13, 1990, the Soviet authorities at last admitted responsibility for the massacres at Katyn and elsewhere, although the figure cited in the relevant statement—"around 15,000"—fell short of the real total by more than 6,000. The admission came in a statement by the Tass news agency, with the personal authority of then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The statement referred to only three of the prison camps involved: Smolensk, Voroshilovgrad, and Kalinin. It claimed that the authorities had knowledge of the killings through "recently discovered documents." "Direct responsibility for the crime" was ascribed to Beria. The statement ended "The Soviet side, expressing profound regret over the Katyn tragedy, declares that this was one of the gravest crimes of Stalinism."

At a meeting in Moscow that day, Gorbachev presented Polish president General Wojciech Jaruzelski with copies of the NKVD's lists of names of Polish internees in the three camps mentioned. The Polish government issued a statement declaring that the question of responsibility for the massacre had "weighed particularly painfully" on Polish-Soviet relations and that the "long-awaited" Soviet admission made possible a relationship based on "partnership and true friendship." The statement went on: "Reconciliation can only be built on truth." It is surely fair to add that the Tass statement—although useful for relations between the ailing Soviet Union and its Polish satellite—was true but not the whole truth. Only three of the localities involved were named, and the total given fell short of the true figure.

In 1990, fifty years after the fact, the Kremlin finally admitted Soviet complicity in the killings in the Katyn Forest.

The Polish statement was striking not only for its content but because it had been drafted under the authority of Jaruzelski—a communist leader installed under Soviet protection. In September of that year, he was forced to resign and in December he was replaced as president by the elected anticommunist leader Lech Walesa.

Postscript

In his 1959 memo to Krushchev, KGB head Shelepin noted that Soviet propaganda efforts to blame the Katyn massacre on the Germans had "taken firm root in international public opinion." To keep the truth from coming out, Shelepin recommended that all records pertaining to the murdered Poles be destroyed. In other words, "We did it, but the world believes the Germans did. Therefore, leave the story as its stands." Thankfully, the documents were not destroyed and we now know the truth about Katyn.

Uncovering the Past: Supplementary material from the Hoover Institution Archives.