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Polish leader honours massacred officers on Russia visit MOSCOW (AFP) — Poland's Lech Kaczynski on Monday made his first visit as president to Russia for highly charged commemorations for 22,500 Polish servicemen massacred by Soviet secret police in World War II. The visit to Katyn in western Russia, where many of the killings happened, took place against a backdrop of heightened tensions between Poland and Russia since Kaczynski's rise to power in December 2005. The visit took place on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939, which occurred under a secret agreement between Soviet leader Joseph...

Katyn , an album preceeds premiere of film by Andrzej Wajda 24.08.2007 A book entitled Katyn is to be released on September 3rd , that is two weeks before the premiere of Andrzej Wajda’s film under the same title. The album contains photographs, archive documents and reproductions of historical maps and will be an introduction to the film. The album will also contain stills from the set of Wajda’s film, and personal commentaries of the Oscar winning Polish director. Wajda, whose father was killed in Katyn , says the film will be a story of the Katyn lie, a story...

Poland should also remove Soviet monuments - Katyn Committee 21:35 | 28/ 04/ 2007 WARSAW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - The time has come to remove Soviet-era monuments in Poland, a Polish public organization said Saturday echoing the Estonian government's decision to remove the Bronze Soldier statue in central Tallinn. The Katyn Committee which is made up of relatives of Polish officers, who were executed on the orders of the Soviet authorities in the village of Katyn near Smolensk in western Russia in 1940, said just like Estonia Poland "suffered from the Soviet occupation, while Soviet monuments have always been...

Katyn 67th anniversary 03.04.2007 Today marks the 67th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. In 1940 the Stalinist NKVD secret police executed over 20 thousand Polish army and police officers, who had been held in POW camps in Ukraine since the Soviets invaded Polish territory in September 1939, on the basis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact signed with the Nazis. Commemorative events are being held throughout Poland. In Warsaw, a symbolic wreath has been placed by Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski at the Katyn quarters in the Powazki Military Cemetery.

Wajda begins filming Katyn movie 01.12.2006 Krakow comes to a standstill as shooting of Oscar winning director Andrzej Wajda’s new film on the 1940 Katyn massacre begins. Report from Krakow by Robert Kusek The major streets and squares closed. The city veiled in mist and covered with artificial snow. Swastikas on the buildings. Men in Nazi uniforms. Krakow has once again become a location for the shooting of a new movie by Andrzej Wajda – one of the most renowned Polish filmmakers who in 2000 was presented with an honorary Oscar for his outstanding contribution to world cinema.. “Post mortem”...

Wajda on Katyn Poland’s renowned film director Andrzej Wajda has begun work on a film about the Katyn massacre of Polish officers by the Stalinist NKVD secret services in 1943. 05.10.06 After the discovery of the mass graves Soviet Russia denied any responsibility attributing the killings of 1943 to Nazi Germany but there was too much evidence pointing to Soviet guilt. Over the years of the communist rule in Poland the Katyn issue had been covered with a cloth of silence. With the coming of the end of 1989 the issue had been acknowledged by Russia with president Gorbachov admitting...

"My musimy pamietac" - "we must remember" - was the message at Saturday's annual memorial ceremony for the Polish soldiers killed in the 1940 Katyn massacre. This year's ceremony also remembered those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, including those killed at the World Trade Center. The Twin Towers once stood directly behind the Katyn Massacre statue, which depicts a Polish soldier falling after being stabbed in the back by a bayonet mounted on a rifle. In 1940, Soviet troops - who invaded Poland after agreeing to divide the country with Nazi Germany...

Tribute to Polish officers killed by NKVD in Mednoye 02.09.2006 Ceremonies are being held in Mednoye, Russia, commemorating the memory of Polish police officers murdered there by the Soviet NKVD in 1940. Families of the victims as well as interior minister Ludwik Dorn and police chief Marek Bienkowski are attending the ceremonies at the cemetery in Mednoye. It is one of three cemeteries in Ukraine and Russia where Polish officers murdered at Stalin’s order in 1940 are buried. So far the bodies of 15 thousand Poles killed there have been found, while the total number of the victims is estimated...

Katyn: the post mortem 15.05.2006 Renowned film director, Andrzej Wajda, has begun work on a major film about the 1940 Katyn massacre of over 20,000 Polish officers by Soviet forces. After the discovery in 1943 of the mass graves Soviet Russia denied any responsibility, attributing the killings three years earlier to Nazi Germany. But the evidence pointing to Soviet guilt is overwhelming, say most independent historians. During communist rule in Poland the Katyn issue was covered by a cloth of silence. With the coming of the end of the regime in 1989 the issue was acknowledged by Russia, with President...

Poles take Russia to court over 1940 Katyn massacre 24 April 2006 Relatives of Polish soldiers executed by Joseph Stalin's secret police in one of the Second World War's most infamous massacres are to take Russia to the European Court of Human Rights to try to make it disclose the full truth about the killings. In the so-called Katyn atrocities, personally ordered by Stalin in 1940, the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) killed 21,587 Polish Army reservists in cold blood on the grounds that they were "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority". Russia has refused to prosecute surviving suspects...

Families of Katyñ victims to launch legal case 21.04.2006 Relatives of Polish officers – victims of the Katyn Forest Massacre in 1940 are to lodge a complaint against Russia before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Their lawyer has said that Russia’s failure to carry out a preliminary investigation to find those responsible for the murder is a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Liberties. Russia’s military prosecutor closed the case recently, refusing to recognize the massacre as either a war crime or a crime against humanity. Some 22 thousand Poles were killed in...

Katyn: Stalin’s massacre 06.04.2006 A new study by an American journalist on the Katyn massacre by Soviet forces in 1940 that killed over 20,000 Polish officers, has just been launched in Warsaw. Report by Michal Kubicki 06.04.06 Every April Poles commemorate an anniversary of the Katyn Forest Massacre, one of the most notorious World War Two crimes against humanity. Over 22 thousand Polish officers and intelligentsia fell victim to Stalin’s policy aimed at an annihilation of the cream of the Polish nation. It was twenty years ago that Allen Paul heard about Katyn for the first time. The story of...

The truth about Katyn continued Fr Ireneusz Skubis Katyn, a small village near Smolensk on the River Dnieper, is still an unhealed painful wound in our history. It has begun bleeding again after the Russians stated that this crime could not be defined as genocide. Many questions arise: Is this fact only Poland's problem and in what light does it place the credibility of Russia in the international arena? On 5th March 1940 Joseph Stalin, together with the Political Bureau KC WKP(b), signed the decree concerning the murder of 22,000 Polish officers, policemen, clerks. Thousands of innocent people, our fellow...

Russia’s Refusal to Recognize Katyn Massacre Shocks Polish Leaders Spokesman for Polish President Lech Kaczynski Maciej Lopinski has said that the Russian chief Military Prosecutor’s Office failure to recognize Katyn crime victims as victims of Stalinist’s repression was “shocking”, the Polish PAP news agency reported. “This is all the more shocking that earlier the Russian chief military prosecutor’s office maintained that the Katyn crime was not genocide but a simple homicide,” Lopinski told journalists. He announced that Poland would not cease to bring the truth about Katyn to light. Lopinski stressed that Poland was very interested in improving relations with...

Katyn massacre not Stalin’s fault, says Russia 06.03.2006 After years of enquiry Russian authorities have concluded that the Katyn massacre – when over twenty thousand Polish officers were killed in 1940 – was not an act of Stalinist repression. Polish politicians, outraged, say that the report amounts to a cover up. Slawek Szefs reports. 06.03.06 The Russian Military Prosecutor General has released a statement denying that the wartime massacre of thousands of Polish army and police officers in Katyn and neighboring camps had been an act of Stalinist repression. According to the Russian side, no evidence has been found in...

Russia says Katyñ massacre was not a Stalinist crime 03.03.2006 Russia’s military prosecutors have refused to recognize Polish officers murdered in Katyn forest by Stalin’s NKVD police as victims of Stalinist repressions. The documents to this effect have been sent to the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Some 22 thousand Poles died in the Katyn massacre. On Sunday, the Katyn Day will be celebrated in Poland, an anniversary of Stalin’s decision which led to the massacre.

Polish director Wajda makes film on Katyn atrocity Wed 15 Feb 2006 1:43 PM ET By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Celebrated Polish director Andrzej Wajda said on Wednesday he aims to finish a film close to his heart this year about the 1940 Soviet massacre of 15,000 Polish soldiers, including his own father, in the Katyn forest. Wajda, in Berlin to collect a lifetime achievement award from the Berlin Film Festival, said most Poles always knew it was a Soviet atrocity even though propaganda during World War Two and afterwards wrongly tried to pin the blame on...

Kozielsk, General Anders' Army, the Vatican - unique Christmases of Fr Zdzislaw Peszkowski Carols stick in our throats Remigiusz Malinowski I meet Msgr. Zdzislaw Peszkowski in his flat, the parish house next to St John's Cathedral in Warsaw Old Town. When I knock at the door a priest in a long dark pullover, with a clerical collar, opens the door. 'God bless, czuwaj' [greeting used by Polish scouts], he says and invites me to come in. I sit on a comfortable sofa in a spacious living room. There are a lot of documents and various notes on the desk at...

The Polish War Cemetery in Miednoje Bishop Ryszard Karpinski The War Cemetery in Miednoje in Russia (about 200 km north of Moscow) is one of three cemeteries, beside Kharkov in Ukraine and Katyn in Russia, which are called 'Katyn cemeteries'. The remains of 15,000 Polish officers, prisoners of 1939, are buried in these three cemeteries. At Stalin's command, in the spring of 1940, over 22,000 Poles were murdered. The graves of 7,000 victims have not been found yet. The cemetery in Miednoje was made from the funds of the Council for Preservation of the Monuments of Struggle and Martyrdom. The...

On the anniversary of 11 September 2001 Our Lady of New York Witold Zych 'Never forget! Pray for all the innocent victims and heroes who died in the terrorist attack on America, September 11, 2001'. These words have been engraved on a low relief made by Andrzej Pitynski and affixed on a granite base of his Katyn 1940 Memorial. The monument is in Jersey City on the Hudson River, opposite Manhattan. The plaque shows in a symbolic way, and as seen from the perspective of the place the monument is situated, one of the most dramatic moments in the history...