On this day 5th March 1940.The Soviet Politburo declared the Polish officers in captivity "enemies of the Soviet Union" and ordered death sentences for all of them, fearing that, if released back into the population, they would organize resistance movements against the Soviet occupation.
This decree led to the deaths of at least twenty thousand Polish officers, in what is known as the Katyn massacre.
Among the Polish POWs held in special camps in Kozelsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkow were professional officers of the Polish Army and State Police as well as reservists. In “death transports” to Smolensk and Kharkiv were: 12 generals, 1 rear admiral, 77 colonels, 197 lieutenants-colonels, 541 majors, 1 441 captains, 6 061 lieutenants, second lieutenants, cavalry masters, and warrant officers, and 18 chaplains and other clergymen. According to Polish historians, half of the then officer corps of the Polish Army were killed. In the NKVD prisons of so-called Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, the Soviets detained officers who were not mobilized in September 1939, civil servants and local government officials. Many of the murdered were high-class specialists in various fields, among them university professors, engineers, priests, doctors, lawyers, officials, poets, writers – the intellectual elite of Poland.
Many employees of the central apparatus, regional directorates in Smolensk, Kharkiv, and Kalinin, as well as NKVD convoy and military units, participated in the Katyn genocide. The perpetrators were the most experienced torturers from Lubyanka and local NKVD prisons, trained in killing with one shot. Some of them are known by name. One of the documents that were not destroyed was Lavrentiy Beria’s order, released on 26 October 1940, rewarding 125 people “for the proper performance of special tasks”.
The Soviet Union ended a half-century of denials in 1990 and officially admitted Josef Stalin's secret police killed 15,000 Polish officers held prisoner during World War II. Poland welcomed the Kremlin's apology as a first step toward healing old wounds.
'Thousands of Poles have waited for this information for 47 years,' Polish radio reported
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev turned over documents to Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski that showed the Soviets had killed the officers in what is known as the Katyn Forest massacre.
The discovery of the archival material allows us to conclude the direct responsiblity for the atrocities of the Katyn Forest lies with (security police head) Lavrenti Beria and his henchmen,' the official news agency Tass said.
'The Soviet side expressed profound regret over the Katyn tragedy, declaring that it was one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalin era.'
