Radio Amateurs members of the Dobrzycki Klub Krotkofalowcow, SP3PDO will be active with special call SP80KATYN from Dobrzyca, Poland.
They will operate on HF Bands.
QSL via SP3PDO.
Katyn Massacre
After the Soviet aggression against Poland on September 17, 1939, some 250,000 Polish prisoners of war, including more than 10,000 officers, were taken prisoner by the Soviets.
Preparations for the crime
As early as September 19, 1939, Lavrenty Beria established the Board for Prisoners of War and Internment under the NKVD and ordered the establishment of a network of camps.
At the beginning of October 1939, the Soviet authorities began to release some of the POWs-sergeants. At the same time, a decision was made to establish two "officer camps" in Starobielsk and Kozelsk, as well as a camp in Ostashkov, intended for police, KOP and prison officers.
At the end of February 1940, 6,192 policemen and officers of the above-mentioned services and 8,376 officers were imprisoned in the aforementioned camps. Among those imprisoned was a large group of reserve officers, called up to the army at the outbreak of war. Most of them represented the Polish intelligentsia - doctors, lawyers, school and university teachers, engineers, writers, journalists, political activists, state and local government officials, landowners. In addition to them, the camps also included Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish chaplains.
Decision to murder
The decision to murder Polish prisoners of war from camps in Kozelsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov, as well as Poles held in NKVD prisons in the territory of the pre-war eastern provinces of the Republic, was made at the highest level of the Soviet authorities. It was taken on March 5, 1940, by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union(b) on the basis of a letter that People's Commissar of the Interior Lavrenty Beria sent to Stalin. In it, the head of the NKVD, assessing that all the named Poles "are hardened enemies of Soviet power who do not promise improvement," requested that their cases be considered under a special procedure, "with the application to them of the highest penalty - execution." He added that the cases should be considered without summoning the arrestees and without the presentation of charges, the decision to terminate the investigation and indictment.Formally, the sentences were to be handed down by the NKVD Special Collegium, consisting of Ivan Bashtakov, Bogdan Kobulov and Vsevolod Merkulov. The above proposals presented by Beria were accepted in full, and his letter bore the approving signatures of Stalin - General Secretary of the CPSU(b), Kliment Voroshilov - Marshal of the Soviet Union and Commissar of Defense, Vyacheslav Molotov - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Commissar of Defense. Council of People's Commissars, commissar of foreign affairs, and Anastas Mikoyan - deputy chairman. Council of People's Commissars and commissar of foreign trade, as well as a handwritten note: "Kalinin - in favor, Kaganovich - in favor." (Mikhail Kalinin - chairman. Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR - theoretically head of the Soviet state; Lazar Kaganovich - deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and commissar of foreign trade. of the Council of People's Commissars and commissioner of transportation and oil industry).
Scale of the crime
After preparations lasting a month, the liquidation of the Kozelsk camp began on April 3, 1940, followed two days later by the camps in Starobielsk and Ostashkov. For the next six weeks, Poles were taken out of the camps in groups to the execution sites.
From Kozelsk, 4,404 were transported to Katyn and murdered with shots to the back of the head. 3,896 prisoners of war from Starobielsk were killed in NKVD premises in Kharkov, and their bodies were buried in the city's suburb of Pyatichaty. 6,287 from Ostashkov were shot in the NKVD building in Kalinin, now Tver, and buried in the town of Mednoye. A total of 14,587 people were murdered.
Some 7,300 Poles held in various prisons in the territories annexed to the Soviet Union were also murdered under the March 5, 1940 decision: 3,435 people were shot in Ukraine (their graves are probably in Bykivnia near Kiev), and some 3,800 in Belarus (probably buried in Kuropaty near Minsk). Most of them were arrested activists of underground organizations, officers not mobilized in September 1939, state and local government officials and "socially dangerous elements" from the point of view of the Soviet authorities.
Of the POWs from Kozelsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov, a group of 448 survived (395 according to other sources). These were those who were transported to the NKVD-established transit camp in Pavlishchev Bor and then transported to Griazovets.
On the night of April 12-13, 1940, that is, when the NKVD was murdering Polish prisoners of war and prisoners, their families became victims of a mass deportation deep into the USSR carried out by the Soviet authorities. The decision to organize it was made by the Council of People's Commissars on March 2, 1940. According to the NKVD, during the deportation carried out at that time, a total of about 61,000 people were deported, mainly to Kazakhstan.
Discovery of execution sites
The Germans announced the discovery of mass graves in Katyn on April 13, 1943 (today is the symbolic anniversary of the crime).
On April 15, 1943, in response, the Soviet Information Bureau announced that Polish prisoners of war had been employed on construction work west of Smolensk and had "fallen into the hands of German fascist executioners in the summer of 1941, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the Smolensk area." The message stated: "The German fascist thugs do not retreat in this their monstrous rabble from the most rascally and despicable lies, by means of which they attempt to conceal the unheard-of crimes committed, as is now clear, by themselves."
On the same day, the Polish government-in-exile instructed its representative in Switzerland to ask the International Red Cross to appoint a commission to investigate the discovered graves.
On April 17, 1943, the Polish side submitted an official note on the matter to Geneva, while learning that earlier the Germans had also asked the ICC to initiate an investigation.
The German authorities' efforts to provoke a conflict between the Allies were intended to give the impression that the conduct of Berlin and the Polish government were being coordinated.
Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: "The Katyn affair is developing into a gigantic political affair that may have wide repercussions. We are exploiting it by all possible means."
Katyn in Soviet propaganda
Moscow reacted very harshly to the ICC's proposed investigation. On April 19, 1943, the Soviet daily Pravda published an article entitled "Polish Helpers of Hitler." It read, among other things: "The slander is spreading rapidly. Before the ink had dried on the pens of the German-fascist scribblers, the hideous concoctions of Goebbels and Co. about the alleged mass murder of Polish officers by the Soviet authorities in 1940 were picked up not only by the faithful Nazi servants, but more strangely, by the ministerial circles of General Sikorski's government ().
The Polish leadership unforgivably went along with Goebbels' sly provocation and actually upheld the despicable lies and slanderous concoctions of the executioners of the Polish nation. In view of this, it is hardly surprising that Hitler also approached the International Red Cross with a proposal to conduct an +investigation+ at the scene of the crime, prepared by the hands of his masters in the art of killing."
The Germans' disclosure of the crime served as a pretext for the Soviets to break diplomatic relations with the Polish government in London.
On April 21, 1943, Stalin sent secret and one-sentence messages to President RooseveWith the Soviets blocking the ICC's investigation of the Katyn case, the Germans organized their own investigation. On April 28, 1943, a group of international forensic and criminological experts arrived at the crime scene at the invitation of the German authorities. The team was headed by Dr. Ferenc Orsos, director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Budapest. The experts unanimously signed a report stating that the executions of Polish prisoners of war were carried out in March and April 1940.
After the Red Army occupied Smolensk in late September 1943, Soviet authorities set up a special commission to investigate Katyn under the chairmanship of Prof. Dr. Nikolai Burdenko.
On January 24, 1944, following the exhumation of 925 suitably crafted bodies of Polish officers, the said commission announced that the crime against the Poles was committed by the Germans between September and December 1941.
In 1945, during the trial of Nazi criminals at Nuremberg, the Soviets introduced a charge of responsibility for the Katyn crime into the indictment. However, the Nuremberg Tribunal, in its 1946 verdict, omitted the murder of Polish officers due to lack of evidence.
They will operate on HF Bands.
QSL via SP3PDO.
Katyn Massacre
After the Soviet aggression against Poland on September 17, 1939, some 250,000 Polish prisoners of war, including more than 10,000 officers, were taken prisoner by the Soviets.
Preparations for the crime
As early as September 19, 1939, Lavrenty Beria established the Board for Prisoners of War and Internment under the NKVD and ordered the establishment of a network of camps.
At the beginning of October 1939, the Soviet authorities began to release some of the POWs-sergeants. At the same time, a decision was made to establish two "officer camps" in Starobielsk and Kozelsk, as well as a camp in Ostashkov, intended for police, KOP and prison officers.
At the end of February 1940, 6,192 policemen and officers of the above-mentioned services and 8,376 officers were imprisoned in the aforementioned camps. Among those imprisoned was a large group of reserve officers, called up to the army at the outbreak of war. Most of them represented the Polish intelligentsia - doctors, lawyers, school and university teachers, engineers, writers, journalists, political activists, state and local government officials, landowners. In addition to them, the camps also included Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish chaplains.
Decision to murder
The decision to murder Polish prisoners of war from camps in Kozelsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov, as well as Poles held in NKVD prisons in the territory of the pre-war eastern provinces of the Republic, was made at the highest level of the Soviet authorities. It was taken on March 5, 1940, by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union(b) on the basis of a letter that People's Commissar of the Interior Lavrenty Beria sent to Stalin. In it, the head of the NKVD, assessing that all the named Poles "are hardened enemies of Soviet power who do not promise improvement," requested that their cases be considered under a special procedure, "with the application to them of the highest penalty - execution." He added that the cases should be considered without summoning the arrestees and without the presentation of charges, the decision to terminate the investigation and indictment.Formally, the sentences were to be handed down by the NKVD Special Collegium, consisting of Ivan Bashtakov, Bogdan Kobulov and Vsevolod Merkulov. The above proposals presented by Beria were accepted in full, and his letter bore the approving signatures of Stalin - General Secretary of the CPSU(b), Kliment Voroshilov - Marshal of the Soviet Union and Commissar of Defense, Vyacheslav Molotov - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Commissar of Defense. Council of People's Commissars, commissar of foreign affairs, and Anastas Mikoyan - deputy chairman. Council of People's Commissars and commissar of foreign trade, as well as a handwritten note: "Kalinin - in favor, Kaganovich - in favor." (Mikhail Kalinin - chairman. Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR - theoretically head of the Soviet state; Lazar Kaganovich - deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and commissar of foreign trade. of the Council of People's Commissars and commissioner of transportation and oil industry).
Scale of the crime
After preparations lasting a month, the liquidation of the Kozelsk camp began on April 3, 1940, followed two days later by the camps in Starobielsk and Ostashkov. For the next six weeks, Poles were taken out of the camps in groups to the execution sites.
From Kozelsk, 4,404 were transported to Katyn and murdered with shots to the back of the head. 3,896 prisoners of war from Starobielsk were killed in NKVD premises in Kharkov, and their bodies were buried in the city's suburb of Pyatichaty. 6,287 from Ostashkov were shot in the NKVD building in Kalinin, now Tver, and buried in the town of Mednoye. A total of 14,587 people were murdered.
Some 7,300 Poles held in various prisons in the territories annexed to the Soviet Union were also murdered under the March 5, 1940 decision: 3,435 people were shot in Ukraine (their graves are probably in Bykivnia near Kiev), and some 3,800 in Belarus (probably buried in Kuropaty near Minsk). Most of them were arrested activists of underground organizations, officers not mobilized in September 1939, state and local government officials and "socially dangerous elements" from the point of view of the Soviet authorities.
Of the POWs from Kozelsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov, a group of 448 survived (395 according to other sources). These were those who were transported to the NKVD-established transit camp in Pavlishchev Bor and then transported to Griazovets.
On the night of April 12-13, 1940, that is, when the NKVD was murdering Polish prisoners of war and prisoners, their families became victims of a mass deportation deep into the USSR carried out by the Soviet authorities. The decision to organize it was made by the Council of People's Commissars on March 2, 1940. According to the NKVD, during the deportation carried out at that time, a total of about 61,000 people were deported, mainly to Kazakhstan.
Discovery of execution sites
The Germans announced the discovery of mass graves in Katyn on April 13, 1943 (today is the symbolic anniversary of the crime).
On April 15, 1943, in response, the Soviet Information Bureau announced that Polish prisoners of war had been employed on construction work west of Smolensk and had "fallen into the hands of German fascist executioners in the summer of 1941, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the Smolensk area." The message stated: "The German fascist thugs do not retreat in this their monstrous rabble from the most rascally and despicable lies, by means of which they attempt to conceal the unheard-of crimes committed, as is now clear, by themselves."
On the same day, the Polish government-in-exile instructed its representative in Switzerland to ask the International Red Cross to appoint a commission to investigate the discovered graves.
On April 17, 1943, the Polish side submitted an official note on the matter to Geneva, while learning that earlier the Germans had also asked the ICC to initiate an investigation.
The German authorities' efforts to provoke a conflict between the Allies were intended to give the impression that the conduct of Berlin and the Polish government were being coordinated.
Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: "The Katyn affair is developing into a gigantic political affair that may have wide repercussions. We are exploiting it by all possible means."
Katyn in Soviet propaganda
Moscow reacted very harshly to the ICC's proposed investigation. On April 19, 1943, the Soviet daily Pravda published an article entitled "Polish Helpers of Hitler." It read, among other things: "The slander is spreading rapidly. Before the ink had dried on the pens of the German-fascist scribblers, the hideous concoctions of Goebbels and Co. about the alleged mass murder of Polish officers by the Soviet authorities in 1940 were picked up not only by the faithful Nazi servants, but more strangely, by the ministerial circles of General Sikorski's government ().
The Polish leadership unforgivably went along with Goebbels' sly provocation and actually upheld the despicable lies and slanderous concoctions of the executioners of the Polish nation. In view of this, it is hardly surprising that Hitler also approached the International Red Cross with a proposal to conduct an +investigation+ at the scene of the crime, prepared by the hands of his masters in the art of killing."
The Germans' disclosure of the crime served as a pretext for the Soviets to break diplomatic relations with the Polish government in London.
On April 21, 1943, Stalin sent secret and one-sentence messages to President RooseveWith the Soviets blocking the ICC's investigation of the Katyn case, the Germans organized their own investigation. On April 28, 1943, a group of international forensic and criminological experts arrived at the crime scene at the invitation of the German authorities. The team was headed by Dr. Ferenc Orsos, director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Budapest. The experts unanimously signed a report stating that the executions of Polish prisoners of war were carried out in March and April 1940.
After the Red Army occupied Smolensk in late September 1943, Soviet authorities set up a special commission to investigate Katyn under the chairmanship of Prof. Dr. Nikolai Burdenko.
On January 24, 1944, following the exhumation of 925 suitably crafted bodies of Polish officers, the said commission announced that the crime against the Poles was committed by the Germans between September and December 1941.
In 1945, during the trial of Nazi criminals at Nuremberg, the Soviets introduced a charge of responsibility for the Katyn crime into the indictment. However, the Nuremberg Tribunal, in its 1946 verdict, omitted the murder of Polish officers due to lack of evidence.