CPA Urges Senators to amend the language in S. Res. 566 on the Katyn Massacre

May 16, 2020

Coalition of Polish Americans welcomes the idea of a resolution commemorating the victims of the Katyn Massacre, introduced to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Sen. Menendez, Risch and Durbin on 5/7/2020, now known as S. Res. 566.   This action should go a long way towards strengthening the American-Polish alliance at the time of raising tensions with Russia.  However, the Resolution contains statements and omissions that may have an opposite effect.   We would like to bring to your attention inappropriate wording in the proposed Resolution, which introduced historically false and offensive statement that minimizes the gravity and changes the character of the Katyn crime:

 “Whereas the Katyn Massacre fits into a larger pattern of Communist governments around the world persecuting their citizens and denying their people freedom, which has resulted in the deaths of up to 100,000,000 people since the Russian Revolution of 1917.”  See: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-resolution/566/text

The Polish officers held as Prisoners-of-War by the Soviet Union were NOT murdered because “the Communist governments […] persecuted their citizens”.  This statement is historically false and morally repulsive.  The Katyn victims were brutally murdered because they valiantly defended their homeland against the Soviet aggression of September 17, 1939.  The Katyn victims were NOT Soviet citizens and the Soviet Union was NOT their government.  They were Soviet Prisoners-of-War, soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces that constituted a part of the Allied Coalition during WWII.  They were murdered because they defended their homeland against the Soviet aggression, and remained loyal to Poland to the end.

Accordingly, the Katyn victims do not fit “a larger pattern of Communist government persecuting their citizens and denying their people freedom”.  Instead, they fit a larger pattern of similar conduct by Stalinist Russia aimed at destroying the Polish people because of their nationality.  This is evidenced by the “Polish Operation” of 1937, Katyn Operation of 1940, and innumerable mass executions and deportations to Siberia with intent of extermination.  All those operations aimed at annihilating the Polish national group as such.  The Katyn victims were murdered not because they wanted to overthrow the Soviet government or demanded more freedoms in the Soviet Union but because they belonged to the Polish national group that the Soviet Union intended to annihilate.

The incorrect wording that Katyn “fits a pattern of Communist governments persecuting their citizens” implies that the Katyn atrocity was committed for political reasons.  Hence the Katyn crime does not meet the standard of genocide because it was not aimed at the protected national group but merely at political opposition.  Such contrary to facts language is reminiscent of the Russian policy of anti-Katyn. The Katyn Execution Order of March 5, 1940 of the Soviet Politburo states that the officers held as prisoners of war selected for execution are “Polish by nationality.”  Therefore, the Katyn Execution Order itself reveals that it is aimed at the Polish national group as such.  This is the clear proof of the genocidal motive.  Furthermore, according to the UN Genocide Convention, even if the motive for the atrocity is mixed, the coexistence of motives is no defense if the genocidal motive is present.

It is particularly alarming that S. 566 is submitted now, at exactly the time when in Tver, Russia, where thousands more of Polish POWs were executed pursuant to the “Katyn Execution Order”, the plaques commemorating that genocidal act were removed.

S. Res. 566 represents evident attempt of genocide denial.  This language has all the hallmarks of the long standing Soviet and Putin’s Russia historical revisionism of denying, concealing and distorting the truth about Katyn and the Soviet genocide of the Polish people.  The Congress of the United States, the leader of the free world, must not contribute to such efforts.

Therefore, we urge the US Senators to delete the offensive and factually incorrect statement discussed above and replace it with the following statement made by Hon. Dennis Kucinich in 2011 (“Kucinich Clause”):

Whereas, Katyn was aimed at eliminating the very idea of Poland, to exterminate the people and the memory of the people. Katyn presents a moral crisis to this day because the moral calculus with respect to Katyn has not been worked out. Katyn represents a marker in human history that has not yet been fully inscribed;

We also urge the US Senators to declare the Katyn atrocity as the crime of genocide by adopting the following language:

Therefore, we recognize that the systematic mass murder of the Polish people, conducted pursuant to the order of March 5, 1940 issued by the Soviet Politburo, raises to the level of the crime of genocide.

Let Senators know that you insist
on correcting the language of S.R. 566