Katyn

RESOLUTION Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Katyn Massacre

as proposed originally to New Jersey Senators Bob Menendez and Cory Booker

on March 11th, 2020

Whereas, following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939 with the secret protocol to divide Poland between themselves,[1] Nazi Germany and the Soviet Russia invaded Poland;

Whereas, upon defeating Poland, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Russia partitioned Poland and signed Treaty on Friendship and the Border with a secret supplemental protocol to inform each other and closely collaborate in ‘liquidating” any Polish resistance “in embryo[2]”;

Whereas, the Soviet Russia and the Third Reich cooperated closely in the aftermath of the invasion of Poland.  At a conference in Brest-Litovsk on November 27, 1939, representatives of NKVD and SS discussed the methods of cooperation in liquidating Polish people and destroying Poland.  The NKVD and SS continued this cooperation at subsequent conferences held in Lwów, Zakopane and Kraków.  In March 1940 both aggressors implemented parallel genocidal operations against the Poles: Katyn Operation on the Soviet side of the partition line and Special Pacification Operation known as Action AB on the German side;

Whereas, on March 5, 1940 the Soviet Politburo issued an order that directed the NKVD to carry out a mass killing of 14,736 officers “more than 97% Polish by nationality” who were held as prisoners of war, and 11,000 Polish civilians arrested on the territory conquered by the Soviet Union;

Whereas, in April and May 1940 the Soviet Russia carried out systematic mass murders of Polish officers held as POWs and patriotic elements of the Polish society in numerous locations throughout the Soviet Union.  Only one such location was discovered soon after the crime and became known to the world as the Katyn Massacre.  Those murdered in other locations were identified only after the demise of the Soviet Union, some have not been identified to this day;

Whereas, in April 1940 the NKVD deported families of the murdered Poles to Kazakhstan pursuant to March 2, 1940 Resolution of the Soviet Political Bureau of the VKP(b).  This was just one of four mass deportations of Polish people from the conquered Polish territory into the depths of the Soviet Union conducted between February 1940 and June 1941, impacting about one million people according to the Polish sources[3].  Mass deportations of the Polish people constituted an integral part of the Soviet 1939-1941 genocidal actions undertaken against ethnic Poles, hereinafter called “Katyn Operation”;

Whereas, the Katyn Operation was one of several mass extermination operations conducted against ethnic Poles by the Soviet Russia during the Stalinist era.  In the 1937 Polish Operation, the Soviets sentenced 139,835 Soviet citizens of Polish descent, summarily executed 111,091 Poles, and resettled thousands of them pursuant to NKVD Order No. 00485 of August 9, 1937.  It was the largest ethnic murder and deportation operation during the Great Purge, and the largest extermination of ethnic Poles in history outside of an armed conflict;

Whereas, the Soviet Union continued the genocidal policy towards ethnic Poles after World War II.  In July of 1945, Soviet forces conducted the Augustów Operation in north-east Poland, rounding up 2,000 people. About 600 of them disappeared without a trace.  They are presumed to have been murdered and buried in an unknown location in present-day Russia or Belarus.  Their remains have not been located to this day;

Whereas, the manifest pattern of similar conduct aimed at destroying the Polish national group, as such, is evident in the Polish Operation of 1937, Katyn Operation of 1940, and Augustów Operation of 1945;

Whereas, in December 1949 Raphael Lemkin, who formulated the crime of genocide, invoked the Katyn crime as an example of the crime of genocide.[4]  In 1950, Judge Gunther testifying at a hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide submitted a statement from the President of the Polish American Congress that described the Katyn forest massacre as “one of the most heinous genocides of modern times.”  Hon. Gunther also reported that “millions of Poles throughout the world are still mourning the losses of those who were victims of Nazi (Germany) genocide in Auschwitz and of Soviet genocide in Katyn”[5];

Whereas, in the 1951 Written Statement on the Reservations to Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide, the United States declared that “the Roman persecution of the Christians, the Turkish massacres of Armenians, the extermination of millions of Jews and Poles by the Nazis are outstanding examples of the crime of genocide”[6];

Whereas, on September 18, 1951, the United States Congress established the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre.  In its July 2, 1952 Report, the Committee recognized the Katyn massacre as one of the most barbarous international crimes in world history and recommended that the Soviets be tried before the World Court of Justice for the crime of “Katynism” that is a definite and diabolical totalitarian plan for world conquest;

Whereas, in 1993 the Committee of Experts of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Offices of the Russian Federation concluded that the Katyn crime was an act of genocide under international law.[7]  The August 2, 1993 statement signed by all members of the Committee read: “The murder . . . of Poles has all the characteristics of genocide, the responsibility for which lies with Stalin, Beria, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Kalinin, Kaganovich, Merkulov, Kobulov, Bashtakov and other individuals who committed the murder in practice”;

Whereas, the government of the Russian Federation refused to declassify and disclose all of its official records pertaining to the Katyn crime and release complete lists of the victims and perpetrators.  Instead, the policy of minimizing, distorting and justifying the Katyn crime was implemented;

Whereas, in 2011 Hon. Dennis Kucinich, member of US House of Representatives, stated that Katyn was aimed at eliminating “the very idea of Poland … to exterminate the people and the memory of the people…”  Hon. Kucinich reminded us that “Katyn presents a moral crisis to this day” because the moral calculus with respect to Katyn has not been worked out.  “We look back at Katyn as a marker in human history that has not yet been fully inscribed”, he said[8];

Whereas the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 (Public Law 115–441) establishes that atrocities prevention represents a United States national interest, and affirms that it is the policy of the United States to pursue a United States Government-wide strategy to identify, prevent, and respond to the risk of atrocities by “strengthening diplomatic response and the effective use of foreign assistance to support appropriate transitional justice measures, including criminal accountability, for past atrocities”;

Whereas, to this day Katyn remains the crime without punishment.  Impunity encourages the killers and poses risk of new massacres occurring once the killers realize that the outside world does not care;

Whereas, Poland and her people were the faithful allies of the United States during World War II;

Whereas, thousands of families of the Katyn victims have since made their homes in this country. Approximately 10 million of US citizens are of Polish ancestry, millions of our citizens have close ties with the families of the victims, and Katyn monuments accentuate the landscape of several American cities.

Now, therefore, be it   

Resoved that:

(1) honors the lives and legacies of the approximately 22,000 Polish prisoners-of-war and civilians brutally murdered by the Soviet NKVD, and thousands of their family members and other Polish civilians deported in the most inhumane conditions to the depths of the Soviet Union in the Katyn Operation 80 years ago;

(2) recognizes that Katynism poses enormous danger to the world community because it represents a template for annihilation of a people and annihilation of the historical truth.  If ignored, Katynism poses danger that such grave atrocity may occur again;

(3) recognizes that the systematic mass murders of the Polish people, conducted pursuant to the order of March 5, 1940 issued by the Soviet Politburo and implemented in conjunction with 1940-1941 mass deportations of the Polish people from lands conquered by the Soviet Union, raise to the level of the crime of genocide that requires appropriate transitional justice measures under the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018;

(4) urges the Government of the Russian Federation to fully declassify and disclose all official records pertaining to the Katyn genocide and stop denying, distorting and justifying this grave international crime;

(5) recognizes that it is in the national interest of the United States to assure proper international recognition of the Katyn genocide, to support disclosure of the full truth and the establishment of a comprehensive historical record of this grave atrocity;

(6) calls on the Government of the United Sates to analyze political and moral ramifications of the denial of justice to the Katyn victims, including the impact of impunity for the Katyn genocide on the modern-day international peace and security, and implement appropriate measures in order to protect the truth, seek justice, and prevent the crime of Katynism from reoccurring;

(7) encourages education and public understanding of the facts and circumstances of the Katyn genocide, including the Katyn crime, Katyn lie, cover up, and conspiracy of silence;

(8) calls for protection of memorials and monuments honoring the memory of the Katyn victims.

[1] Secret Additional Protocol to Treaty of Nonaggression Between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of August 23, 1939. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp

[2] German-Soviet Treaty on Friendship and the Border dated September 28, 1939 with Secret Supplemental Protocol, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/sesupp1.asp; See also: “Katyn, A Crime without Punishment,” Anna Cienciala ed., Yale University Press, 2007, p. 59-62.

[3] Piotr Szubarczyk, Czerwona Apokalipsa, AA s.c., 2014, s. 229-230.

[4] Anton Weiss-Wendt, (2019) “When the End Justifies the Means: Raphaël Lemkin and the Shaping of a Popular Discourse on Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 13: Iss. 1: 173-188. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol13/iss1/15.

[5] United States Senate, The Genocide Convention: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 81^st Congress, 2nd Session, January 23, 24, 25, and February 9, 1950 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1950), 136, 540.

[6] Reservations to Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide, Advisory Opinion, Written Statement of the United States of America, 1951 I.C.J. 25 (May 28).

[7] The Committee of Experts included lawyers, Boris Topornin (member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, director of its Institute of Law and the State) and Aleksandr Yakovlev (head of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at the Institute), as well as representatives of other disciplines, Inessa Yazhborovska (historian), Valentina Parsadanova (historian), Yuriy Zoria (military sciences) and Lev Belayev (medical sciences). The text of this decision is available in Anna Dzienkiewicz ed. “Rosja a Katyn,” Karta, (2010), pp, 48–108. See also: Karol Karski, “The Crime of Genocide Committed Against the Poles by the USSR Before and During World War II: An International Legal Study,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law,·Vol. 45·2013, p. 719; https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=jil

[8] Dennis J. Kucinich, Speech Presented at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, February 4, 2011.  See: M. B. Szonert ed., “Katyn: State-Sponsored Extermination, Collection of Essays,” Libra Institute, Inc. 2012.

Request for Resolution on the 80^th Anniversary of Katyn

A brief synopsis as to reasons for adoption of this Resolution:

1. The Nuremberg Tribunal declined to serve justice to the victims of Katyn and their families due to Soviet interference. Hence, Katyn represents an international genocidal crime covered up with lies and conspiracy of silence, as no other. To this day, Katyn remains the worst unpunished crime of World War II.

2. Due to effective Soviet disinformation and cover up, Katyn functions in the public perception as the 1940 mass murder of 4,421 Polish officers buried in the Katyn forest because this mass murder site was discovered first by the German army back in the spring of 1943. Other mass murder sites of this genocidal operation were discovered after 1990, yet other sites have not been discovered to this day.

3. In the 1990s, the Russians disclosed some archival documents related to Katyn that were subsequently published in English in a book entitled, “Katyn – Crime without Punishment.”

4. Among such documents was an order issued by the Soviet Politburo on March 5, 1940 (“Katyn Execution Order”) showing that 25,700 Polish nationals, including 14,700 POWs and 11,000 civilians, were summarily sentenced to death and murdered in many different locations throughout the Soviet controlled territories. The Katyn forest represented one of three main murder sites of the Polish officers held as POWs. There are also many mass murder sites of Polish civilians murdered pursuant to the Katyn Execution Order.

5. The disclosed documents also revealed that mass deportations of the families of murdered Poles and other Polish civilians from the Polish territory conquered by the Soviet Union took place in conjunction with the mass extermination conducted pursuant to the Katyn Execution Order.

6. On the 80^th anniversary of this mass atrocity, it is necessary to alert the public that the Soviet operation against ethnic Poles during the first phase of World War II consisted of 1) Mass exterminations of Polish Officers POWs buried in Katyn, Piatykhatky, and Miednoye, 2) Mass extermination of Polish civilians buried in numerous other locations, and 3) Mass deportations of the families of the victims and other Polish civilians from conquered Polish lands to the Soviet Far East.

7. Based on today’s knowledge, the crime of Katyn consists of state-sponsored mass extermination of at least 22,000 Polish nationals and mass deportations of about 1 million of Polish citizens from conquered Polish lands. As such, this genocidal operation of World War II should be finally considered in its entirety by the US Congress, and on its 80^th anniversary proclaimed as the crime of genocide known as the Katyn Operation.

“Katyn – Crime without Punishment.”  ed. A. Cenciala, Yale University Press, 2007.

Position Statement of Polish Sibirak Deported To USSR in 1940

on the Katyn Resolution – S. Res. 566

 May 21, 2020

I read the relevant documents, including the Katyn Resolution S. Res. 566 in the version submitted to the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Congress by Senators Durbin and Menendez. This version includes the following sentence: “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…”

This language dilutes the significance of the Katyn massacre by, in effect, saying that, “Oh well, all communist governments did this to their subjects.” I would like to summarize the most important issues raised by the Durbin/Menendez version of the Katyn Resolution (S. Res. 566), and particularly by the sentence quoted above.

The Katyn Massacre, as horrendous as it was, was the central component of a larger plan of extermination, a genocide, as defined by international law (see below) perpetrated by the Soviet Union against the Polish nation. The 22,000 Polish officers, regardless of whether they were Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, or Jewish, were shot in the back of their heads, one by one, their hands tied behind them, because they were Poles, because they were faithful to their country. Immediately preceding WWII (1936-1938), there was the “Polish Operation,” as the Stalin-Beria regime called it, directed against Poles who resided in the western part of the Soviet Union. They were native to those lands and were left there after the 1921 Treaty of Riga. During the two year “Operation,” 150,000 Poles, mostly men, were taken out of their homes and shot. After the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, in four deportations in February, April, and June 1940, and June 1941, an estimated one-to-one-and-a-half million Poles were deported from eastern Poland, to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Most of them perished, and only very few survived. I am one of the lucky ones, deported as a seven-and-a-half-year-old boy, together with my mother, two year old sister, and 68 years old grandmother to Siberia in the April deportation, exactly at the same time as our fathers, husbands, brothers were being slaughtered in Katyn. My sister and grandmother did not survive the ordeal.

This was ethnic cleansing on a gigantic scale in its own right but, taken together with the Katyn Massacre and the 1936-38 “Polish Operation,” constitutes a planned and ruthlessly executed genocide against the Polish nation. This is the major point which is not emphasized in the Katyn Resolution S. Res. 566, and this is why I find the sentence quoted above from this Resolution particularly offensive.

The Soviets’ intent, which needs to be shown in this case, to destroy the Polish national group in eastern Poland is clearly visible in the extensive targeting and the indiscriminate selection of the victims: deportation of women, children, the aged, entire families, nation’s leading elites, and the murder of Poles on the conquered territories. In other words, all Poles were to be annihilated simply because they were Poles. Clearly, the careful planning and execution of the “Polish Operation,” (the name chosen by the Soviets), the massacre of the Polish Officers held as prisoners-of-war in pursuance of Stalin’s Katyn execution order of March 5, 1940, and the mass deportations, constitute the Soviet genocide masterplan against the Polish nation. Consequently, the S. Res. 566 shall declare the Katyn Massacre a genocide, a genocide which, during the five-year period of 1936 to 1941, was designed to exterminate all Poles from the lands occupied by the Soviet Union.

The current language of Katyn Resolution S. Res. 566, as introduced in the Foreign Relations Committee, diminishes the suffering of the Polish people during WWII, and does this at the time when those who perpetrated these crimes are doing their best to rewrite the history of the war, to shirk their responsibility for these atrocities, and even try to blame Poland for starting the war itself. I am particularly appalled by the acceptance as valid of the Soviet strategy to treat Katyn murders as political murder and not as a genocide. This Stalinist tactic has been successfully pursued for 80 years. To give credence, as the S. Res. 566 does, to this historical manipulation by avoiding to call the crime for what it really was, a genocide, is yet another hideous example of promoting the Katyn lie.

In the light of today’s knowledge of this crime, there is no doubt that the Katyn atrocity is the embodiment of the genocide perpetrated by the Soviet Union against the Polish people, and the S. Res. 566 must state so clearly and unambiguously.

Witold J. Lukaszewski, Professor Emeritus

Survivor of Siberian Deportation

US Army Veteran

The Woodlands, Texas

Definition of the Crime of Genocide:

According to Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide signed and ratified by the United States, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted – not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership in one of the four groups protected under the Genocide Convention. This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against the protected group, in whole or in part, as long as that part is identifiable and ‘substantial.’