Katyn massacre: 1940 execution of Polish officers and aftermath

Sovietization of Eastern Poland

The Second Polish Republic had been in conflict with Soviet Russia since its foundation in 1918. Poland was victorious in the Polish-Soviet War and in the Riga Peace Treaty (1921) received larger parts of Ukraine and Belarus, which had belonged to Poland-Lithuania until 1795. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, regarded these territories - in which ethnic Poles constituted the minority - as a rightful part of its own country, especially since the victorious powers of the World War had proposed a border further west with the Curzon Line. Polish leader Józef Piłsudski sought British-French declarations of guarantee and alliances with smaller neighboring states in Eastern Europe to secure Poland's independence against Soviet and German aspirations for supremacy. In 1932 the Polish-Soviet non-aggression pact was concluded and extended for ten years in 1934.

On August 23, 1939, the German Reich and the Soviet Union delineated their areas of interest in Eastern Europe in the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In a secret additional protocol, they agreed, among other things, on a division of Poland "in the event of a territorial-political transformation". After the German invasion ofPoland on September 1, 1939, the Red Army occupied eastern Poland on September 17, also without declaring war. The Polish government fled to Romania. Many Polish soldiers fled abroad or surrendered. The Red Army took about 250,000 prisoners of war in eastern Poland.

In accordance with the German-Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty of September 28, 1939, the victors divided Poland and supported each other in suppressing Polish resistance movements in their occupied territory. Each in its own way destroyed the Polish state, its administrative structures, parties and institutions. Both sides persecuted church officials and the intellectual elite. In the process, the Germans also committed mass murders of Polish Jews. The Soviet Union justified its occupation of eastern Poland as the alleged liberation of Ukrainians and White Russians living there from Polish tyranny. After manipulated referendums, it annexed the occupied territories to neighboring Union republics. The Politburo ordered Red Army military tribunals to execute "counterrevolutionaries" in the annexed territories. Certain occupational groups were generally classified as anti-Soviet, especially Polish professional or reserve officers, policemen, civil servants, judges, lawyers, teachers, clergy, and landowners. Many of these were arrested and deported on the basis of prefabricated lists or denunciations.

These and other measures resembled the NKVD's "national operations" during the Great Terror (1936-1938), by which the entire leadership strata in all non-Russian Union republics were deprived of their power and killed. One of these was the "Polish Operation," in which 111,091 of 143,000 arrested Soviet citizens of Polish origin, with Polish-sounding names, or contacts with Poland were shot by October 1938. This political purge was accompanied by a campaign against alleged Polish sabotage, espionage and military organizations on Soviet soil.

Storage system

On September 18, 1939, the Politburo placed the reception camps for eastern Polish prisoners of war under the control of the NKVD. On September 19, the head of the NKVD, People's Commissar Lavrenti Beria, ordered the establishment of an "Administration for Prisoners of War and Internees" (Upravlenie po delam wojennoplennych i internirovannych; UPWI) and eight camps. He appointed Pyotr Soprunenko as their chief. The UPWI was first established out of the main administration for penal camps (Gulag) and was not prepared for hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Its reception and transit camps were overcrowded and had hardly any shelters. The prisoners starved, had to sleep in the open air, and mail was forbidden. From 1 October they were registered and their social background, school and military training, profession, party affiliation and marital status were recorded in questionnaires. Their daily routine was strictly regulated, but they were allowed to move freely in the camp. They were subjected to political indoctrination and were not allowed to practice their religion. Tens of thousands died in this first phase. Only about 82,000 of the Polish and Belarusian prisoners of war are said to have survived until 1941.

By order of the Politburo on October 3, 1939, the NKVD released some 42,400 ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians from the overcrowded camps by November 19. Some 43,000 western Polish prisoners were handed over to the German Wehrmacht, and in return the Soviet Union received nearly 14,000 prisoners who had made their home in eastern Poland. This exchange involved only crew ranks and non-commissioned officers. The NKVD kept about 39,600 eastern Polish prisoners in custody. Of these, 24,600 soldiers and non-commissioned officers were forced to perform forced labor. About 15,000 persons, including 8,500 officers (mostly reservists) and 6,500 policemen and gendarmes, were distributed among three special camps. According to NKVD files, on April 1, 1940, about 4,600 officers were in the Koselsk special camp (Kaluga oblast), about 3,900 officers in the Starobelsk special camp (Lugansk oblast, Ukraine), and about 4,400 policemen, gendarmes, border guards, judicial personnel, and landowners in the Ostashkov special camp (Lake Seliger).

Special bearing

In the special camps, the arrivals had to build their own barracks, toilets and washrooms. Here, too, there was a lack of food, water and hygiene. The prisoners with higher military ranks received privileges to which they were entitled under the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 1929. The Soviet Union had not signed this agreement and did not officially consider the Polish military personnel detained in eastern Poland as prisoners of war because of the absence of a declaration of war. Nevertheless, it granted them special status with the establishment of the UPWI, the special camps and the preferential treatment of higher ranks. It informed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about the three camps, but generally did not allow it to inspect the camps.

On Beria's order of October 8, 1939, the NKVD set up a system of informers in the camps, most of whose inmates were considered particularly hostile to the Soviet Union. Intelligence officers and interrogation specialists were to identify possible agents, members of nationalist organizations, and Zionists in interrogations independent of the camp administration. They divided the prisoners into categories such as "informer," "saboteur," "terrorist," or "conspirator," observed and infiltrated some of these groups more closely in order to filter out "counterrevolutionaries." "Enemies of the people" were considered to be Polish Social Democrats, National Democrats, Piłsudski supporters, higher ranks of officers, Soviet refugees, and founders of self-help groups and their participants. The informers identified persons who organized religious life and education among the prisoners and recorded patriotic, pro-Western, and anti-Soviet statements. They also regarded non-political lectures as counter-revolutionary activity in disguise. According to their reports, the officers could only be coerced into self-sufficiency in the camp, but not into cooperation with their guards. From the beginning, the prisoners refused and obstructed registration, for example by giving false personal data. In interrogations they spoke only Polish, boycotted camp work and propaganda demonstrations, criticized indoctrination lectures, exposed educational deficiencies of the interrogators, and celebrated national memorial days despite prohibitions. A few dozen, including a group led by Zygmunt Berling in Starobelsk, got involved. Overall, the attempt at recruitment and re-education failed.

In Starobelsk, on 30 October, over 100 imprisoned doctors and pharmacists demanded their immediate release in accordance with the Geneva Convention. When the camp commander requested their text from the NKVD, he was ordered to abide only by the UPWI rules. When he then forbade the prisoners to send mail to relatives, they protested again, citing the Geneva Convention. The NKVD relented and allowed them limited correspondence and receipt of food parcels, also to record the addresses of family members. On November 24, Soprunenko pointed out to Beria that most Poles were now Soviet citizens and not prisoners of war. On November 29, the Supreme Soviet declared the population of Soviet-occupied eastern Poland to be Soviet citizens. At Beria's suggestion, the Politburo had the professional officers among the prisoners arrested as of December 3. This meant that they lost their special status as officers; to demand it was now considered a counterrevolutionary crime. Beria thus sought to force effective registrations and interrogations. In response, the prisoners in Starobelsk sent further letters of protest demanding the rights of prisoners of war because they had been captured on Polish soil, as well as clarification of the reason for their arrest and numerous improvements in the camp's daily routine. A camp inspector reported to Beria about chaos, corruption, petty crime and material deficiencies in Ostashkov and recommended the complete replacement of the camp personnel.

Beginning in December 1939, Beria dispatched new interrogators, this time trained and experienced, to complete the registrations and try the arrested officers. After this special brigade also threatened to fail due to the resistance of the prisoners, Beria ordered special investigations by selected interrogators. They were to uncover all former Polish foreign espionage in the Soviet Union, "enemies of the Soviet Union" and "networks", and gather evidence for conviction under Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. In the months that followed, most of the prisoners were required to fill out new questionnaires, allegedly indicating concealed military service and foreign travel. The questions were aimed at criminalizing them as anti-Soviet. The interrogators compiled prisoner dossiers and by the end of December 1939 recommended multiyear camp sentences for 500 suspected spies. Other special investigation brigades sifted through the dossiers, established criminal offenses, and forwarded them by February 1940 to regional special committees to pass sentences. The whereabouts of these dossiers are unclear. It is assumed that most of the prisoners were also sentenced or were to be sentenced to several years' imprisonment in the camps. To this end, the highest Soviet military court placed them under the jurisdiction of the NKVD on 28 January 1940.

By February 10, 1940, the "first special department" of the NKVD under Leonid Bashakov received all the interrogation results from the camps. On February 20, Soprunenko proposed to Beria that he release 300 seriously ill, invalids, and over-60s, as well as 400 to 500 professionals who had not come to his attention as anti-Soviet. Beria refused and decided to have the three special camps evacuated immediately. On February 22, his deputy, Vsevolod Merkulov, ordered that all "prison guards, spies, provocateurs, lawyers, landowners and merchants" be transferred from the three camps to regional NKVD prisons under the strictest secrecy. There they were to be immediately recategorized according to class, nationality, rank, and hostility to the Soviet Union. On 28 February Soprunenko submitted to Beria an overview of their nationality, and on 2 March an overview of prisoners classified as enemies of the Soviet Union. On the same day Beria ordered those already convicted to be transferred to labor camps, which the NKVD had been controlling since early February. However, the regional NKVD units were hardly willing to accept the prisoners assigned to them. The secret operation was called off after a few days. The special camps remained in place.

On November 16, 1939, the German Reich had agreed with the Soviet Union to exchange Ukrainians, White Russians, and Russians in the German-occupied part of Poland for "ethnic Germans" in the now Soviet part of Poland, and also showed itself willing to take on additional Poles. The Foreign Office and the Secret State Police (Gestapo) had been negotiating a prisoner exchange with Soviet authorities since February 1940. The Soviet side protested against the German plan to accept into the Wehrmacht some 30,000 Ukrainians who had escaped into German occupied territory, and proposed the exchange of Ukrainians for Poles from the special camps. But that same month, Governor General Hans Frank decided to use the "AB Action" to have more "resistance politicians and otherwise suspicious individuals" of the Polish elite murdered rather than continue to send them to German concentration camps. Since those Polish officers were also potential resistance fighters and were also covered by the 1929 Geneva Agreement, the Germans broke off the exchange negotiations at the end of February. The resettlement agreement, which expired on March 1, was not renewed.

On February 28, Beria discussed with Stalin the further procedure with the prisoners of the special camps and submitted some personal files on them. He probably suggested that they all be executed as enemies of the state. The reason for this is presumed to be that Stalin signalled to Beria his wish to eliminate Poland's leading elite, but that the previous procedure seemed too time-consuming and personnel-intensive for this, and that the intention to murder could be better kept secret with only a few confidants. On March 3, Beria sent Stalin a draft decision to this effect.

·         Proposal of Lawrenti Beria to Stalin for the execution of Polish prisoners

Execution order

Beria's draft resolution called the prisoners "sworn enemies of Soviet power, filled with hatred for the Soviet system." The special camps held 14,736 former officers, civil servants, landowners, policemen, gendarmes, prison guards, (military) settlers, and secret agents, over 97% of whom were of Polish nationality. There were a total of 18,632 persons in prisons in Western Ukraine and Belarus, including 10,685 Poles. Both totals were broken down by military grade, occupation or other function, party affiliation and social status. On the basis that they were all "hard, incorrigible enemies" of Soviet power, the NKVD was to be ordered to examine summarily the cases of the above-mentioned approximately 14,700 Poles of the special camps and of the approximately 11,000 Poles of the prisons, and to apply to them the maximum penalty by firing squad, "without summoning the detainees and presenting the charges, without a decision on the result of the preliminary investigations and without bringing charges." The examination and execution of these decisions was to be entrusted to a troika. Beria appointed himself, Merkulov and Bashakov as its members.

On March 5, 1940, the four Politburo members Josef Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan signed the decision. The approval of Lasar Kaganovich and Mikhail Kalinin was noted as "For". Beria's name was dropped from the proposed troika members, and Bogdan Kobulov's name was added instead (probably by Stalin). All six signatories held the highest state offices, some of them several. The death sentence for some 25,000 people was predetermined. The Troika was only to confirm it, i.e. to agree to the individual sentences already passed by the special committees.

According to a preserved memo, Merkulov returned his copy "No. 41" to the Chancellery of the Central Committee (CC) on March 28, 1940. According to this, at least 41 people were informed of the decision in writing. The original document was kept in a special archive of the CC set up on Stalin's orders. It was in a sealed envelope in the same folder as the secret supplementary agreement to the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Since it was noted on the envelope that the later head of state Yuri Andropov had opened it in 1981, historians assume that all CPSU general secretaries since Stalin had seen it.

Preparation

On March 2, 1940, the Politburo ordered the deportation of about 61,000 Poles from occupied territories, mostly members of the special camp inmates. On April 13, 25,000 of them were deported to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, where they had to perform forced labor. Wives and children appealed in vain to Stalin to release their husbands and fathers. Their apartments were given to Red Army and CP members. This was part of a series of deportations from February 1940 to June 1941 that affected at least 320,000, and possibly as many as 1,692,000 Poles.

At a two-day secret conference at NKVD headquarters in late February/early March, the responsible administrative heads coordinated the removal of prisoners from the special camps. Beria put an end to the work of the special committees. Rumors were spread that it was necessary to prepare for the reception of Finns prisoners of war. This was probably intended to camouflage the intention to murder, since the Soviet winter war against Finland was almost over (March 13, 1940), far fewer Finnish prisoners of war were to be expected, and a camp was already ready for them. The NKVD headquarters forbade the camp commanders to announce any verdicts of the troika before their deportation. As a cover, the Poles were announced their transfer to labour camps.

On March 15 and 16 Soprunenko ordered the camp commanders and heads of the special divisions to "organize the removal of the prisoners of war according to the sentence passed." The whole procedure was laid down: Official orders for removal were to be read to the prisoners before they were handed over. The places where the prisoners were to be handed over to guards and escorts were determined. The wagons were to be occupied in each case by groups from the same or neighbouring regions, in order to make them believe that they were being released. Questions about the transport destination were to be answered uniformly with "to work in another camp". From reliable NKVD members, troops were designated for onward transport from the destination stations to the execution sites, photographers of the executions, death shooters, undertakers, and other "liquidators." From 16 March onwards, prisoners were forbidden all correspondence. Special schedules for the transport trains were drawn up. By the end of March all guards had been briefed in detail. From 1 April the Troika had lists sent to it from the camps containing the prisoners' files. The troika members inserted death sentences into prefabricated forms and then sent the camp commanders lists of names of persons who were to be transferred (brought to the place of execution) immediately to the respective NKVD office in the target region. Merkulov was in charge of the entire operation.

Version

The prisoners were transported to their execution sites on freight trains: The trains from Kozelsk went to Katyn from April 3, 1940, where the victims were murdered until May 11, those from Starobelsk to Kharkov (April 5 to May 10), those from Ostashkov to Kalinin (April 4 to May 22). The dead were buried at night in previously dredged pits.

A survivor, a victim in diary entries, and villagers described the events at the Gnyozdovo train station: NKVD soldiers surrounded the transfer point with bayonets planted. About 30 arrivals each had to transfer to a black prison bus divided into cells with white-painted windows. On the bus, the victims were stripped of watches, money, jewelry, belts and pocket knives. It drove to the nearby execution site in the woods and returned empty. Then the next group boarded it. Whether the victims were shot at the edge of the pits or nearby is unclear. Most lay uniformly aligned face down in them, stacked in layers. Only in a few graves did they lie disordered. About 20% had their hands tied behind their backs with rope. Some had also had their coats or sacks pulled over their heads, tied around their necks, and sawdust stuffed into their mouths so that they would have suffocated if they had resisted. Many had broken bones and square punctures from bayonets. Almost all received a shot in the neck with the muzzle set at a uniform angle of fire, only some received a second shot. The perpetrators used German Walther pistols and 7.65-millimeter cartridges. This ammunition, manufactured by Gustav Genschow (GECO) in Durlach, had been imported by the Soviet Union in large quantities since 1928.

According to testimonies of those involved in the crime, several Poles from Koselsk were shot in the basement of the NKVD headquarters in Smolensk. Each of these victims was placed with his head over a drainage shaft and received a pistol shot in the back of the head or temple. At night the dead were placed in mass graves. In Kharkov, NKVD men had to dig fifteen large pits. The prisoners from Starobelsk were first locked up in prison cells and had to hand over their luggage and money. To deceive them, they were given a receipt for it. Five to six persons each were then led to a corridor above and there they were surprisingly tied up. One by one, they had to enter a room where a prosecutor took down their family name and year of birth. On leaving the room, an NKVD member shot them; another picked up the body. In the Kalinin NKVD headquarters, according to Dmitry Tokarev (head of the Kalinin oblast NKVD 1938-1945) in 1991, each prisoner was immediately handcuffed after his personal details were established and led to a soundproofed basement room, where two men held his arms and a third shot him in the skull. The killed man was placed in a transport vehicle through a second door. Some were also shot at the edge of the pits. After that, the perpetrators drank vodka every day. The commander of Starobelsk had to burn the private mail and the personnel files of the murdered in his camp, except for the files of the Soviet-friendly prisoners, and send them to the NKVD headquarters.

Executor

The main perpetrators after the Politburo, the Troika and the NKVD headquarters were the heads of the regional NKVD authorities Yemelyan Kupriyanov (Smolensk), Pyotr Safonov (Kharkov) and Dmitry Tokarev (Kalinin). They selected suitable subordinates as drivers, digger operators, undertakers, photographers, guards and pistol shooters. Other perpetrators belonged to the battalion that accompanied the transports. They also knew the traditional execution sites, some of which had been used since the 1920s.

The shootings in Smolensk and Katyn were carried out by over fifty NKVD men from the region. Their leader was the prison commander Ivan Stelmach. The Kharkov killings were directed by Timofei Kupri, who commanded the local NKVD prison. The three-man Moscow firing squad for Kalinin was headed by Major Vasily Blokhin. He reported the murder quotas he had imposed on himself to Moscow on a daily basis, initially shooting 300 prisoners per night himself and later deciding to reduce the murder rate to 250 people per night.

Even before the murders began, on March 17, 1940, Beria had once promoted six and twice three NKVD functionaries involved in the crimes from the regional authorities and camps. On October 26, 1940, he rewarded 124 named perpetrators "for the successful fulfillment of special orders" with an additional monthly salary (43 persons) or 800 rubles (81 persons). Many of those involved in the crime received high honors such as the Order of the Red Star. Objection of perpetrators against the orders is not known.