|President Komorowski unveils huge epitaph to over 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Stalinist secret service, known as the Katyn Massacre': photo - PAP/Jacek Turczy|
At 3.30 am on 17 September 1939, the Polish ambassador in Moscow was handed a note, in which Moscow announced that the Polish state had ceased to exist.My Dad's family was swept up in the deportations. They were sent to Siberia in trains normally used to transport cattle, in the middle of winter. Many died on that journey.
In the wake of the Soviet invasion, mass arrests and deportations were carried out. By June 1941 over one a half million Poles were herded into trains, to work as slaves and forced labourers near the Arctic Circle and in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
In Poland, the invasion has often been described as a ‘stab in the back’, which Poland received from the Soviet Union seventeen days after the Nazi attack and less than a month after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.A few years ago, Russia seeking to make it illegal for anyone to say that the Soviet Union occupied Poland or the Baltics during WWII (See Russia accuses Poland of starting WWII)). I'm not sure what came of that, but the fact that it's even suggested shows how contentious the 1939 Soviet invasion still is in Russia, and how they are unable to come to terms with the part they played in WWII as the aggressors before becoming "the victims of the Nazis".
In Warsaw on Wednesday, President Bronislaw Komorowski unveiled the Katyn Epitaph – the first batch of plaques with the names of over 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Soviet NKVD police in 1940.How Russia continues to deal with the Katyn Massacre is to me, the deciding factor as to whether or not the past has been fully recognised. That Russia continues to stonewall Poland with regards to the evidence as to what exactly happened, shows that the Russians have not dealt with their Soviet past in any meaningful way.
The epitaph is located in the Warsaw Citadel, the site of a future Katyn Museum, now under construction.
President Komorowski described the search for the truth about Katyń and the memory of that tragedy as one of the most important foundations of a free Poland.
Komorowski admitted that the efforts to gain access to all documents relating to the Katyn massacre possessed by Moscow have failed.
President of the Institute of National Remembrance Łukasz Kamiński has told Polish Radio that the Polish nation has to preserve the memory of its plight under the Soviet occupation.That will annoy Russia. Maybe Poland will be cast as fascists and Nazis to the world in the next year or so, as a pretext to another invasion.
“World War Two and the Katyń massacre of 1940 are the cornerstones of the nation’s collective memory,” he said, adding that Poland needs a museum dedicated to the Katyń crime.
Lukasz Kaminski also stressed that for the past few years Moscow has been pursuing an aggressive propaganda in regards to Soviet policy during WWII, resorting to Stalinist lies including claims that the Soviet invasion of 75 years ago was undertaken to protect the Ukrainian and Byelorussian minorities in Poland’s eastern territories.It always amazes me that people in the West actually believe the propaganda that is coming out of Russia. If only they knew the history of how the Soviets have been acting over the last century - then they would be immune to any attempts to rewrite history.
Related link: Poland Marks 1939 Red Army Invasion