Post by Bozur on Mar 5, 2005 17:36:44 GMT -5
World - AP
Poles Marks Katyn Forest Anniversary
By ELA KASPRZYCKA, Associated Press Writer
WARSAW, Poland - Poles on Saturday attended a Mass, sang patriotic songs and lay flowers on a monument to more than 21,000 military officers and intellectuals massacred by Soviet agents in Katyn Forest, marking the day 65 years ago that dictator Josef Stalin ordered the killings.
AP Photo / Sat Mar 5,12:17 PM ET / Teresa Rogowska places yellow tulips at the monument in Warsaw, Poland, Saturday March 5, 2005 commemorating the death of Polish army officers murdered by Soviets near the Katyn forest, in Russia, during World War II. Saturday is the 65th anniversary of the event. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Along with the homage at Warsaw's St. Ann's Church, the Katyn Committee, an organization of relatives of those killed in Katyn Forest in western Russia and at other sites in 1940, demanded more Russian attention to the massacre.
A recent Russian investigation failed to produce any new names of surviving perpetrators among the secret police force that carried out the killing, largely by shots to the back of the head, over several nights.
"We are calling on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reveal the names of those who were responsible for the genocide in the spring of 1940," said Stefan Melak, the head of the group. "We are calling on Russian authorities to accept this crime as genocide," Melak said.
"Katyn will always remain a symbol of a death sentence passed on Poland," he said.
Krystyna Balcer, a 62-year-old retiree whose uncle was killed in Katyn, remained angry about the massacre and the Soviet invasion of Poland prior to World War II, carried out under a secret agreement between Stalin and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
"They betrayed us — they stuck a knife in our backs," she said of the Soviets invading Poland from the east in 1939, 17 days after Germans entered from the west. The massacre "was unimaginable cruelty, it was genocide."
The March 5, 1940, order for the massacre was signed by Stalin among others. Soviet agents shot 21,768 Polish military officers, intellectuals and priests who had been taken prisoner during the invasion.
Historians in Poland believe Stalin was seeking to liquidate Poland's elite to prevent the rebirth of a sovereign Polish state.
The massacre is still an irritant to relations between Poland and Russia. Polish war crimes prosecutors opened their own investigation into the massacre in December.
Until the fall of communism in 1989, any mention of the massacre was forbidden in Poland. The following year, the Soviet government accepted responsibility for the murders, but refused to refer to them as a genocide attempt, calling it a war crime on which the statute of limitations has passed.
The slaughter became known to the world when 4,100 bodies were discovered by German forces in 1943 after they overran the area near the Russian city of Smolensk, and the event was widely broadcast by the Nazi propaganda machine.
Poles Marks Katyn Forest Anniversary
By ELA KASPRZYCKA, Associated Press Writer
WARSAW, Poland - Poles on Saturday attended a Mass, sang patriotic songs and lay flowers on a monument to more than 21,000 military officers and intellectuals massacred by Soviet agents in Katyn Forest, marking the day 65 years ago that dictator Josef Stalin ordered the killings.
AP Photo / Sat Mar 5,12:17 PM ET / Teresa Rogowska places yellow tulips at the monument in Warsaw, Poland, Saturday March 5, 2005 commemorating the death of Polish army officers murdered by Soviets near the Katyn forest, in Russia, during World War II. Saturday is the 65th anniversary of the event. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Along with the homage at Warsaw's St. Ann's Church, the Katyn Committee, an organization of relatives of those killed in Katyn Forest in western Russia and at other sites in 1940, demanded more Russian attention to the massacre.
A recent Russian investigation failed to produce any new names of surviving perpetrators among the secret police force that carried out the killing, largely by shots to the back of the head, over several nights.
"We are calling on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reveal the names of those who were responsible for the genocide in the spring of 1940," said Stefan Melak, the head of the group. "We are calling on Russian authorities to accept this crime as genocide," Melak said.
"Katyn will always remain a symbol of a death sentence passed on Poland," he said.
Krystyna Balcer, a 62-year-old retiree whose uncle was killed in Katyn, remained angry about the massacre and the Soviet invasion of Poland prior to World War II, carried out under a secret agreement between Stalin and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
"They betrayed us — they stuck a knife in our backs," she said of the Soviets invading Poland from the east in 1939, 17 days after Germans entered from the west. The massacre "was unimaginable cruelty, it was genocide."
The March 5, 1940, order for the massacre was signed by Stalin among others. Soviet agents shot 21,768 Polish military officers, intellectuals and priests who had been taken prisoner during the invasion.
Historians in Poland believe Stalin was seeking to liquidate Poland's elite to prevent the rebirth of a sovereign Polish state.
The massacre is still an irritant to relations between Poland and Russia. Polish war crimes prosecutors opened their own investigation into the massacre in December.
Until the fall of communism in 1989, any mention of the massacre was forbidden in Poland. The following year, the Soviet government accepted responsibility for the murders, but refused to refer to them as a genocide attempt, calling it a war crime on which the statute of limitations has passed.
The slaughter became known to the world when 4,100 bodies were discovered by German forces in 1943 after they overran the area near the Russian city of Smolensk, and the event was widely broadcast by the Nazi propaganda machine.