Katyn MemorialPrint Page

The monument commemorates victims of the Katyn Massacre.

In 1940 on Stalin`s orders, the NKVD shot and buried over 4000 Polish service personnel that had been taken prisoner when the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939 in World War Two in support of Nazi Germany.

In 1943, Germany exhumed the Polish dead and blamed the Soviets. In 1944, having retaken the Katyn area from the Nazis, the Soviets exhumed the Polish dead again and blamed the Nazis.

In 1989, with the collapse of Soviet Power, Premier Gorbachev finally admitted that the Soviet NKVD had executed the Poles, and confirmed two other burial sites similar to the site at Katyn. Stalin`s order of March 1940 to execute by shooting some 25,700 Poles, including those found at the three sites, was also disclosed with the collapse of Soviet Power. This particular Second World War slaughter of Poles is often referred to as the "Katyn Massacre" or the "Katyn Forest Massacre". The Free World Polonia Co-ordinating Council in Toronto, Canada, declared the Year 1980 as The Katyn Memorial Year.

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