The Katyn Commission or the International Katyn Commission was a committee formed in April 1943 under request by Nazi Germany to investigate the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish nationals during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, mostly prisoners of war from the invasion of Poland including Polish Army officers, intelligentsia, civil servants, priests, police officers and numerous other professionals. Their bodies were discovered in a series of large mass graves in the forest near Smolensk in Russia following Operation Barbarossa.
An international commission of experts in anatomy and forensic pathology were brought in from 11 countries in Europe, predominantly from Nazi Germany's allied or occupied states.[Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Winniza, p.103. Archiv-Edition 1999 (Faksimile der 1944 erschienenen Ausgabe).]
The Soviets denied their responsibility for the crime immediately, and their Extraordinary State Commission was tasked with falsifying documents and forensic science in order to reverse the blame and charged Germany with the crime.[Fischer, Benjamin B., "
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target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field". "Studies in Intelligence", Winter 1999–2000. Retrieved on 10 December 2005.
Members
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Alexandru Birkle, Romanian doctor of medicine
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Herman Maximilien de Burlet, Dutch anatomist, embryologist, physiologist and pathologist
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, Czech professor of forensic medicine
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, Bulgarian professor of forensic medicine
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Eduard Miloslavić, Croatian professor of pathology
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Professor François Naville from University of Geneva
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Dr. from the University of Budapest
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, Italian professor of forensic medicine, University of Naples
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, Finnish pathologist, professor of the Helsinki University
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Professor of the Ghent University in Belgium
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, Danish expert in forensic medicine
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Andrej Žarnov (František Šubík), Slovak professor of pathological anatomy
Russian admission of the Soviet crime
The Soviet documents pertaining to the massacre started being declassified only in 1990. They proved conclusively that 21,857 Polish internees and prisoners of war were executed by the Soviet Union after 3 April 1940 including 14,552 prisoners from three largest Soviet POW camps at this time.
[Aleksandr Shelepin (3 March 1959) note to Khrushchev, with information about the execution of 21,857 Poles including new secret proposal to destroy their personal files. "Записка председателя КГБ при СМ СССР А.Н. Шелепина Н.С. Хрущеву о ликвидации всех учетных дел на польских граждан, расстрелянных в 1940 г. с приложением проекта постановления Президиума ЦК КПСС." 3 марта 1959 г. Рукопись. РГАСПИ. Ф.17. Оп.166. Д.621. Л.138–139. Retrieved 23 November 2013. English translation available at Katyń Justice Delayed or Justice Denied? Law.case.edu.
] Of the total number of victims, 4,421 officers were executed by shooting at the
Kozelsk Optina Monastery, 3,820 at the
Starobilsk POW camp, and 6,311 at the
Ostashkov facility, in addition to 7,305 Poles who were secretly executed in
Byelorussian SSR and
Ukrainian SSR prisons.
Among the victims were 14 Polish generals including
Leon Billewicz, Bronisław Bohaterewicz,
Xawery Czernicki (admiral), Stanisław Haller, Aleksander Kowalewski, Henryk Minkiewicz, Kazimierz Orlik-Łukoski, Konstanty Plisowski,
Rudolf Prich (murdered in
Lviv), Franciszek Sikorski,
Leonard Skierski, Piotr Skuratowicz, Mieczysław Smorawiński and
Alojzy Wir-Konas (promoted posthumously).
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In November 2010, the Russian State Duma admitted in an official declaration that Joseph Stalin and Soviet officials ordered the Soviet NKVD secret police under Lavrentiy Beria to commit the massacres.
