The National Katyn Memorial / Narodowy Pomnik Katyński My Fav Spot
The National Katyn Memorial
Narodowy Pomnik Katyński
The National Katyn Memorial in Baltimore memorializes the victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish nationals carried out by Soviet forces. It was erected on 19 November 2000. The statue by sculptor Andrzej Pitynski was delivered from Poland. September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, triggering the Second World War. On September 17, the Soviet Union, in cooperation with the Nazis and without a declaration of war, invaded and occupied eastern Poland. The Soviets deported some 1.5 million Polish citizens to Siberia. They sent over 20000 army, navy, air force and frontier-guard officers to three prison camps in the Soviet Union: Kozielsk, Starobielsk, and Ostashkov. Most of these officers were reservists: doctors, professors, school teachers, lawyers, judges, civil servants, priests, ministers, and rabbis. They were Poland’s leaders and thinkers, the flower of Polish intelligentsia. Through the winter of 1939-40, the prisoners defied political indoctrination and endured interrogations by the Soviet secret police (NKVD) about their backgrounds and their political views. For the next few weeks, day after day, 200-300 of them were taken away by train, then transferred to special prison buses, locked singly into cramped cubicles and taken deep into the Russian forests. Then each prisoner was murdered with a pistol shot to the back of the head. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that the truth was acknowledged. In 1991, other mass graves were uncovered near Kharkov and in Mednoye. These graves contained the bodies of the murdered officers from the Starobielsk and Ostashkov camps. In 1992, the Russian President released to Poland secret documents, including the death sentences signed by Stalin and by the head of the NKVD at the time of the atrocities. The world finally knew the truth after 50 years of lies and deception.
military and historic spotsmuseums and monumentsMaryland, United StatesBaltimore, Maryland, United States