This section contains photos taken in 1943 by the Nazis

This section contains photos taken in 1943 by the Nazis, during their exhumations of the Polish dead from the Katyn forest sites where the NKVD had murdered them on orders from Stalin in 1940.
They are from "Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Katyn", Berlin 1943.
There are 58 small images here. Clicking on a photo will take you to a page with the enlargements from that section on it.

Artykuły o zbrodni Katyńskiej w tej witrynie (po polsku i angielsku). Articles on this site about the Katyn Forest Massacre [in English and Polish]. "Doing justice to the dead." "Sprawiedliwość dla zmarłych." "Lost Souls." "Zagubione dusze." "Separate memories, separate sorrows." "Odrębne wspomnienia. Odrębne smutki." "The Soviet memory hole." "Podróż w Sowiecką Dziurę w Pamięci."
"KATYŃ. MODUS OPERANDI" Michał Synoradzki, Jacek Grodecki, Victoria Plewak. [po polsku]"
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Strona Główna (po polsku)
Katyn related sites and LINKS.
Email me.
Stalin's order to shoot the Poles. A map of the Katyn massacre site. Katyn related books and videos. Information about the photos used in this site. Katyn photos which people have sent me. 1943 Nazi photos of exhumations in Katyn Forest.
Polish language Katyn Forest Massacre lesson from the Association of Polish Teachers Abroad. The Anglo-Polish agreement of 25 August 1939. Early German/Soviet co-operation: the Treaty of Rapallo. The rebellion of Russian troops at Courtine in 1917. Second Lieutenant Janina Dowbor Musnicki Lewandowska, the Polish woman pilot murdered at Katyn by the Soviets. A copy of the "legalistic" pretext Tito's "communists" used to murder Professor Doctor Ljudevit Jurak, on 10 June 1945.

The Katyn Massacre

The Katyn Massacre
by Bruce KennedyCNN Interactive Writer
In 1943, German soldiers discovered a mass grave in the Katyn forest near Smolensk in western Russia. The grave held the bodies of between 4,000 and 5,000 Polish army officers. Hoping to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western allies, Nazi officials publicized the grave and accused the Soviets of the massacre. Moscow denied the charge and claimed the Germans were attempting to cover up their own atrocity.
Despite evidence that the Kremlin was indeed behind the massacre, Britain and the United States chose to look the other way. London's wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, opposed a call by the Polish government-in-exile for an investigation by the International Red Cross into the incident.
Following the war, at the Nuremberg war crime tribunals, the issue of Katyn was originally included on the list of crimes attributed to the Nazis. But it was later dropped, apparently out of concern that any revelations about the massacre would embarrass the Soviets.
It wasn't until 1990 that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted Soviet involvement in the Katyn forest massacre. Two years later, the Russian government handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa previously secret documents showing that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had directly ordered the killing of the Polish army officers.
Most of the victims in Katyn forest were Polish army reservists -- lawyers, doctors, scientists and businessmen -- who were called up to active service following the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. But instead of fighting the Germans, about 15,000 Polish officers found themselves prisoners of the Red Army, which had occupied eastern Poland under the terms of a secret Moscow-Berlin treaty.
In the spring of 1940, about 4,500 of these officers were taken by their Soviet captors to the Katyn forest. Most were then gagged, bound, shot once in the head and buried on the spot. The other Polish POWs were taken to other locations, where many of them were also executed. The mass liquidation killed off much of Poland's intelligentsia and facilitated the Soviet takeover of the nation.
The memory of the massacre was an open wound in Soviet-Polish relations throughout the Cold War, and it continues to strain ties between Warsaw and Moscow.
In 1995, Walesa and relatives of the Katyn forest victims attended a memorial service at the site of the massacre. Boris Yeltsin was invited to take part in the ceremonies but declined. The Polish media denounced the Russian president's decision.
"Boris Yeltsin's absence leaves a deeply unsettling message," said the Zycie Warszawy newspaper. "There has been no apology of the kind that Germany has long since made. This day could have been a symbol of reconciliation between two nations tragically marked by communism. Instead it is a bitter shame, and Katyn forest continues to cast its dark shadow."

God bless you, always watchful!

God bless you, always watchful!
Piotr Chmielinski
He tried to fulfil his mission till the end of his life. He did not think about himself. First of all he thought about his Homeland and the Association of Relatives of the Victims of Katyn (Rodzina Katynska) whom he served as a chaplain. Rev. Monsignor Zdzislaw Peszkowski died on 8 October 2007 at the age of 89. He was always full of energy. Even towards the end of his life he was very active. He took part in many ceremonies, conferences; he met many people. He knew how to tell stories; he was the soul of the party. He travelled a lot. ‘I often learnt about the place of his stay from the media’, says Fr Andrzej Tulej, the neighbour of Fr Peszkowski. The chaplain for the Association of Relatives of the Victims of Katyn did not avoid journalists. He was eager to make appointments with them and give interviews. ‘God bless you, always watchful!, he greeted us in his characteristic way in his flat in the Old Town in Warsaw.
His strength was our strength
The Relatives of the Victims of Katyn treated Fr Peszkowski as their elder brother or father. He was someone very important, someone to whom you could go with a request or a problem. ‘We felt his strength that gave us strength. The gap that is now will be difficult to bridge’, says Andrzej Skapski, the chairman of the Board of the Association, for KAI. ‘For us, for Relatives of the Victims of Katyn, he was the witness of the crimes, those horrible days; someone who was with our fathers to the very end in the camp in Kozielsk. And it was extremely important to us that we have the man who was present when they went to meet their deaths,’ adds Skapski. At the same time he reminds us that Fr Peszkowski spoke about the massacre of Katyn in Great Britain and the United States in those days when one was not allowed to speak about that in Poland. When we could found the Association of Relatives of the Victims of Katyn after 1989, he came to us as a man whose authority was known and he supported us using his authority,’ emphasizes Skapski. The news of the death of Fr Peszkowski moved Poland’s highest authorities, the government and the hierarchs of the Church. ‘He was an outstanding personality and I am very sorry that this man characterised by extraordinary dynamics of Polishness passed away’, said the Primate of Poland Cardinal Jozef Glemp. In turn, Kazimierz Michal Ujazdowski, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, stressed that Fr Peszkowski’s life showed how important the role of the Church in the Polish history was. ‘The merits of Monsignor Peszkowski as a wonderful chaplain for the Polish pro-independence immigrants, completely dedicated to the Relatives of the Victims of Katyn, cannot be overestimated. He had a big priestly heart and was known for his goodness. He fought for the truth and memory of his brothers in arms, killed and murdered on ‘the inhuman land’. We are very much obliged to him for that,’ said Ujazdowski after having heard of Fr Peszkowski’s death.
He miraculously escaped death
Fr Zdzislaw Peszkowski was born in Sanok in 1918. He loved scouting and he entered the School of Cavalry Cadets in Grudziadz. During the war he enlisted in the 20th Cavalry Regiment named after King John III Sobieski in Rzeszow. He became war prisoner in Russia and was in the camp of Kozielsk. ‘I miraculously escaped death in Katyn’, he recollected after years. After the war he entered the Major Seminary at Orchard Lake in the U.S.A. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1954. He studied at the Universities of Wisconsin, Detroit and London. He received Master of Theology degree and Doctor of Philosophy. He lectured pastoral theology and Polish literature. He was the chief chaplain for the Polish Scouting Association outside Poland and moderator of the Ministry to the Sick of Polonia. He returned to Poland in 1994. He was the chaplain for the Association of Relatives of the Victims of Katyn and the Murdered in the East. He did his best to keep the memory of the Murdered in the East. ‘When I became priest I celebrated my first Mass for my colleagues who were murdered in the East. When I returned to Poland I cared for the relatives of those who had been murdered in the East. My aim was that the relatives of the victims stopped being afraid. I gathered the relatives of the victims of Katyn from all Polish towns. I challenged them: build monuments to the victims of Katyn in every town. And they slowly mended their ways. They began speaking about Katyn’, recollected Fr Peszkowski. On another occasion he summarised his life, ‘My life was just one astonishment at the greatness and mercy of God.’
The article was based on my own information and the KAI news.