Katyn Forest Massacre

Katyn Forest Massacre

Poland, part 4

The Katyn Forest Massacre occurred in 1940. Under orders from Josef Stalin, the Soviet NKVD executed approximately 20,000 Polish officers, landlords, officials and intellectuals whom they had previously been holding in prison camps. The victims were killed by a shot to the back of the head and dumped in mass graves in the Katyn Forest, which is near present-day Smolensk, Russia. The Nazi forces discovered the mass graves in 1943 and used the discovery of the crime as a form of propaganda against the Soviets. The Soviet government, in turn, blamed the massacre on the Germans. It was not until the early 1990s that the government in Moscow acknowledged Soviet culpability for the massacre in the Katyn Forest.

Group 2

Geldern, James von. "1943: Katyn Forest Massacre." Seventeen Moments in Soviet History. MATRIX, 2014. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katyn_massacre_5.jpg

April and May 1940

Two months

Massacre

Soviet NKVD
Josef Stalin
Lavrentiy Beria
Polish prisoners