Katyń 1940 : The Forgotten Genocide of World War II
Dr Waldemar Niemotko

(Excerpts from the transcript of the lecture delivered at University of Western Sydney on 25 June 2010)

Thousands and thousands of Polish people were deported to the Soviet “Gulag”.  Over a million of them lost their lives when in exile.  No precise statistics exists.   Many of their graves are unknown.  The ageing Polish generation witnessed atrocities imposed by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  Under communist rule the issue of what happened in Katyń was largely perceived as a taboo.  Even in Australia the word “Katyń” has been allowed only gradually to be included into the list of key occurrences of the atrocities, along with the rape of Nanjing, Nazi Germany’s death camp Auschwitz and the Japanese brutality in the treatment of the Australian POW’s in Burma. 

The Czech Republic was a frontrunner, as a new member of the European Union, to voice concern over the betrayal of the allies, referring to the infamous 1938 Munich conference.  The complacency of the realpolitik towards the Kremlin rulers, unduly prevailed for several decades until the “Solidarity” trade union in Poland initiated a chain reaction that culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.  Only in 2005 in a speech in Latvia, the US president George W. Bush admitted that the Tehran and Yalta arrangements were an attempt to sacrifice freedom of small nations of Central and Eastern Europe for the sake of global stability.  Eventually, the Latvian film director Edvins Snore, worked for ten years until 2008, on a powerful documentary “The Soviet Story”.  It fully supports the sequence of events that was presented by Andrzej Wajda’s in the heart sickening Polish screenplay “Katyń”.

The masterminds of the modern genocide, in industrial proportions, conceived their ideas in German.  The barbaric Nibelungenlied and Valhalla beefed up the chauvinism of German lands as united in 1871.  Prior to Friedrich Nietzsche formulating in 1885 his racist theory of supermen (Űbermenschen) in the book ”So spoke Zarathustra” (Also sprach Zarathustra), Karl Marx uttered as early as in 1850 that  “The classes and the races that are too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. (…) They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust.”  To his kinsman and close friend, the industrialist Friedrich Engels, was attributed composing the principles of the so called historical materialism that expanded the ominous vision of the 1848 “Communist Manifesto” (Das Kommunistische Manifest): “The spectre of communism is hovering over Europe. (…) The history of the hitherto society is the history of a struggle between the classes” (Die Geschichte der bisherigen Gesellschaft ist die Geschichte des Klassenkampfes).  

In previous centuries, Poland was praised as a bulwark of Christianity.  This was particularly visible in King Sobieski having come to rescue the German neighbours against the invasion from the Southeast, in the 1683 Vienna Siege.   Subsequently, the victory in the 1920 Warsaw Battle, stopped the spread of the Bolshevik revolution to engulf the frustrated German communists.  The dictator Joseph Stalin was resentful of this defeat and was quick to stab Poland in the back on 17 September 1939, partitioning her territories with the Third Reich.  At the time when the Nazis set up their first concentration camp in Dachau in 1933, the Soviets already boasted a dozen years of experience in committing multimillion genocidal atrocities on their own citizens.  There was put in place a tactical cooperation between Gestapo and NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB.

Courtesy of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN)in Warsaw, Poland

An entry appeared on the website of the Defense Department of the Russian Federation, earlier in 2010, blaming Poland for contribution to the start of 2WW by refusal to accept Hitler’s “legitimate” claim to link the East Prussia enclave to Germany proper.  This opinion has ignored the actual realities of the era.  Hitler believed that the German master race (Herrenvolk)  needed more living space (Lebensraum).  Even up to the eve of 2WW, the Nazis courted the Polish establishment to share the spoils on the vast territories in the East.  The book that was sponsored by the National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP), edited in Breslau in 1939 by Hans Hagemayer.  The title is  “Europe’s Fate in the East” (Europas Schicksal im Osten) with twelve leading Nazi contributors.  One of them was Professor Dr Walther Recke of Danzig who wrote: “We hope that (the leaders of Poland) and also the trustworthy circles of the Polish nation will be guided by a full conviction to join the ranks of a fight against Bolshevism, by the side of Germany.”  However, there was no volunteer in Poland to take the top job, comparable to the Nazi collaborators, like: Quisling in Norway, Pétain in France, Pavelić in Croatia, Horthy in Hungary, Antonescu in Romania or Kamiński, the commander of SS Galizien in the Ukraine.

The uniqueness of the Polish tragic experience during 2WW, relied on the fact that both totalitarian regimes targeted top strata of the Polish society: military officers and settlers, civil servants, clergy, doctors, Jagellonian and Lwów universities professors, teachers, scientists and all sorts of intellectuals.  To this category falls the treacherous “Operation AB” at hands of the Nazis.  This was called the Extraordinary Pacification Aktion (Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion).

The 1940 Katyń Massacre that was carried out by the Soviets, engulfed nearly twenty two thousand prisoners from ten concentration camps and was the first mass execution during 2WW.  On the process before the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945-46, the Russian prosecutor agreed to refer to the Katyń Massacre as a crime against humanity, as long as it would be attributed to the Nazis in 1941.  Albeit, the evidence was much too thin to take account of it, in the final indictment of the German perpetrators.  Accordingly, the issue of Katyń was largely absent in the postwar history of Europe, whilst the political correctness has persuaded Western countries to subdue to the Soviet biased version.  In the sense, Katyń was elevated to become an acid test for qualms of conscience of Western democracies.  Katyń could still be reviewed in various aspects: historical, political, moral, spiritual and educational.  It shows a similarity to the observations of Michael Bobelian on the Great War, as expressed in his book “Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-Long Struggle for Justice” (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2009).

Poland’s Eastern Calvary of Katyń must be perceived with the ultimate reverence.  It is comparable to what Gallipoli means to Australians.  The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov admitted that the crime in Katyń was committed by the Soviet secret police.  Later, president Boris Yeltsin said “sorry” in front of the Katyń monument in the Warsaw cemetery of Powązki. Tragically, all 96 members of the Polish delegation headed by President Lech Kaczyński to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the tragic event in Katyń, lost their lives in the plane crash in Smoleńsk on 10 April 2010. 

The enormous suffering became a part of the Polish national character that was credited by Pope John Paul II in his book “Memory and Identity” (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2005).  Late Fr Zdzisław Peszkowski, the survivor of the Katyń Massacre, in the prayer for the families of those who were killed in 1940 said: “Mother of Sorrows, comfort those whose hearts still bleed over the loss of their loved ones.  Mercifully grant our wish to build Polish cemeteries in the East and a Sanctuary of Divine Mercy and Reconciliation at Katyń.” This is a typical Polish attitude:  no envy, no hatred, no desire for retaliation.  It is worthwhile referring to the renowned 1965 proclamation of Polish bishops to German bishops that paved the way for reconciliation between both neighbouring nations.  The power of the word “sorry” is also known from the recent Australian experience.  The Polish-Russian reconciliation, though, would require as prerequisites: truth, memory and the rule of law, stated Fr Zdzisław Peszkowski.

The tragedy of Katyń has also global significance.  Regrettably, there is no reference to it in the emerging Australian school curriculum on modern history.  The highlights of history, as proclaimed by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), have been spelled out as follows: ”Historical study is based on the evidence of the remains of the past.  It is interpretative by nature, promotes debate and encourages thinking about human values, including present and future challenges.  (…)  The curriculum set out here takes a world history approach.  It does so to equip students for the world in which they will live.  An understanding of world history will enhance student’s appreciation of Australian history.”  Following this definition of the role of historical study, the proposal is valid to include the Katyń Massacre into the history curriculum within the ongoing nationwide debate.  Young Australians would benefit from that inclusion.

 

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[Operation AB Katyn - the exhibition held permanently in Poland by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), and touring Australia in 2010]