Katyn Victims Near Kharkov Covered with Lime
10.08.2009
, aktualizacja: 10.08.2009 09:34
'In a woods, some 100 metres from the Kharkov-Belgorod road, within a 50-metre radius, earth has collapsed in many places. The holes are rectangles 3 by 6 metres. One has been dug up. Human bones and skulls can be seen. Some of the bones are scattered on the ground. Remnants of foreign-made military footwear can also be found,' Gen Col Vitaliy Nikitchenko, head of the Committee of State Security of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic wrote on 7 June 1969 to then KGB-head Yuri Andropov and to Petro Shelest, leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
The letter was top secret - 'restricted delivery.' It has recently been posted on the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) official website alongside other documents relating to the Katyn massacre found by the agency in the post-Soviet archives.
Unlike the Russians, the Ukrainians publish all documents relating to communist crimes, including the Katyn massacre. In his letter, Gen Col Nikitchenko further reports that the mass grave has been opened by three students of the fifth and sixth grades of the school of Pyatikhatki, who stole from it a gold ring with the initials A.K. and the date 29 June 1924, gold tooth crowns, and military buttons with the image of the Polish eagle.
Pyatikhatki, as we known, is one of the three places, besides Katyn near Smolensk and Mednoye near Tver, where the NKVD buried in mass graves the Polish POWs murdered in spring 1940 on orders from Stalin and the other Soviet leaders. Here, 3,739 victims are buried in a military cemetery built in the 1990s. But there are historians to this day in Russia who claim that the massacre was carried out by the Germans following the invasion of June 1941 rather than by the NKVD. Part of the Russian public believes this.
Gen Col Nikitchenko wrote straightforwardly, 'It has been determined that in 1940 the NKVD of the Kharkov oblast buried here several thousands executed officers and generals of bourgeois Poland, whose remnants have now been accidentally discovered by children.' He goes on to mention the names of former NKVD executives who 'know where the Poles are buried.'
In this situation, the head of the Ukrainian KGB suggested a disinformation campaign. He proposed announcing that the Germans executed here deserters from their own and the allied armies, and warning that the graves could be dangerous because some of the victims died of 'cholera, typhus, syphilis and other infectious diseases.'
But Andropov, the KGB head, thought that was not enough. According to a document, also found by the SBU, signed by Petro Feshchenko, head of the KGB in Kharkov, on 16-18 June 1969 comrade Andropov ordered a 'liquidation of the special facility.' The burial ground in Pyatikhatki was to be surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded by a team of 21 men. The remnants of the Poles were to be destroyed by covering them with lime, the graves then filled in. Andropov gave his people four years and a budget of 10,000 roubles to do this.
'Lying and spreading disinformation, the Soviet secret services have for decades protected those responsible for the Katyn massacre,' Yevgeniy Zakharov, head of the Memorial Association in Kharkov, tells Gazeta.
'But the documents posted on the SBU website show beyond any doubt that their leaders knew very well who murdered the Poles, where and when. This is not the end. The SBU is intensely researching the post-Soviet archives and discovering ever new documents. I hope they will eventually bring us closer to the truth about the 1940 massacre,' says Mr Zakharov.
Translated by Marcin Wawrzyńczak
Unlike the Russians, the Ukrainians publish all documents relating to communist crimes, including the Katyn massacre. In his letter, Gen Col Nikitchenko further reports that the mass grave has been opened by three students of the fifth and sixth grades of the school of Pyatikhatki, who stole from it a gold ring with the initials A.K. and the date 29 June 1924, gold tooth crowns, and military buttons with the image of the Polish eagle.
Pyatikhatki, as we known, is one of the three places, besides Katyn near Smolensk and Mednoye near Tver, where the NKVD buried in mass graves the Polish POWs murdered in spring 1940 on orders from Stalin and the other Soviet leaders. Here, 3,739 victims are buried in a military cemetery built in the 1990s. But there are historians to this day in Russia who claim that the massacre was carried out by the Germans following the invasion of June 1941 rather than by the NKVD. Part of the Russian public believes this.
Gen Col Nikitchenko wrote straightforwardly, 'It has been determined that in 1940 the NKVD of the Kharkov oblast buried here several thousands executed officers and generals of bourgeois Poland, whose remnants have now been accidentally discovered by children.' He goes on to mention the names of former NKVD executives who 'know where the Poles are buried.'
In this situation, the head of the Ukrainian KGB suggested a disinformation campaign. He proposed announcing that the Germans executed here deserters from their own and the allied armies, and warning that the graves could be dangerous because some of the victims died of 'cholera, typhus, syphilis and other infectious diseases.'
But Andropov, the KGB head, thought that was not enough. According to a document, also found by the SBU, signed by Petro Feshchenko, head of the KGB in Kharkov, on 16-18 June 1969 comrade Andropov ordered a 'liquidation of the special facility.' The burial ground in Pyatikhatki was to be surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded by a team of 21 men. The remnants of the Poles were to be destroyed by covering them with lime, the graves then filled in. Andropov gave his people four years and a budget of 10,000 roubles to do this.
'Lying and spreading disinformation, the Soviet secret services have for decades protected those responsible for the Katyn massacre,' Yevgeniy Zakharov, head of the Memorial Association in Kharkov, tells Gazeta.
'But the documents posted on the SBU website show beyond any doubt that their leaders knew very well who murdered the Poles, where and when. This is not the end. The SBU is intensely researching the post-Soviet archives and discovering ever new documents. I hope they will eventually bring us closer to the truth about the 1940 massacre,' says Mr Zakharov.
Translated by Marcin Wawrzyńczak
Skomentuj:
Aby ocenić zaloguj się lub zarejestrujX