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Polish ambassador honours victims of 1940 massacre by Soviets

10.04.2024 14:30
Poland's ambassador to Russia has paid tribute to thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals who were killed by the Soviets more than eight decades ago in a series of mass executions known as the Katyn Massacre.
A Polish war cemetery in the Katyn Forest, near the city of Smolensk in western Russia.
A Polish war cemetery in the Katyn Forest, near the city of Smolensk in western Russia.Photo: PAP/Wojciech Pacewicz

Krzysztof Krajewski laid flowers and lit candles at a Polish war cemetery in the Katyn Forest, near the city of Smolensk in western Russia, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.

"It is our duty to be here to honour their memory," he said during the tribute on Tuesday, ahead of the 84th anniversary of the World War II mass murders.

Krajewski remarked that monuments, plaques and crosses commemorating Polish victims of Soviet crimes were being removed from public places in Russia amid increasing attempts to question the Soviet Union's responsibility for these atrocities, the IAR news agency reported.

A host of events are scheduled to take place in Poland on Saturday to commemorate the victims of the 1940 Katyn Massacre.

April 13 is a national day of remembrance for the victims of the Soviet crime.

Almost 22,000 Polish prisoners of war were killed in the spring of 1940 on orders from top Soviet authorities, according to estimates cited by Polish Radio’s IAR news agency.

Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, thousands of Polish officers were deported to camps in the Soviet Union.

POWs from camps in Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov as well as Poles held in prisons run by the Soviet Union's NKVD secret police were among those murdered in April 1940.

Moscow for decades denied responsibility for the Katyn Massacre, while the topic was taboo when Poland after the war remained under Soviet control until 1989.

(gs)

Source: IAR, polskieradio24.pl