Customer Reviews

Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth

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I purchased this book from Amazon since you seem to carry books not on the bookstore shelves! Originally I wanted to learn more about my cultural history, being part Polish. I was impressed by the writer's scholarship as seen by the references. I was emotionally impacted by horror story and the quality of Mr. Paul's writing. I read with interest the author's opinions and obeservations blended (and appropriately separated) with the facts. This is a well written history that should impact everyone in the world by the truth it tells.
I was embarrassed how little I knew about the events with the pages. I am sure most people know little about the Russian execution massacre of Polish officers at Katyn Forest in 1940. Even worse was the subterfuge and lies and informaion burial perpetrated by so many high level people. Having seen the grainy black and white war crimes trials in Nuremberg, it haunts me that the murdering executioners of these Polish elite went home unscathed and pensioned for the rest of their lives while the world watched other heinous ciminals punished. The world didn't care.
As to Fanklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and their advisors: I recall someone once said that a greater crime than evil comes from good men who allow evil to exist. With all the well explained logical rationale in this wonderful book about these two icon's motivations, I still take away the fact that historical people I once admired (Churchill) and accepted (Roosevelt) allowed Stalin to get away with Polish executions (murder) in an attempt to destroy the Polish culture. Happily he failed.As Mr. Paul observes: in the long term the truth has prevailed.
In summary, not only should all people of Polish descent read this book, but so should anyone interested in the machinations around WW2 and the outcomes we live with today. To me, this book is a must read for history lovers.
Mr. Paul - thank you for all your work on the research and for bringing this story to the public. Well done, sir!

Very seldom do we encounter a book such as this--where a non-Pole has such a thorough and relatively factual understanding of Polish history. Allen Paul not only discusses the genocidal Katyn massacre itself in considerable detail, but also gives a thorough review of Polish history in WWII and the immediate aftermath.

German-Soviet collaboration and mutual military assistance had long predated Hitler's coming to power in 1933 (p. 57). Paul is perceptive in his repudiation of oft-repeated canards regarding Polish conduct during the German-Soviet attack in 1939. He realizes that the Polish Air Force was not destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war (p. 23). (Functional Polish airplanes had earlier been scattered throughout secret airfields for this very contingency). He knows that Polish cavalry did not charge German tanks (p. 30). It was simply a canard from German propaganda that became "true" through retelling.

Paul provides graphic detail on the massacre itself. It was not just a cold-blooded shooting of captive enemy officers, but a systematic destruction of the very cream of Polish society--in effect a "beheading" of Poland. (Being unmistakeably a nation-destroying act, it was clearly a form of genocide). Some Poles valiantly resisted getting shot point blank, as indicated by the tied-up corpses (p. 353). Forensic evidence alone put the blame for this crime squarely on the Soviets (p. 229). There is riveting testimony provided by Stanislaw Swianiewicz, one of the few surviving eyewitnesses (pp. 103-on).

Paul provides a good description of the "airplane accident" that claimed the life of Wladyslaw Sikorski on July 4, 1943: "Coming when it did, only weeks after the discoveries at Katyn, Sikorski's death seemed too convenient. Evidence of sabotage was not found, but conclusive proof of an accident was not found either. Continuing doubts persisted. On November 12, 1952, Sumner Welles, who was U. S. under secretary of state at the time of the crash, told a House committee investigating the Katyn murders, `I have always believed that there was sabotage.' Welles noted that Sikorski had narrowly escaped death in a similar incident the year before in Montreal. `To put it mildly, it would be an odd coincidence,' Welles concluded." (pp. 239-240).

Paul discusses many of the heart-wrenching difficulties faced by the remaining Poles, released from Soviet captivity as part of the Sikorski-Maisky pact. [My mother, aunt, grandmother, and biological father were among them].

Unfortunately, there is an undercurrent of blame-the-circumstances thinking behind Paul's depiction of the sellout of Poland by Churchill and Roosevelt in the events leading up to and including Teheran and Yalta. Yes, the Soviet Union had done the largest share of the fighting. But the Soviet Union was also heavily dependent upon western Lend-Lease aid, which could have been judiciously dispensed to force Stalin to recognize Poland's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Yes, the west feared the possibility of a Soviet-Nazi separate peace. But Stalin was saddled with an identical fear of a western-Nazi separate peace.

Paul also implies that the Polish government-in-exile should have been more flexible, and more willing to compromise with Stalin. But what evidence is there that Poland's postwar fate would have been any different had it in fact been more "realistic"? With Hitler in 1939, the real issue had not been Danzig and the Polish Corridor, but the existence of Polish sovereignty. Likewise, with Stalin in 1941-onwards, the real issue had not been the location of the Soviet-Polish border but the existence of Polish sovereignty.

Paul has a mistaken understanding of Poland's prewar eastern half (the Kresy) (p. 248). He says that, in principle, the Soviet Union had just as much right to the territory as Poland because it "had been neither Polish nor Russian". That is utter nonsense. The Kresy had been part of Poland for centuries before the Partitions, and some parts of them (eastern Galicia) had never once been part of Russia until the Soviet-German conquest of Poland in 1939. The prewar Kresy had a 20-40% ethnic Polish minority (depending upon whose figures one believes). The percentage of Russians, outside of western Byelorussia (if one counts Byelorussians as Russians), was negligible. Nor is it correct that the non-Poles of the Kresy had "chafed under Polish rule." This was true only of some of them. In any case, few of them willingly preferred to be part of the Soviet Union. Ironically, Paul demolishes his own argument when he cites Sikorski, who, in retort to Maisky's assertion about Poland needing to be strictly limited to so-called ethnographic frontiers, pointed out that the Soviet Union was itself a multi-ethnic, multi-national federation! (p. 158).

At the time this book was written, the Soviet Union had finally acknowledged blame for the Katyn Massacre. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security advisor to then President Carter, said in December 1990: "Recently, several direct participants in the mass murder of the defenseless Polish officers in Katyn and elsewhere--15,000 of them [now known to be 22,000] shot one by one in the back of the head--have been identified. If Gorbachev has totally broken with Stalinism, why has not a single one of them been put on trial? The Eichmann of the operation, a former NKVD major by the name of Serepenko who was in charge of the `logistics' of the operation, lives comfortably in Moscow." (p. 340).

Numerous Nazis have been found and punished for their crimes, but not a single Soviet Communist has been punished for his crimes. THAT is perhaps the greatest, and cruelest, legacy of the Katyn massacre.

Allen Paul wrote the original edition of Katyn back in 1991 so this recently published soft cover revision is positively welcomed.

While Poles have been painfully aware of the story of Katyn since 1943 few others outside of Poland had ever heard of the massacre. After the Soviets invaded Poland in September 1939, in conjunction with the German attack from the West, military and civilian leaders were transported to several prison camps in the western USSR. On March 5, 1940, Stalin signed the execution order and between April and May approximately 22,000 Poles were murdered by the NKVD Soviet secret police, the bodies buried in mass graves at remote sites (one near the Katyn Forest). Stalin's motivation was to remove Poland's military and civilian elite as part of his strategy to dominate the country.

In addition to this group of elites, the NKVD deported another 300,000 Polish citizens to various locations in the Soviet Union. Approximately half that number died of disease and starvation. It's interesting to note that although Polish ethno-nationalists are fond of ascribing all Soviet crimes to Jews, a propotionate number of Polish Jews died at Katyn and and were deported to the Gulag.

Germany turned on it's Soviet ally in June, 1941 and pushed the Red Army back beyond Katyn. The mass graves were discovered by the Germans in April 1943 and used as propaganda against the Western-Soviet alliance. Of course, the Soviets denied their involvement, blaming the Germans despite evidence to the contrary. The controversy created serious tensions in the alliance and the London-based Polish government-in-exile was basically told to drop its inquiries in the interests of the greater war effort.

Throughout the post-war years the Soviets kept to their official version of the massacre, blaming the Germans, although every Pole knew differently. Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin finally admitted to Soviet complicity, however official Soviet documents have remained sealed to this day. The Russians fear too much cooperation may result in demands for reparations. Russians also counter Polish indignation over Katyn with accusations that 20,000 Red Army prisoners of war died in Polish internment camps at the time of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920.

For the Polish people, Katyn became a national symbol of martyrdom and oppression under the rule of the Soviets.

Allen Paul's book is a very readable account of one of the most tragic episodes in Polish history. With the release of Andrzej Wajda's film in 2007 along with the tragic airplane crash on April 10, 2010 which claimed the lives of ninety-six Polish dignitaries on their way to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre, the rest of the world has begun to realize what took place at Katyn.

(ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN POLISH AMERICAN JOURNAL, November 2010, p. 17):

The tragic deaths of Polish President Kaczyñski and 96 members of his entourage on April 10, 2010 en route to Katyñ were but the latest page in a history that just won't go away. For 70 years efforts to deny Katyñ, to falsify its story, to consign it to a conspiracy of silence, or to insist on changing the subject have foundered on what Allen Paul calls in the subtitle of this remarkable book "the triumph of truth." Paul has been laboring for that triumph for over two decades now, having published the first edition of this book in 1991. This third edition takes the story through 2009.
For the many people who first learned about Katyñ when they heard of Kaczyñski's death, this book offers a solid, complete, and well readable introduction. The book is especially valuable because of its personal focus: Allen tells the story of Katyñ through the fates of five people whose lives were personally touched by that massacre. Msgr. Zdzisław Peszkowski, my teacher at Orchard Lake, was diverted at the last minute from the Kozelsk detention camp, and thus avoided a spot in Katyñ's graves. Until the end of his life, Peszkowski was an indefatigable advocate for the Katyñ families. Maria Pawulska Rasiej, whom I knew from the New Jersey Polish American Congress and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences, lost her father in Kharkov.
The human story makes this book both eminently readable and extraordinarily valuable: readable, because it puts human faces on the 4,143 corpses found in Katyñ, valuable, because it details the human and national fates of those connected with Katyñ. Maria Rasiej did not just lose a father. Paul explains how she lost a home, how at age 12 she and her mother were given 30 minutes to pack for deportation to Central Asia, just two victims of the Soviet Union's ethnic cleansing of places like her hometown, Łwów. Dumped on a train, Maria spent the next four weeks in transit, the last one aboard an ox cart that deposited her 200 miles from the Chinese border. For the next three years, her mother struggled to keep themselves alive on the Kazakh steppe. Maria was one of the "lucky" ones: she and her family eventually escaped the Soviet Union as part of the evacuation of Polish forces to Iran. Most Poles deported by Stalin in spring 1940 never left. By the time she was 18, Maria had passed through Iran, Iraq, Yemen, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and England. One memory of Rasiej's, recounted in the book, was particularly poignant. She discusses how her mother got the two of them aboard one of the last trains leaving Kazakhstan for Iran by bringing them to a staging point at some distance from where they were. Other Polish heads of household in that district journeyed alone to the staging point, believing that the train would pick up their dependents when it passed through their town. But when it did arrive, the Soviets kept the train closed and cordoned off loved ones waiting at the station. "The passengers could not get off and their relatives could not get on. For almost an hour the train sat at the platform engulfed in the din of parents and children screaming from both sides of the fence. It seemed like an eternity to Maria. Then came the first lurch; the train began to move. Mothers leaned as far as they could from the windows, arms outstretched, as if somehow they could touch the hands of their children reaching through the fence. At that moment, all knew: these frantic glimpses were the last they would ever see of each other" (p. 205).
Paul takes pains to set those individual stories in the historical context of the Soviet-German alliance, Stalin's ethnic cleansing, his duplicitous dealings with Poland's Government-in-Exile , his "allies" and his "enemies," and the general Soviet plan to impose a satellite regime on Poland after the War. Paul's explanations are balanced and fair. He concedes that the Western Allies were complicit in a "whitewash" of Soviet guilt, but also points out that, in the big picture of the need to defeat Hitler, raîson d'état often dictated Western actions. To paraphrase Stalin, "how many divisions did Poland have?"
Two excellent histories of Katyñ now exist in English. Anna Cienciała's Katyñ: A Crime without Punishment (Yale UP, 2007) focuses precisely on Katyñ and provides a comprehensive collection of primary source documents related to that massacre. Allen Paul's story, written with more popular appeal for a general audience, serves as a very human introduction not just to Katyñ but to the fate that befell Poland from 1939-89; of which Katyñ was a most apt symbol.
Paul's book ends with mention of his accompanying President Kaczyñski to Katyñ in September 2007. As events in April 2010 showed, the story has still not ended, and Paul should already be thinking of a fourth edition. That President Kaczyñski lost his life at Katyñ shows that the story of that tragedy continues to affect history seven decades later. As more and more people hear about Katyñ, this book deserves widespread readership. It obviously belongs on Polish American bookshelves and should be placed by Polish Americans on the bookshelves of their local libraries.

Thank you Allen Paul. It is not often that a book is written by a non-Pole that clearly shows a simpatico toward the Polish people, as well as a careful factual understanding of their history.
Until the death of Lech Kaczynski and his entourage, the world still knew very little about the Katyn Massacre, and there was not that much available in the popular press for people who wanted to learn more. The Katyn massacre is a harsh reminder of what the Soviet Union and its supporters and sympathizers were all about. It is but another reason why the Poles detest the Soviets, and why when Kaczynski's plane crashed their immediate default position was that the Russians must have had something to do with the tragedy. Read this and Norman Davies' books and the Poles position looks a bit less paranoid.

Unlike the Jewish Holocaust the Katyn Massacre, the deportation and extermination of Poles, and the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 - another of Stalin's gifts to the world -- far too little information has been brought to light on the atrocities perpetuated by the Soviets.
Paul not only discusses the genocidal Katyn massacre itself, but he also gives a thorough review of Polish history in WWII and the immediate aftermath. I was delighted to see him dispel Nazi propaganda that has been widely and uncritically repeated by U.S. historians. One such is that Polish cavalry charged German tanks. Not true, and simply floated out there by the Nazis to make Poles look stupid. Likewise, he dispels the myth that the Polish Air Force was destroyed during the first few days of the war. And, bless him, he gives due credit to "the greatest Ally" and their tremendous and unacknowledged contributions to the war.
So effective were Soviet propaganda and lies that until recently, many people believed that the Katyn massacre had been committed by the Germans. Today we know the truth. The Katyn massacres were not just a cold-blooded shooting of captive enemy officers, but part of a systematic destruction of the cream of Polish society within the context of the plan to exterminate all of Polish intelligentsia. This continued into the days after WW II when the cream that was left was hounded and persecuted, jailed and tortured. No wonder my father refused to go back until Solidarnosć tossed the bums out on their collective (no pun intended) butts.
He provides a graphic description of the massacres and the discovery of the mass graves by the Nazis, reconstruction of forensic evidence, and the subsequent lies by the Soviets denying their involvement and the cover up by the Brits and the U.S.
Paul provides a fantastic personal portrait of the courtly and patriotic General Władysław ikorski and his valiant efforts on behalf of his people, as well as the shabby and disrespectful treatment he received at the hands of the Brits. He also raises old and lingering questions about ikorski's "airplane accident" on July 4, 1943: "Coming when it did, only weeks after the discoveries at Katyn, ikorski's death seemed too convenient." ikorski was pushing the Brits and Americans to make public the Katyn massacres and was an inconvenient thorn in their side when it was in their interest to ignore the fact that all evidence pointed to the fact that they had made a pact with the devil - i.e. Stalin. Roosevelt comes under withering criticism by Paul, insofar as he portrays him as barely cognizant or caring about the fate of Eastern Europe. Another reason - once again - for my ongoing contempt of this celebrated American president.
Paul suggests that the Polish government-in-exile should have been more flexible, and more willing to compromise with Stalin. This is where I take issue with him. There is no evidence that Poland's fate would have been any different if they had been more cooperative or "realistic" - in fact, given the fact that Stalin was a sociopathic mass murderer of HIS OWN PEOPLE, there was no reasoning with this guy. And the Poles knew it. There is a great photo in the book of the two great generals of Poland, ikorski and my godfather General Władysław Anders, with Stalin looking like the cat that swallowed the canary, and the two generals gazing at him in utter mistrust and loathing. The photo says it all.
I also take issue with him for his less than well informed contention regarding the Kresy borderlands. Paul says that Poland and Russia had equal right to these lands. This is the problem when a journalist takes on a project that should have been taken on by (ok even with) a historian. The Kresy were always part of Poland over the centuries, except during the brutal partitions. So, I am surprised that all the Poles who gave Mr. Paul his awards in the past did not disabuse him of this error in previous editions so that he could make it right in this one.
All I can conclude is that Poles are so happy to have someone pay attention to their history that they become uncritical and endorse everything, poor or good, factual or less. Not everything written about Poland (or by a Pole deserves 5 stars!)
Paul also discusses many of the horrors faced by the Poles who were released from Soviet captivity as part of the Sikorski-Maisky pact. My grandparents and aunts were among those joining Anders army in Iran. Sadly, my grandparents were too emaciated by starvation and the harsh hospitality of the workers' paradise and they died shortly after they joined my father who was with Anders in the middle east.
At the time of this book's publication, the Soviet Union had finally acknowledged blame for the Katyn Massacre. Yet not ONE person has been put on trial, nor punished for the systematic murder of 22,000 Polish officers, nor the slow murder of untold hundreds of thousands of Poles who were shipped to Soviet lands simply because they had an education.
"Katyn" is a must read for those who want to understand the brutality of the former Soviet Union. More needs to be done and more needs to be written as an entire generation has no idea (certainly my kids never learned it in school) that the Soviets were as - if not more - brutal than the Nazis. At least the Nazis were put on trial for their crimes.

IT IS A VERY SAD BOOK BUT IT REALLY GIVES YOU A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT HAPPENED TO THE POLISH PEOPLE. IT SHOULD BE READ BY ALL BECAUSE IT IS A PART OF OUR HISTORY