Customer Reviews

Katyn...slaughter and Silence

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This is not some super professional production but it does document the Katyn Forest Massacre well. KATYN is the story of the murder of some 20,000-25,000 Polish officers during WWII by the Soviets on orders from Stalin. After the invasion of Poland by the Soviets on September 17, 1939 thousands of Poles in the army were taken prisoner. The important thing to note here is that these were all officers (reservists) who were highly educated i.e., engineers, lawyers, doctors, professors, etc. Katyn is one of several camps that the Poles were interred in. The burial grounds at Katyn (with 4500 corpses) were discovered by the Germans when they attacked Russia. Each one of the prisoners was shot in the back of the head with their hands tied in a typical Soviet style. A propaganda war ensued whereby the Russians denied complicity and instead accused the Germans of the slaughter. The Germans brought in the International Red Cross, forensics experts, allied POW's (including Americans) to confirm the findings and to be witnesses who would spread the word about the true nature of the Russians and Stalin.

I recommend this vhs on Katyn to anyone who is interested in WWII history because there is none other out there that I'm aware of. One must realize that the atrocities at Katyn were always hushed up as WWII raged and the western allies needed Stalin's help in defeating Nazi Germany. The silence went on well beyond the end of WWII. Only 50 years later after the end of the Cold War was when the Russians finally admitted their guilt.

On a personal note, I wanted to say that I met one of the survivors in 1970 in Detroit, a Reverend Zdzislaw Peszkowski who is today in his eighties. I didn't know who he was at the time but have followed his life in recent years. He seemed to me to be a very kind man, a pleasant man. If you want to learn something more about Katyn and Rev. Peszkowski you might want to google the names. There's a ton of information available online.

The VHS begins with the German-Soviet conquest of Poland and the genocidal intentions of both conquerors. The process was to begin with the flower of Polish society--not only officers but also intellectuals. Diaries found on the bodies of the POW officers are read. There are photos of the places of murder in the Soviet Union, and a large map which shows these places.

There are interviews with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Roman Pucinski, grieving widows and other relatives of the victims, etc. There are also interviews with the Rev. Peszkowski, who recently passed away. There is a clip of Mikhail Gorbachev, who was responsible for finally admitting Soviet guilt for this act of genocide.

The interview with an evasive old NKVD official is telling. There is a fascinating description of Luftwaffe photos which give a birds-eye view of the main mass graves, as well as Soviet attempts to destroy the evidence following their recapture of the area from the Germans.

Pucinski was part of the early 1950's US Congressional Commission studying the Katyn Massacre. Its recommendations were hushed up. Pucinski suggests that, had Roosevelt known about Katyn sooner, the course of history would have been different, and Yalta would never have happened. This is unbelievable. Roosevelt had a rosy view of the Soviet Union, and facts were not about to get in his way.

The VHS speaks of 15,000 Polish victims. We now know that there were 22,000, and this doesn't include numerous other Poles who died or were murdered in other places within the Soviet Union.