Children of the Katyn Massacre: Accounts of Life After ... (ISBN 0786427566)

The Katyn Massacre in Broad Historical Context:
In the massacre at Katyn and surrounding locations, some 22,000 members of the cream of Polish society were systematically murdered--all to prevent the Polish nation from possessing the necessary leadership to ever rise again. It was a cold-blooded act of genocide done by the Soviet Union against Poland, and its effects continue today: "Poland would today be a different country if the Soviets together with the Germans had not deprived it of its most enlightened citizens. Their extermination resulted in the next generation being taught and raised by opportunists, traitors, and betrayers. The liquidation of Poland's elite is permanent and irreversible." (Ewa Gruner, p. 49). The content of this volume goes far beyond the authors' childhood experiences of losing their fathers. In fact, the authors present a good deal of information of historical value. One of the most enduring themes mentioned is the fact that NO ONE has ever been punished for the crime of Katyn (p. 4, 46, 90, 104, 161, etc.). (Then again, this must be contextualized. The ends of the Earth are, to this day, searched for geriatric Nazi criminals, but no comparable effort is ever made to find and punish Communist criminals. Why?) Wes Adamczyk, who wrote the Foreward of this book, provides more historical detail than just about any other author in this book. (Adamczyk has subsequently expanded his essay into an excellent book: WHEN GOD LOOKED THE OTHER WAY.). A number of the children of Katyn live (or lived) in Wilno (Vilnius). Witold Swianiewicz personally remembers how the local Jews warmly welcomed the Soviet invaders (p. 203), and how he was nearly betrayed to the Soviets by a Jewish acquaintance who had evidently become an NKVD agent (trying unsuccessfully to learn exactly where the Swianiewicz's were living at the time.) (p. 204). Jozef Wasilewski describes the subsequent murders of several tens of thousands of Jews, and a few tens of thousands of Poles, in the nearby wooded area of Ponary (pp. 140-142). The murderers were mostly German-serving Lithuanian collaborators, notably the "Ypatingas Burys". Halina Kalwajt (p. 130) provides excellent detail on the seizure of Wilno from the Germans by the AK, just before the 1944 entrance of the Red Army, as part of Operation Burza (or Tempest). Halina Kozlowska describes the entry of the Red Army into Skierniewice in 1944 (pp. 181-182). The Soviets threw Poles out of their homes, broke locks, and stole at will. Those who protested were often shot. Other Poles were shot in the nearby forests. The Soviets also raped Polish women and girls. Later, the Kozlowski domicile was, for a time, confiscated by the new Soviet puppet government of Poland (p. 182). Generations later, some unscrupulous Poles, attempting to take advantage of the unresolved question of the ownership of the home, came to claim it. (This situation shows that it was not only the returning Polish Jews who sometimes experienced resistance to the reclamation of their properties.) In the decades following the Katyn massacre, and especially after the fall of Communism, many Katyn Societies have sprung up all over the world in order to memorialize the victims. In Israel, the Yad Vashem Institute, focusing exclusively on the Jewish victims of the Nazis, has refused to include the Polish-Jewish victims of Katyn in its purview (p. 231). Many of the children of Katyn victims have, during and since the 1990's, visited the several sites of the murders. Locally, excavations were conducted (pp. 35-37, 44). Some of the graves of the Poles had obviously been looted by Russians: "The local population began to find bones, Polish buttons, and military decorations when they, in need of fuel, were demolishing the fence that, during the war, had still bordered the burial areas. They would dig through this place in pursuit of military accessories and valuables. They destroyed a lot of remains." (Ewa Gruner, p. 41). (Holocaust materials commonly mention that Poles looted places where the remains of Jews were interred--all in search for valuables. The Katyn experience shows, once again, that such looting was a common occurrence. It obviously involved a variety of perpetrators and victims.) Wanda Wasserman touches on her life in prewar Poland as an assimilated Polish Jew: "She admits that she personally never experienced any anti-Semitic sentiments on the part of Poles. She has even had many Polish friends. However, from other Jews she heard about the negative feelings of Poles toward her people." (p. 222). Her direct experience adds support to the premise that prewar Polish anti-Semitism had been sporadic and intermittent, not constant and relentless. It also contradicts Celia Heller, who, in her ON THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION, would have us believe that assimilated Polish Jews experienced Polish anti-Semitism about as often as their non-assimilated counterparts.