The Katyn Memorial at the Sybir Memorial Museum

On 11 April 1943, the first news about the crime committed in the forest near Katyn was released to the world. The German Transocean Agency broadcast an official announcement “about the discovery of a mass grave with the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers […], killed in February and March 1940” by the Soviets. In the same communiqué, the sentence: “German military authorities calculate the total number of Polish officers killed and buried there at 10,000” was also included. Two days later, on 13 April, Radio Berlin reported the discovery. The case was thus highlighted.

And when did the Germans find out about the Katyn graves? It is not known exactly. Katyn was occupied by the Germans in the autumn of 1941, and it is said that in October two Polish forced laborers encountered the mass graves in the Katyn Forest. However, March 1942 is also indicated. Only February 1943 raised no doubts, when peasants living in the area showed the Germans places of mass burials. At the beginning of April 1943, the Germans carried out an exhumation. Thousands of bodies of Polish POWs and prisoners were excavated from the graves. At the beginning of June, it became warm and the bodies of the victims were placed in new graves.

In September 1943, the Soviets drove the Germans out of these areas. The Katyn graves were once again under Soviet jurisdiction.

From the beginning, the authorities of the Soviet Union consistently denied responsibility for the murder. They lied to the whole world that the crime was committed by Germans. This lie was repeated until April 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that Polish officers and prisoners had been murdered by the NKVD.