The Katyn Forest

The Katyn Forests

The word, 'holocaust' comes from the ancient Greek word for, 'sacrifice by fire'. In the 19th century it was used to refer to mass slaughter, “especially by fire“. In 1938 Hitler predicts that if there is a war in Europe, the Jews will be exterminated. Poland at the time was known to harbour more than 3,000,000 Jews. Hitler swiftly draws up a plan to invade Poland. but fearing, “on the advise of his generals” Russia would see this as an act of aggression against the Soviet claimed territories in eastern Poland. Hitler at this point was not ready to go to war with Russia. He knew that opening a second front before they were fully ready would be futile. With this in mind, Hitler ponders with great thought on the situation at hand and decides to dangle a carrot in the face of Russia. He will use Starling for his own purpose of eradicating the Jewish and Polish problem once and for all. In 1939 a secret pact with Russia is drawn up to invade and split Poland in half. On the eve of this invasion, Hitler, (who regarded Poles as, 'primitive, subhuman') is reported by one of his generals to say, 'Genghis Khan had millions killed, and history sees him only as a great state-builder. I have sent my Death's Head units to the East in order to kill without mercy men, women and children of the Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the lebensraum that we need'. On September 1st 1939, Germany invades and occupies western Poland as the USSR invades and occupies eastern Poland. German troops and SS units take every opportunity to torment, beat or kill Polish Jews. All Polish Jews are ordered to wear identification armbands showing the, ”Star of David” emblem. The first ghettos are set up in Poland, and Jews along with the other judged undesirables are forcibly brought in from town, country and abroad to endure the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. The ghettos are walled and locked, to isolate Jews from the rest of the population. A concentration camp is opened at Ravensbruck. On the Russian side, Polish soldiers along with civilian men, woman and children are rounded up and sent by train or forcibly marched into the heart of Russia, where the ones that made the trip were confined to a number of camps. One such camp was near a tranquil and leafy wooded area, just a short distance from Gneizdovo village near Smolensk. Here in 1940 and under Stalin's orders, the NKVD shot and buried over 4000 Polish service personnel that had been taken prisoner. In 1943 the Nazis uncovered the graves of the dead when the German invasion of Russia was in full swing. Starling of course blamed the Nazi's and Hitler blamed the Russians.

In 1989, “after the collapse of the Soviet union“ Russian president,” Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev” admitted that the Russian NKVD were in fact the culprits of the massacres that took place in the Katyn forest. With this new found revelation he also unfolded another two such sites in the area. No one knows for sure the exact amount of victims that met there fate in the Katyn forest and the surrounding areas.

[NKVD- Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del.If you are Polish, NKVD means, "Nie wiadomo kiedy wroce do domu. (Impossible to tell when I will return home).

The Final Solution at Katyn Forest


Oh! how they lined in timeless falter
Within the heat of furnace swelter
No ashes but lime for them this day
As the furnaces were full at play
On the other side of day, they say
And stoking up well for tally made
From empty yards where children played

As showers silence from beastly cries
How fallen the fickle from guarded lies
And history will try to hide it's eyes
For truth be made from mans own bark
In human nature sense will lack
As comprehension blinds equation
We look within all hopes redemption
To make us seek another reason
And humanize with tortured treason
We spill your names in mud's frustration
With much this self abided thought
We lose all sense where guilt is fraught
And change of mind and heart beset
As is easier on the conscience met
Where swastika lays with shredded thread
Besides hammer and sickle, but know no bed
Within these compounds of silent dead
For they tell all too late..........

To the dead when read

Robert Anderson 2009