Katyn massacre
Sign in to saveSoviet mass murder of ca. 22,000 Poles in several parts of European Russia, including in the Katyn forest, which became a pars pro toto name for the whole massacre
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The Katyn massacre was the Soviet killing of approximately 22,000 Polish people in various locations across European Russia during World War II, with the Katyn forest becoming the name associated with this entire atrocity. It matters as a significant historical event that revealed the scale of Soviet violence against Poles and became a symbol of the broader brutalities committed during the war.
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The sites related to the Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of Poles carried out by the Soviet Union between April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the NKVD prisons in Kalinin, Kharkiv and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943. Nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, intelligentsia, and prisoners of war were executed by the NKVD (Soviet secret police), on Joseph Stalin's orders.
The massacre is qualified as a crime against humanity, a crime against peace, a war crime and (within the Polish Penal Code) a Communist crime. According to a 2009 resolution of the Polish parliament's Sejm, it bears the hallmarks of a genocide.
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1940 murders in the Soviet UnionApril 1940 in EuropeHistory of Smolensk OblastJoseph StalinKatyn massacreLavrentiy BeriaMassacres committed by the Soviet UnionMassacres in 1940Massacres in RussiaMassacres in the Soviet UnionMassacres in Ukraine during World War IIMassacres of Poles committed by the Soviet Union in World War II