More than 22,000 captured Polish officers and other prisoners were systematically murdered in the Katyn forest on the western edge of Russia in 1940.
Three years later American prisoners of war sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of the atrocity after seeing rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the forest.
It was seen as proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area.
Their testimony might have lessened the tragic fate that befell Poland under the Soviets, some scholars believe. Instead, it mysteriously vanished into the heart of American power.
The long-held suspicion is that President Franklin Roosevelt did not want to anger Russian leader Josef Stalin, an American wartime ally.
Documents now released lend weight to the belief that suppression within the highest levels of the US government helped cover up Soviet guilt.
The evidence is among about 1000 pages of newly-declassified documents that the United States National Archives is releasing and putting online.
There's an excellent movie, "Katyn," made by Andrzej Wajda, whose father was one of the victims. I wrote about it in Oct. of last year. He doesn't go into American complicity, but it's not at all surprising.
ReplyDeleteHeard of the movie but never saw it, Teresa. Will check it out online. Tx
ReplyDeletehttp://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/on_9_11_new_evidence_from_another_massacre_20120911/
ReplyDeleteUncle Joe was a Bastard, but he was "their bastard" at the time.
FDR did a lot of great things. But his dealings with Stalin especially at Yalta were inexcusable.
At that stage in his life FDR should have stepped down and had some one else do the negotiations.