Katyn and Bykivnia: what you need to know before the consul

The consul asked — and the room fell silent. "What do you know about Katyn?"

It's not a trick question or a test of general knowledge. The consul wants to understand one thing: do you feel Polish memory — the one Poles have carried since 1940, the one that has not faded to this day. Katyn is not just the name of a forest near Smolensk. It is a word that in Poland means a mass murder, fifty years of lies, and a living wound that reopened in 2010. And alongside it — Bykivnia near Kyiv, where the same tragedy touched our soil.

The fifth of March 1940

The Kremlin. Joseph Stalin signed a Politburo resolution. The document was less than a page long — yet it determined the fate of twenty-two thousand people. Polish officers, policemen, border guards, gendarmes, intelligence agents, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, doctors, priests. Almost all of them had been captured by Soviet forces following the USSR's invasion of Poland in September 1939 — under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

For six months the NKVD interrogated them, built dossiers, sorted them into categories. The sentence was passed without trial: shoot them. Not because of anything they had done — but because of what they could do. They were the living memory of an independent Poland, and the Soviet regime could not allow them to survive.

Who they were

Among the twenty-two thousand — eight thousand officers of the Polish Army. Police officers and border guards. But also — judges and prosecutors. University lecturers. Doctors. Catholic priests. Factory owners and landowners. Those who had built the Second Polish Republic — a state that survived only twenty-one years between two occupations.

They were the elite of pre-war Poland. The Soviet regime saw them not merely as enemies — but as potential leaders of future Polish resistance. People who would rebuild Poland again after the war ended. They had to be eliminated in advance.

Four sites

The NKVD split the lists into groups and distributed them among executioners. Four sites — three in Russia, one on our soil.

Bykivnia — and why it concerns us

Bykivnia is a mixed forest on the right bank of the Desna River, twenty kilometres east of Kyiv. A quiet place. And one of the largest sites of Soviet-era mass burials in Ukraine.

Polish citizens are not the only victims buried here. Most of the more than thirty thousand victims of Bykivnia are Ukrainians: teachers, engineers, writers, priests — "enemies of the people" from 1937–1938. But among them are also Poles from the March 1940 order, victims of the same killing machine. For Ukrainians and Poles, Bykivnia is a shared place of pain. When the consul asks about Katyn — knowing about Bykivnia means understanding: this tragedy is not somewhere far away. It is here, on our soil too.

Fifty years of lies

In spring 1943 — three years after the executions — mass graves were discovered in Katyn Forest. The occupying authorities announced it as a crime of the NKVD and requested an investigation by the International Red Cross. The Polish government-in-exile — from London — supported the request.

Stalin's response: severing diplomatic relations with the Polish government and accusing it of "collaborating with the Nazis". The Soviet version: "The Germans did it. In 1941". This lie entered the textbooks. The Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945–1946 excluded Katyn from its verdict — no evidence was found of Reich involvement, and the Allies did not press for Soviet accountability.

In Poland — where the USSR had installed a controlled regime — the word "Katyn" meant risk. People knew. And stayed silent. Polish children studied in schools where Katyn did not exist. Katyn became a symbol not only of mass murder — but of organised, state-sanctioned lying.

1990: the truth came to light

April 1990. Fifty years later. Mikhail Gorbachev officially acknowledged NKVD responsibility. The Soviet side handed Poland the documents — including the original Politburo resolution of 5 March 1940 bearing the signatures of Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov and Mikoyan.

For Poland this was more than a legal admission of guilt. It was the rehabilitation of every Pole who had told the truth and been forced to stay silent. Half a century of "yes" and "no" — where "yes" could cost your freedom.

10 April 2010

Exactly seventy years after the order was signed — a Polish delegation was flying to Smolensk for the memorial ceremony. On 10 April 2010, the presidential aircraft approached in fog and fell short of the runway.

Ninety-six people were killed. Among them: President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and First Lady Maria Kaczyńska. The Chief of the General Staff. The President of the National Bank. Members of Parliament. Bishops. Leaders of veterans' associations and representatives of the families of Katyn victims.

What you need to know — short and clear

For the interview it is enough to answer confidently on a few key points. Here is the minimum that the consul will appreciate: