All language subtitles for Stalin_and_the_Katyn_Massacre.2020.Eng

In the north west of Russia lies
Katyn Forest,

beneath which lie
over 4,000 Polish officers

slaughtered in 1940

by the Soviet secret police,
NKVD.

Lying alongside them are
many other human remains.

They are Soviet civilians

executed in the same way
just a few years earlier.

The Katyn Massacre is only
a fragment of truth,

committed in the USSR
for over a decade

by Stalin's executioners.

Unshakable disciplined executioners
that worked in the shadows

and whose story, methods and names

can now be revealed.

STALIN AND THE KATYN MASSACRE

On 1 September 1939,

Nazi Germany started the blitz

and invaded Poland.

The Polish frontlines
were soon annihilated.

Warsaw

After a week,

Warsaw was under siege

regularly bombarded
by German airstrlkes and gunfire.

In the midst of the chaos,
somewhere east of Warsaw,

Captain Jozef Czapski

roamed with his squadron.

Czapski was a reserve officer.

In civilian life, he was a painter.

"We were exhausted

"We tried to assemble our men,"

"little did we know we were
about to be victims"

"of one of the biggest betrayals
of the 1900s,"

A few weeks earlier,
Stalin and Hitler

signed a non-aggression pact
that stunned the world.

But nobody knew that the dictators
had secretly agreed

to share Poland.

And Stalin wanted
his piece of the cake.

On 17 September the Red Army

invaded the east of Poland

and took the Poles,
in disbelief, by surprise.

Cornered 230,000 Polish soldiers

and officers were captured

and disarmed by the Soviets.

Captain Jozef Czapski

joined a line of POWs.

"Our guards said nothing

and threatened stragglers,"
stated Czapski.

"They took us west,
towards Tarnopol."

In Tarnopol,
like in all eastern Poland,

a large part of the population was
from Ukraine and Belarus

Two ethnic minorities
seeking independence.

Ukrainian population

welcomed the Red Army
as liberators.

Soviet soldiers handed out
Ukrainian newspapers

announcing that the USSR
considered them as brothers

and that they were protected
by Russia.

The propaganda ridiculed

the Polish Minister
of foreign affairs.

"Улица вспоминает пана Бэка:

Какой гибкий был пан."

And ridiculed the head
of the Polish Army.

"Пан Рыдз-Смиглы гуляет по Парижу".

"Then", says Czapski,

"We continued east,"

"towards to the Soviet border."

Another reserve officer,

Jewish doctor Salomon Slowes,

was also captured.

They crossed the Soviet border
by truck.

and they took Salomon Slowes
somewhere in Russia.

"We were lined up
in a huge field", he recounted.

"A long line of soldiers"

"meandered in the middie of nowhere."

"Each waited to give their name,

rank and ID number."

"I was next, when
a guy in front of me"

"proudly announced
to the Soviet soldiers"

"that he was a communist"

"Our gaze fell upon this poor man,

the journey to his dream country
had filed with gloom."

As for Captain Czapski,

he was isolated

and locked up in an odd prison

along with thousands
of other Polish officers.

This was Starobielsk monastery

close to the Soviet town
of Starobilsk.

On many walls," told Czapski,

"there were deep cavities
bored by bullets."

"The guards calmly told me"

"that the nobility was executed
there during the civil war."

"That's all I got."

"Unless barking orders,
our guards remained silent."

"In Starobielsk", recounted Czapski,

"loudspeakers would be used
continuously"

"to play Chopin
and Mussorgsky full blast."

"Over time it plunged the POWs"

"into a sort of depression."

"We lived on top
of each other in the huts"

"and many had to slip
under the bunks"

"not to sleep outside."

Like Josef Czapski

over half of the POWs
were reserve officers,

civilians in uniform:

physicians, engineers,

teachers, lawyers,

senior civil servants, architects,

writers and artists.

In total, 3,800 Polish officers

were crammed into Starobielsk.

As for military doctor
Salomon Slowes,

he ended up in
another monastery prison.

It was in Kozielsk, Russia

"Loudspeakers continuously played
music peppered with slogans,"

remembered Salomon Slowes,

"and it got to us."

"We were like in a prison camp
unlike anything we knew."

To pass time,
he drew this new world.

The church in the centre

surrounded by huts thrown together
into which the POWs crammed.

Kozielsk held 4,500 Polish officers
as POWs.

There was also
a third monastery prison.

It was in Ostashkov,
on a little island in a lake.

in northern Russia.

Held there were 6,500 Poles.

Like their fellow Poles
in Starobielsk and Kozielsk

they had no idea
what the Soviets had planned.

They were in the clutches

of the People's Commissariat
of Internal Affairs,

the NKVD.

An implacable repressive machine

of men and women

blindly devoted
to the Party's cause.

Its bloody legacy began
22 years earlier,

in 1917.

It was the Cheka's successor,

the secret police established
in 1917 by the Bolsheviks

just after they took power.

It was led at the time

by a Bolshevik of Polish descent

called Felix Dzerzhinsky.

Cheka stands for
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission

for Combating
Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.

Upon its creation,

it only numbered
600 hard-line Bolsheviks.

As the Russian Civil War raged
between Whites and Reds,

the Chekists had to enforce

the party's dictatorship
in conquered areas.

Kiev, Summer 1919

Some months later,

the Whites took
Kiev from the Red Army,

and revealed the Cheka's methods
to the world.

Proven or suspected opponents,

sometimes mere onlookers
and passers-by,

were executed after being stripped

then thrown in mass graves.

The Chekist's aim was

to speed up executiion
of the old world

an event that was inevitable
to the Party.

"Our action", said Dzerzhinsky,

"must be assumed
by the Party as a method"

"to create the Communist man."

But this had to remain secret.

The way of achieving
a proletarian dictatorship

was nobody's business.

If not for the Civil war,

these mass graves
would have remained hidden.

The head of the Chakists
led his troops by example

as stated by Dzerzhinsky
in a letter to his wife:

"No time to think about you."

I'm exhausted and never stop."

"Я даже расстреливаю виновных
собственноручно."

"Мои руки в крови."

На протяжении 1918,

чекисты арестовали и казнили
3.000 священников,

иногда заливая расплавленный
свинец им в рот

чтобы искупить их "грех"
(веру в Бога).

That was how the Cheka turned
deserted monasteries into prisons

and places of execution.

Lubyanka Square, Moscow

Place Loubianka, Moscou
Lubjanka-Platz, Moskau

In early 1920 the Cheka
set up offices in Moscow

In a huge building
in Lubyanka Square.

The basement was turned into
holding cells and an execution site.

The following year,
with the civil war over,

Cheka grew from 600 agents

to 260,000 agents.

The last published figure.

After this,
Cheka numbers were kept secret.

They locked down towns.

Many people were arrested
for unknown reasons.

They vanished.

It was as if they never existed.

From 1922,

Cheka took the name GPU,

standing for
State Political Directorate.

But Dzerzhinsky and his men

still called themselves Chekists".

The GPU attracted opportunists

not afraid to get their hands dirty

or simply enjoyed doing so.

Such as Lavrentiy Beria.

Born in Georgia into a poor family,

a man with precocious talent.

Aged 18 when the Revolution began,

he decided to infiltrate
Georgian nobility

by posing
as an anti-Bolshevik activist.

He then reported back to the Cheka

the names of the nobility
to be executed.

The young manipulator
was soon recruited

by the Georgian Cheka

where he rose through the ranks
at lightning speed.

Following in
Dzerzhinsky's footsteps,

Beria was a young local leader
who commanded respect

by torturing and taking out
the most important suspects.

Felix Dzerzhinsky died
of a heart attack.

He was immediately replaced
by two Chekists.

Vyacheslav Menzhinsky,

a man with heart problems,

and his deputy,
Genrikh Jagoda,

who would be tasked with
most of responsibilities.

The Party held
a majestic funeral for him

in line with his contribution.

Dzerzhinsky left behind
a repressive machine,

that was also merciless
and paraioid,

which even terrorised
its own members.

Every Chekist, regardless of rank,

worked with the threat
of a case file

that recorded their past,
weaknesses and errors.

Any of them could be arrested
or interrogated at any time.

As for the model Chekist,
Tiflis, Georgien

As for the model Chekist,

Lavrentiy Beria,
he continued his ascent.

The tireless worker

was in 1927 appointed

head of the entire Georgian GPU.

Now an absolute master
in his kingdom of Tbilisi,

Beria was blinded by ambition.

Thq Georgian had even put down
markers at the Kremlin

with a Politburo member
as chaperone,

Anastas Mikoyan.

He was an acconplice
to another Georgian

who had just removed
all his opponents from power:

Joseph Stalin.

From 1929,

Stalin gradually established
his personal tyranny

and the Chekists had
to shift into high gear.

The leader first sought
collectivisation

of Soviet agriculture.

To get 110 million peasants,

three quarters
of the country's population,

to abandon their land
and join collective groups,

the Chekists had to be
very persuasive.

This led to the GPU executing
30,000 peasants

after being labelled "kulaks":

reach peasants.

For the country, a rich peasant
was one with a cow,

but those described in propaganda
were nothing but a fantasy.

The resistance to collectivisation
was particularly strong in Ukraine,

the Soviet Union's breadbasket

To overcome this,
the Chekists deported

some 110,000 Ukrainian peasants

primarily to the special prison

on the Solovetsky Islands
in the White Sea.

They were to be rehabilitated
through forced labour.

So many deportees were uprooted
from their land

that in 1931 the GPU created

a new arm
to its repressive arsenal:

Gulag.

In two years, the Chekists
crushed the resistance

to collectivisation.

But collectivisation did not work.

Production fell dangerously low

while harvests were subject
to completely disproportionate

requisition quotas.

After a disastrous harvest
in Ukraine,

the collective farms were forced
to give their grain to the state.

They had nothing to sow
for the following year.

A terrible famine hit Ukraine

yet Stalin demanded

that the quotas were upheld.

On 20 November 1932

the collective farms
unable to pay in grain

had to pay in meat.

But there was no longer meat.

A week later the Chekists had
to register the villages

unable to meet the quota
on the "black board".

Their last grain reserves
confiscated,

the peasants were banned

from leaving their village
to stock up.

As for the consequences
of this sentence,

Chekists could not
state it in writing.

Nobody was to know their methods
for breaking the resistance

and the secret had to be kept.

But in spring 1933,

British journalist Gareth Jones

Managed to enter Ukraine
without detection.

Since 1929,

Gareth Jones had done
three reports from the field.

The land was unrecognisable.

The land was strewn with bodies
that people had stopped burying.

When the journalist
entered this region

cut off from the rest of the USSR,

the Ukrainians were dying
at a rate of 10,000 per day.

With no other option, sometimes,

the youngest was killed
to feed the family.

Even mothers gave their life

and begged
their children to eat them.

that the GPU executed
3,000 peasants for cannibalism.

With his detailed articles
in The Guardian,

Gareth Jones revealed the extent
of the famine

and accused the Kremlin
of being directly responsible.

Moscow vehemently denied
its existence

and accused the journalist
of anti-Communism.

The truth revealed by Jones

hit a brick wall
in the form of propaganda

that hammered home
the official version:

collectivism was a complete success.

The state used images
to support its lie

in overwhelming proportions.

While propaganda showed
combines in mass,

there were in fact none.

And while it said
Ukraine had an excellent harvest,

it was in fact disastrous

and people were starving.

This was how the USSR managed

to murder in cold blood
four million Ukrainians

disconcertingly in secret.

In 1934, the head of the GPU,

Vyacheslav Menzhinsky,

died himself of a heart attack.

His deputy, Genrikh Yagoda,

took over the GPU,

soon renamed to the NKVD.

The NKVD was the backbone
of a Soviet Union

that commanded propaganda
in unprecedented proportions.

The Chekists were the guardians

of an impregnable mass of lies.

They would now establish
Stain's total domination.

Pre-revolution Lenin supporters
were previously untouchable,

known as the old Bolsheviks,

but they were the next target.

Genrikh Yagoda, inspecting
the Gulag's work here,

had to take out the most important
and fast.

Yagoda ordered the NKVD
to arrest them

based on false evidence.

He then held show trials

at the end of which the defendants,
psychologically defeated,

confessed to their imaginary crimes
and were executed.

"We have made great progress."

"Firstly,"

"we live more comfortably."

"Life is more joyful."

"And joy ensures success at work."

Lavrenty Beria, head
of the Georgian NKVD,

was now one of Stalin's confidants.

He was in charge
of Stalin's private security

when he was on holiday
in his native Georgia.

Beria, seen here
with Stalin's daughter on his lap,

distingushed himself

through the execution
of Georgia's Old Bolsheviks.

This ambitious Chekist had
the ideal profile

to lead the Soviet NKVD one day.

But in 1936,

Stalin chose another product
of the NKVD

to replace Genrikh Yagoda

and guarantee the next stage:

Nikolai Yezhov.

A paranoid perverted being,

riddled with so many diseases

it was a wonder
he was still standing.

On Stalin's orders
Nikolai Yezhov executed

almost all the Red Army's generals

and two-thirds
of the Party's Central Committee.

But this purge by the Soviets

was just the tip of the iceberg
of an operation as excessive

as it was concealed.

On 30 July 1937

Operation Order

No. 00447 of the NKVD

extended the purge
to the wider Soviet society

by setting quotas for each region.

In total 200,000 so-called
"criminals" and "saboteurs"

were to be deported to the Gulag

and 70,000 were to be executed.

But the NKVD's regional heads

competed zealously
to exceed the quotas.

They sent hundreds of requests
to the Kremlin

to increase deportations
and executions.

These were approved daily

and without hesitation by Stalin

and the Politburo's
five other members:

Voroshilov,

Molotov,

Mikoyan,

Kaganovich

and Kalinin.

Most people were arrested at night

and taken to one
of the many NKVD prisons.

Confessions were obtained
through torture

which was officially authorised
by Party leaders.

The number of "accomplices"
was also obtained by torture.

They were then arrested.

For the next phase,
the NKVD used professional killers

led by Vasily Blokhin.

A former shepherd known for

his talent to kill in cold blood.

Blokhin was appointed by Stalin

as chief executioner.

His role specifically included

personally executing
the high-profile Party members.

Executions were often done at night
in a soundproof cell.

The victim would be held
by two NKVD agents

as a third shot them
in the back of the head.

Blokhin and his men didn't like
using the Nagant revolver,

the Chekist's main arm,

due to it being heavy
and heating quickly.

They preferred
German Walther pistols,

an efficient and reliable weapon
with a 7.65 calibre

that minimised blood splatter.

Thanks to Walther pistols,
victims could be executed

like clockwork,

every two minutes
if it was a busy day.

The bodies were then
taken away by truck

either to be burned
at the all-night crematorium

or to be thrown in mass graves

dug in secret

often in woodland.

They were then filled in
using bulldozers.

The NKVD would plant

saplings immediately after,

often firs as they grow fast.

There was soon no trace
of what happened.

This methodical organisation

enabled the NKVD to secretly execute

some 750,000 Soviets
in a year and a half.

To fight traitors, murderers,
fascist intelligence agents

and capitalism restorers,

the Party has appointed
as the NKVD chief

a devout son, friend
and supporter of our comrade Stalin:

Nikolai Yezhov.

Nikolai Yezhov was the subject
of a true cult of personality.

But it did not last.

Stalin would accuse him

of letting traitors
infiltrate the NKVD.

This led Yezhov to start
purging the NKVD

This led Yezhov to start
purging the NKVD

and the Chekists began
executing each other.

In this madhouse,
some even died shouting:

"Glory to Stalin".

This self-destructive circus was
nothing but a manoeuvre by Stalin

to purge the purgers.

He was covering his tracks.

On 15 March 1938

former NKVD head,
Genrikh Yagoda,

was taken to
Lubyanka's soundproof cell

were Nikolai Yezhov awated.

He had never betrayed the Party

but he was now disposable.

He could one day become a liability.

Vasily Blokhin

executed his former boss
in front of his new one.

A year later
Stalin demoted Nikolai Yezhov

and appointed Lavrentiy Beria

He well knew that those who survived

were collaborators
Stalin saw use in,

so did his all to prove
how essential he was.

With this aim on 17 September 1939,

when the Soviet Union began
its invasion of Poland

Beria methodically planned
Sovietisation of this territory.

He ordered the Red Army
to give the NKVD,

at predetermined points,

all the captured Polish officers.

Kozielsk, January 1940

Salomon Slowes and his comrades
had been prisoners in Kozielsk

for four months at the time.

"We were now allowed
to write to our families"

"even if the address
Kozielsk was secret."

"Our family must write
to Gorki Rest House,"

"Moscow, P.O. Box 12."

"The NKVD often held conferences
on socialism"

"and policy training courses."

"We had to study Party history,"

"discuss Stalin's
and Molotov s speeches"

"which were broadcast
via camp loudspeakers."

"And often at night,"

"educational films were projected
for us"

"Like 'Battleship Potemkin'."

"Battleship Potemkin" by Sergey Eisenstein

"A film I found nterastrg
but much too theatrical."

As for Jozef Czapski,

he was still imprisoned
at the Starobielsk monastery.

"Some nights, we were interrogated"

"individually, recalled Czapski.

"It wasn't about torture,"

"the NKVD just wanted to know
everything about us,"

"our families, beliefs, commitments."

"I was once pulled out of bed
at 1 o'clock in the morning."

"So, you worked as a painter
in Paris"

"for eight years?"
Chekist asked.

"Yes. From 1924 to 1932."

"Where your orders from
your Minister of foreign affairs?"

"No. He didn't know I was there"

"What order did you get
from his deputy?"

"None. He didn't know either."

"You think I'm stupid?"

"You had to draw up a map of Paris"

"and send it to your minister"

"You can get a map
on any street in Paris"

"You are lying. Never lie
to the NKVD, Captain Czapski"

Many officers saw it as a farce.

Nobody imagined
it was a way to select

who would live and who would die.

Meanwhile, half of Poland
occupied by the Red Army

was officially annexed by the USSR.

To oversee the operation

Stalin sent a fresh member
of the Politburo

Ukrainian Nikita Khruschev.

Nikita Sergueievitch Khrouchtchev
Nikita Sergej ewitsch Chruschtschow

"The changes don't look much
at first sight...

The same windows,

but the signs are in Ukrainian,

and their management is now under

that of government officials."

They were wiping Poland off the map.

Sovietising the people.

"In Western Ukraine
we have opened 13 high schools."

"Professor Kirill Studinski"

"was shown the door
by Polish authorities."

"He's now a member of the Ukrainian
Academy of Sciences,"

"and a deputy of the Supreme Soviet
of the USSR."

"Life has changed:"

"new citizens don't simply go
to school,"

"they want to instruct, learn"

"and understand the world."

While model students studied,

NKVD carefully drew
the list of Poles

who were "unsovetisable":

members of non-Communist partes
and student unions,

police and all armed officers,

anyone that had bean abroad,

government heads of service
and those superior,

journalists, artists,
members of the clergy,

industrialists, business owners,

and hotel and restaurant owners.

Lubyanka, NKVD Headquarters

4 February 1940

Beria scrupulously studied
the reports

sent by commanders at Kozielsk,

Starobielsk and Ostashkov.

After five years' detention,

the Poles were unsurprisingly deemed

impervious to the work
of political education.

They formed
intellectual resistance groups

and illegal religious services.

Some even openly described
the USSR as an imperial state.

It was time for Beria to go down
to the Lubyarka basement

and into the execution cell.

He found his predecessor
Nikolai Yezhov there.

He had admitted his crimes

after being tortured, as was custom.

Yezhov was probably worried
about his daughter Natalia

who he had adopted after ordering
the killing of her Chekist parents.

Six-year-old Natalia

was now an orphan
for a second time.

The implacable Vasily Blokhin

executed another former head
of the NKVD

watched by the new head.

A month later, on March 1940,

Beria's proposed No. 794/B

sent to his comrade Stalin

sealed the fate
of the Polish officers.

"They are enemies
of the Soviet Union"

"and are filled with hate for the Soviet system."

Beria suggested dealing with

the execution of 14.700 Poles

imprisoned in three monasteries,

as well as that
of 11.000 officers and civilians

held in Soviet Poland.

"It's agreed" he concludes,

"that the appropriate punishment"

"should be death y shooting."

As always, the execution request

was approved by all members
of the Politburo present

and was signed by Stalin,

Voroshilov,

Molotov and Mikoyan.

Two absent members,
Kalinin and Kaganovich,

gave their approval by phone.

Nikita Khrushchev in Ukraine
and could not be reached.

The session was held
at 2:10 in the morning.

The norm.

For the mission to go smoothly,

the Poles had to think
until the end

that they would soon be released.

From 5 April 1940,

the POWs at Ostashkov monastery

were gradually evacuated
by windowless trains

to Kalinin prison.

Vasily Bolkhin awaited them there.

This was disclosed only years later

by the NKVD officer
running the prison,

Dmitry Tokarev

Testimony of Dimitry Tokarev
recorded in 1992

"I was terrified when Blokhin,
Siniegubov and Kriwienko"

"came into my office"

"and said:"

"Come on then.

Let's get to it!"

"It was dangerous to refuse,
so I agreed."

"The door leading to the hall

"had been covered with felt"

"to muff e the sounds of gunfire."

"The prisoners went down the hall,"

"turned left"

"and into the "red" room."

"In that room,"

"their identity was checked"

"to avoid any errors."

"Once certain"

"it was the right person,"

"they were handcuffed,"

"and taken"

"to the execution cell,"

"One of the doors
of the execution cell"

"led to a yard."

"The bodies were taken out"

"through this door"

"and loaded on to trucks."

"On the first night"

"they executed 300 people."

"But as the executions"

"had to stop at dawn,"

"Blokhin gave orders"

"to take prisoners"

"in groups"

"of a maximum of 250."

There were executions every night

until 22 May 1940.

There was only one day of respite,
May 1st,

Labour Day.

There were 6.287 executions
at Kalinin.

The POWs at Starobielsk monastery

were taken by winndowless trains
to the town of Kharkov.

They were then taken
to the NKVD prison

where there were executions
every night for six weeks.

There were 3.896 executions
at Kharkov.

As for Kozielsk POWs,

they were taken by windowless trains
to the town of Smolensk.

Then they were taken by truck
to Katyn forest

as retold by Andrzej Wajda

whose father was murdered
in Katyn forest.

Some officers were taken to a dacha

used as an NKVD rest house.

But most were executed
directly by the mass graves.

Contrary to the other executions
and for unknown reasons,

the killings at Katyn were done
out in the open in broad daylight.

There were 4.404 executions.

This was the Katyn Massacre.

But this wasn't the full grim toll.

The NKVD also deported

officers and civilians arrested
in Poland to prisons in Kiev,

Kharkov and Minsk
where they were executed.

An additional 7.305 executions.

In a month and a half
the NKVD executed

a total of 22.000 Polish officers
and Polish nobility.

Via the Top Secret order
of 26 October 1940,

Beria gave a reward
of a month's salary

to the NKVD agents
that executed Poles.

This order stated the killers' names

including Vasily Blokhin,

who oversaw the execution
of the Ostashkov POWs

along with Nikolai Siniegubov

and Mikhail Kriwienko.

The order also mentioned
Fedor llyin,

Iosif Gribov,

Timofei Kupriy,

Ivan Feldman,

Ivan Stepanov.

Two sets of brothers:

Nikolai and Vladimir Kostyuchenko,

and Ivan and Vasily Shigalev,

two twisted alcoholics
Blokhin kept an eye on.

And there were two women:
Serafima Kuznetsova

and a Bulakhova,
whose first name wasn't mentioned.

A total of 40 Chekists

executed 22.000 people in six weeks.

This deserved nothing less
than a bonus.

But the NKVD's operation
did not stop there.

They had to erase all traces.

Katyn" d'Andrzej Wajda (2007)
"Das Massaker von Katyn" von Andrzej Wajda (2007)

Take two.

- Yes, sir.
- Let's go, quick.

Open up!

- Elzbieta Aleksandrowna?
- Yes.

Wife of Polish Army officer
Kazimierz Ignatowicz?

- Yes.
- Pack your things.

In just two nights,
entire families of the executed,

some 60.000 people,
were arrested and sent to the Gulag.

Why is the girl crying?

Don't cry!
Don't you want to see your daddy?

You're going to your husband.

Barely deported, four officers'
children wrote to the Kremlin.

"Dear Stalin our Father,"

"we are writing to beg you
to return our dads"

"working in the Ostashkov camp."

"Life is hard for us now."

"Our mothers aren't well
and we're starving."

"We are humbly asking you,
Father Stalin, not to forget us."

"We promise to be good Soviets,"

"yet it's hard to live
without our dads."

"Bye, Stalin our Father"

This first wave
of 60.000 arrests and deportations

was followed
by two much bigger waves.

A total of one million Poles

deemed "unsovietisable" were
deported to Kazakhstan and Sibeia.

They were met
by thousands of Soviet peasants

deported since 1930

who had no intention
of helping them.

Among the destitute,

the first victims were
youngest children.

Jozef Czapski was part of the last
transferred from Starobielsk.

To his great surprise
he wasn't released

but taken to another NKVD monastery

in Gryazovets.

He joined 395 officers

from the three monasteries,

the only survivors of a mass murder

to which they were obvivious.

Salomon Slowes was also among
the 395 who miraculously survived.

They struck up a friendship.

Neither of them understood

why they weren't freed
Like the rest of their comrades.

So as not to go mad,

Czapski held conferences
on Marcel Proust.

Day after day with his comrades,
he recited from memory

the seven volumes
of "In Search for Lost Time".

It will never be known why

the NKVD spared a handful of Poles.

One can only assume
that the Chekists

considered that these men
might come in handy one day.

One year ater

A year later, a dramatic
turn of events changed everytHng.

Hitler terminated his pact
with Stalin

and invaded the USSR
whose front was wiped out.

The Red Army's collapse
was so devastating

that the world expected the Nazis
to take Moscow in months.

British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill

whose country was
fighting alone against Hitler

offered to provide the USSR
with any help it needed.

Churchill decided to draw a line
under his profound anti-Communism

and offered Stalin an alliance

that the dictator in dire straits
gladly accepted.

But the UK was allied
to Poland's government-in-exile

run by Wladyslaw Sikorski

who demanded all Poles
deported to the Gulag be freed

and that Poland's
pre-1939 borders be restored.

Churchill, determined
to bring his allies together,

invited Poland and the USSR
to come to an agreement.

Stalin represented by Ambassador Ivan Maisky,

recognised the Polish government-in-exile.

The Poles deported to the USSR
had to be released,

or given amnesty in USSR terms.

The most able formed an army

of Poles in the USSR
to fight the Nazis.

But the agreement made no mention
whatsoever of Poland's borders,

with Stalin refusing
to commit at the time.

After some hesitation and pressure
from Churchill, who asked him

to have faith in Stalin's sincerity,

Sikorski signed the agreement.

Totskye military camp, October 1941

The Polish POWs began
leaving the Gulag

and were sent to Totskye camp
on the edge of the Urals.

Exhausted and starved,

Soldiers and refugees
had to throw together

the new Polish Army.

Winter 1941 came early.

People were housed in tents with
temperatures as low as -30 degrees.

93.000 of them would die
of exhaustion and illness

the year after their release.

The new Polish Army was formed
and commanded

by General Wladyslaw Anders.

Captured in September 1939,

General Anders languished
for two years in the Lubyanka

where he was often tortured.

He was freed personally by Beria,
who said to him:

"Let bygones be bygones."

"Do yo want some tea
or cigarettos?"

Anders didn't need long
to understand

that he missed
thousands of officers.

Almost all his general staff

from 1939 was now missing.

Now released,
Jozef Czapski and Salomon Slowes

joined General Anders
at Tokstoye camp

and told him what they knew
about the monastery evacuations.

And the plot thickened.

Had the POWs been handed over
to the Germans, as Slowes suspected?

Anders alerted Sikorski in London,

but the International Red Cross
assured him

that no Polish POWs
had been found in German camps.

Anders deduced
that his men were still in the USSR

and demanded the Kremlin explain.

The Kremlin responded via Molotov,

who signed
the officer's execution order,

that the POWs had been freed
as had been agreed.

End of story.

Moscow, December 1941

But Sikorskii intended

to shed light on
the officer's disappearance

and settle the matter
of Poland and the USSR's borders.

Sikorski was first seen by Kalinin,

who had also signed
the execution order.

Kalinin assured Sikorski and Anders

that he had no idea
were the missing were.

As for the borders,
that was the boss's area.

And the boss was in a good mood.

"Let's not lock horns
over a matter of borders,"

he declared to the Poles
as he postponed

talks on the issue.

He was then confronted
with the issue of missing officers.

Stalin denied all knowledge of this

but promised to ask Beria
to find them.

Urals, Totskoye Camp

But in reality Stalin wanted
to get rid of the Poles

by sending them to the front line

with no training or equipment...

Anders cateqorically refused.

In retaliation,
the USSR halved the rations

Moreover, Anders had had enough

of being strung along on the matter.

In August 1942

he decided
to relocate his army to Iran.

He offered his services
to the British troops there.

General Anders told Jozef Czapski

that he was sure the officers

had been executed by the NKVD.

But Czapski, obstinate,
refused to believe it.

Meanwhile, the USA had etered the war

against Nazi Germany.

The world's top economy

had given a blank cheque
to the war effort

and devoted
all its industrial capabilities.

Stalin could now count
on an additional ally

and would soon benefit

from the influx of US equipment.

It was good timing as
he was taking back control.

The Soviet's tenacity surprised
time and again the Nazis

которые были вовлечены

and known in
their repugnant terminology

as "Jewish Bolshevism".

They exterminated Soviet Jews
in mass

and in unprecedented horror.

The Wehrmacht was also ordered
to prey on this people,

to be starved to death
and replaced by German settlers.

Driven by despair,

the Soviet peasants formed
resistance groups

that constantly attacked
the German rear.

As for the NKVD,

it reformed the Red Army
in its own way.

In line with an order from Stalin,

Beria formed blocking units

that executed those reluctant
and deserters.

It wasn't rare for Soviet soldiers

to go into battle
held at gunpoint by the NKVD

to enforce Stalin's order:

"Not a step back!"

In February 1943,

Red Army won
decisive battle in Stalingrad.

It was certain:

the USSR was going
to bring down Nazi Germany.

The US, overcome with "Sovietmania",

affectionately nicknamed Stalin
"Uncle Joe".

In the UK, he was almost
as popular as Churchill.

Faced for the first time
with looming defeat,

the Nazis tried behind the scenes

to make peace with the US and UK,

and why not obtain
in the name of anti-Bolshevism

their matherial support
to push back the Red Army?

Goebbels, minister of propaganda,

deployed all possible means
to rock the alliance

between the US and UK and Stalin.

And, soon, his services

reported back to him
with intelligence he believed

would prove to the US and UK
that the real danger

was Jewish Bolshevism

and its master, Stalin.

Berlin, 13 April 1943

On 13 April 1943,

Goebbels told the world
that the German Army

had discovered in Katyn Forest

the bodies
of the missing Polish officers,

executed by the NKVD.

"An odious Jewish Bolshevik crime,"
stated Goebbels,

before revealing the names
of those identified

and the execution period:

April 1940.

Two days later, Moscow denouneed
a German-Fascist lie

and stated they were executed
by the Nazis

in July 1941.

General Anders' Army

The German ravelation
unlocked the mystery

that had consumed
Anders' men for two years.

Jozef Czapski was devastated.

Still, a haunting question remained:

who had done it?

Many soldiers wanted to believe
the Soviet version.

Katyn could be used

in true Nazi style to manipulate.

But could they really be certain?

General Anders pressured Sikorski
to hold urgently

an independent investigation
to put an end to the doubt.

Sikorski was torn
between his wish to know the truth

and the need to handle Stalin

so as to protect Poland's interests.

But some officers
identified by the Germans

were the family of his ministers

who also wanted to know the truth.

Sikorski was quickly summoned
by Churchill

to 10 Downing Street.

The Prime Minister was
extremely tense.

"We need your full support,"
said Sikorski.

"It is perhaps true,"
Churchill continued,

"but this is a trap set by Goebbels
to pit us against Stalin."

"A luxury we cannot afford."

Churchill said,
"Be careful and realistic."

"Do not publicly question
Stalin's word."

"Too late," replied Sikorski,

"Stalin may not like it,"

"but we have requested
an investigation"

"by the Red Cross."

The Polish request was
a clear betrayal

to the US and UK.

What right did the bloody Poles have

to doubt Stalin's good faith

and contribute
to Goebbels' conspiracies?

A particularly furious editor

would even write:

"On the off chance the Poles
were killed by the USSR,"

"then they deserved it!"

And Roosevelt

was sure that Stalin

was not capable of such an atrocity.

Far from being bothered
by the Katyn find,

Stalin saw it as an opportunity
to get rid of the Polish government.

And the USSR

announced it was severing
diplomatic ties

with Sikorski's government,

"a Hitier collaborator,"
declared Molotov.

Roosevelt and Churchill,

terrified Stalin would leave the alliance,

could no longer support Sikorski.

They had to settle the matter
of Poland's borders

without upsetting Stalin.

Katyn was a crime scene
under Nazi control.

Polish medical examiner
Marian Wodzinski,

head of Cracow
Institute of Forensic Medicine

was appointed
by Sikorski's government in London

to accompany the Polish Red Cross
at Katyn.

"It was 9:30 am,"
Wodzinski recalled.

"Despite the cold, an awful odour
made the air unbreathable."

"Then suddenly, we saw the bodies
in No.1 mass grave."

"The Germans had left several layers
of bodies clearly visible."

"We were speechless."

"After retracing our steps."

"we sat in silence all morning
to recollect ourselves."

"The only way to find the culprit,"
said Wodzinski,

"was to determine the date
of the killings."

The Polish team got to work.

The bodies were exhumed
by Russian POWs.

The bodies were so packed down,

they were difficult to separate
without damaging.

The upper layers were moulded
together into a fatty block,

showing that the bodies
had not been moved

since being buried.

Each body was searched.

Personal papers, cards
and newspapers were sent to a cabin

where a German team recorded
and translated then

"We could access them,"
recalled Marian Wodzinski,

"even though the Germans
wanted them as evidence."

"No document was dated"

"after 20 April 1940."

Many officer's hands had been tied

and many showed bayonet wounds
on their arms and legs.

"The tied hands and bayonet wounds",
noted Wodzinski,

"showed that certain victims
had put up a fight."

The bodies had different uniforms.

There were no signs of insects

on the bodies or the clothes.

This meant it had happened
during the cold season

and not during summer 1941
as the Soviets had stated.

It soon became clear
that all the executions

had been done with 7.65 mm bullets

and used exclusively
with German pistols

made by Walther.

"This discovery,"
recalled Dr Wodzinski,

"had dumbfounded the Germans"

"who had no idea
how this could be possible."

When Goebbels heard,

he was appalled and ordered:

dass sie absolut geheim bleibt..."

meaning it must remain secret.

But being impossible to conceal,

the Wehrmacht covered its back

by revealing that Germany
had sold

a large amount of Walther pistols
to the USSR in the 1930s.

To create the illusion
of impartiality,

Goebbels decided to gather
best medical examiners

from 12 German-controlled countries.

They arrived at Katyn
on 30 April 1943.

Professor Orsos from Budapest

interrogated in Russian
locals living nearby,

selected by the Nazis

and who claimed to have heard
the sound of non-stop gunfire

in spring 1940.

Some said they had seen
Polish officers

get off windowless trains
at the small Gniezdowo station

and taken by the NKVD
towards Katyn.

According to witnesses,
it had been

a common execution site
fort the Cheka since 1918.

Even if it sounded
like a recitation,

this last statement

was confirmed
by No.8 to No.11 Graves.

They held older remains

of murdered civilians
shot in the head.

"Professor Orsos,"
recalled Marian Wodzinski,

"conducted a thorough autopsy
that I attended."

"He focused on the skull"

"to determine the burial time"

"by the number of layers
of calcium deposits inside."

"I agreed with him,"
Wodzinski stated.

"They were buried
three years earlier."

"The only truly neutral
medical examiner,"

"the Swiss Professor Naville,"
recalled Wodzinski,

"focused on the vegetation
next to graves."

"Young pines had been planted
on the mass graves."

"A cross-cut revealed it had
been done three years earlier"

"durng 1940."

Marian Wodzinski and the
other medical examiners

had no doubt about
the crime period

given so much reliable evidence:

April 1940.

It could only be a Soviet crime.

Marian Wodzinski spent
five weeks at Katyn

to try to identify
as many victims as possible.

Among them he would identify
two of his best friends.

Out of the 700 autopsies he did,

he noted an astounding consistency

in the gunshot wounds.

Only two per cent of shots
required a second attempt.

The killers were
surprisingly experienced

with precise and repetitive actions.

Seventy per cent of the 4.400 bodies

were identifed

and numbered before being reburied.

All the victims were
exclusively from Kozielsk monastery.

The fate of those
from Ostashkov and Starobielsk

rermained a total mystery.

On 7 June 1943,

the work of Marian Wodzinski
and the Red Cross

had to be definitively stopped.

The Nazis were losing Smolensk

and in just a few weeks

Katyn would once again
be in Soviet hands.

Wodzinski passed his findings
on to the Polish resistance,

which sent them to London.

In July 1943

the Foreign Office gave Churchill
a top secret report

that concluded
that Katyn was a Soviet crime.

Churchill passed the report
on to Rossevelt,

adding the comment:

"Here are the facts."

"We must never speak of this"

"Katyn is of no practical use."

"Please send this back to me
after reading it."

Iran, December 1943

"On the way to Tehran."

"Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt
plus their staffs all came by air,"

"Soviet's great leader going abroad
for the first time in over 30 years."

Soviet Union Embassy in Tehran

Upon arriving Stalin was seething
against Churchill and Roosevelt,

who still hadn't sent
troops to Europe.

And he learned
it wouldn't happen any time soon.

Another reason to please him
regarding Poland.

Churchill proposed a solution.

The British PM laid
three matches on the table,

representing Poland.

He took the match on the right
and placed it on the left,

representing a shift west
of the Polish territory.

Stalin would keep his 1939 conquest

and, to compensate, Poland would get
part of the German territory.

Stalin agreed.

Millions of Poles and Germans
had to be relocated

but as Stalin said:
"Nationalities are just
a matter of transport."

Roosevelt simply asked Stalin

to keep the pact secret

until the US Presidential Elections
in 1944,

so as not to lose the vote
of the Polish community.

First surprised by this
democratic subtlety,

Stalin gladly agreed

to do the US president this favour.

Katyn, January 1944

"In January 1944
the Soviet government returned"

"to the tragic Katyn Forest scene
near Smolensk."

The Katyn bodies were
once again exhumed

and autopsies performed
by an all-Soviet expert panel,

which concluded that the Poles
had been executed in 1941

while the area was
under German control.

"The executions were carried out
by Hitier sympathisers."

"Each officer was shot in the head."

"A hallmark of Fascist executioners."

The witnesses confirmed
they talked under Gestapo duress

and recanted their statements.

While Nazis returned to Berlin

with all the documents from Katyn,

the NKVD presented new evidence:

"Several documents found at the site"

"were dated after 1940."

"Here is a letter from an officer"

"addressed to his family
and dated 20 June 1941."

"And Goebbels said the Poles
were executed in 1940!"

"Another letter was dated"

"September 1941."

The NKVD managed to sow
seeds of doubt

and confusion

among sceptical Western observers
at the site.

Katyn appeared to be a Nazi crime.

Nazi Germany surrendered

Poland

The war was over and, as agreed,

Polish borders shifted west.

Stalin appointed a Communist leader,
Boleslaw Bierut,

that the Poles quickly nicknamed
"Little Stalin".

The Chekists terrorised the people

and eliminated any who opposed
the Communist Party.

No Pole dared speak
of the Katyn Massacre

for fear of being arrested
or worse...

At the Nuremberg Trials,

the Soviet prosecutor maintained

that Katyn was a Nazi crime

to achieve recognition

from the world
of the USSR version of events.

But the judges deemed the evidence
presented by Moscow insufficient.

The court refused to rule
on the Katyn affair!

In international law,
Katyn remained a mass crime

with no ruling or conviction.

A huge setback for the USSR

which showed that their version
was very weak.

..IP I

Mr Czapski, do you object
to being photographed?

- No.
- No objection to photographs.

In true McCarthyism,
the House of Representatives

formed a committee

to investigate Katyn.

A political refugee in France,

Jozef Czapski was called
to give evidence

and gave a long deposition

at the end of which,
the president asked:

To say who, what government,

is responsible for the massacre

at Katyn in your opinion.

First of all, there
no doubt in my mind

that these men were murdered
by the Soviets.

Thank you for your testimony.

I must state my second point.

Secondly,

we keep forgetting that Russia is

the most central country
in the world

whenever it comes to issuing
orders or directives or policy

Full responsibility of this crime
does not rest with some NKVD sadists

but it rests with Beria and Stalin.

I want to thank you
for testifying here today.

The Select Committee found
the USSR guilty.

This finding still lacked proof.

The White House and CIA

refused to release
classified information.

As the Cold War raged,
neither Washington

nor London wanted to provoke
Stalin over Katyn unnecessarily.

Moscow

March 1953

With Stalin dead, Poland's surviving
officers and the victims' families

had hopes that the truth
would come out about Katyn.

As for the Politburo members,
they were both relieved,

with Stalin's tyranny and paranoia
in the final years

sowing terror among them,

and also concerned
for their own lives.

Head of the Chekists for 15 years,

Beria cunningly escaped
Stalin's wrath.

Chief of home and foreign security,

with incriminating files
on the entire Politburo,

he already acted
as he was the new boss.

But Stalin's other henchmen
were scheming against him

and ordered his arrest.

Lavrentiy Beria was shot in the head

on 23 December 1953.

The Chekist tradition
had been upheld.

For the new boss, Nikita Khrushchev,

Katyn was a delicate state secret

that had to be kept at all cost.

In 1959,

Alexander Shelepin,
Beria's successor,

proposed in a top secret letter
addressed to Khrushchev

to destroy every single document

of the 21.857 Poles

executed by the NKVD in April 1940.

"These documents,"
wrote the KGB boss

"could one day bring
this operation to light,"

"and cause undesirable consequences
for our country."

Nobody knows if Nikita Khrushchev

authorised the evidence's
destruction.

Moscow 1964

In 1964, Khrushchev's successor

Leonid Brezhnev inherited the secret.

Like any good propagandist,
he decided to put up a smokescreen.

He established
an annual memorial day

for the Khatyn Massacre

with an "H",

A small village in Belarus

whose inhabitants were burned
alive by the Nazis.

Brezhnev invited President Nixon

who officially visited
the memorial in 1974.

In response
the Poles in exile in London

decided to build
a memorial in the UK capital

sombrely named "Katyn 1940".

The reference to 1940
aroused the wrath of Brezhnev

who warned the UK
to prevent this "provocation",

But the UK government,
despite its best efforts,

was unable to stop
the construction of the memorial

unveiled in 1976.

One of Churchill's grandsons,
a Common's minister,

placed a wreath
on behalf of his family

yet the opening ceremony was

largely glossed over
by the British media.

Gdansk, 1980

In 1980, the Solidarność trade union

led a major uprising

against the Polish Communist regime

that was on the brink of collapse.

Genera Jaruzelski came out
of the woodwork.

Jaruzelski was just a child
when, like a million fellow Poles,

he was deported to Siberia.

He often wore dark sunglasses

after suffering snow blindness.

He was trained
at a Soviet officer school.

With unfaltering dedication
to Moscow,

he became
head of the Polish regime.

He proclaimed martial law

and imprisoned the leaders
of Solidarność.

Moscow 1985

In 1985

Mikhai Gorbachev became
the new Soviet leader

and tried with all his energy
to reform the Soviet Union.

Two years later,
before an official visit to Poland,

Gorbatchev asked to see
the classified documents

related to Katyn
and the 1940 Polish operation.

After reading the files signed
47 years earlier by the Politburo,

Mikhai Gorbachev replaced the seals

and ordered the affair
to be buried once again.

Warsaw, 1988

In 1988

new strikes led by Solidarność
ended in violence

and the situation was no longer
under control.

In February 1989

Jaruzelski agreed to hold talks.

18 June 1989

On 18 June, after the election,

partly opened to parties
other than the Communists,

rejection of the regime
was so apparent

that Jaruzelski had no choice

but to call on a Solidarność leader,

Tadeusz Mazowiecki,

who became the first prime minister

that was non-communist
in Eastern Europe.

Some weeks later,
pressured by the people,

Jaruzelski gave Gorbachev
an ultimatum:

he would cancel
his official visit to Moscow

if the Kremlin didn't admit
the truth about Katyn.

This blackmail would have meant

his sectioning under Brezhnev

and his murder under Stalin

but Gorbachev promised
to release some information

in the hope
Jaruzelski wouldn't cancel.

Gorbachev was in fact himself

losing his grip on the Soviet Union,

torn between
the Party's progressives

demanding more reforms

and the conservators
wanting to end it all.

In this chaotic context,

Soviet academics

went as far as publishing
in the official press

an article attributing
Katyn war crime to the NKVD.

Katyn was now an open secret
that the Soviet government,

on its last legs,

could no longer protect.

On 13 Apr 1990

Moscow acknowledged
the Katyn Massacre

via a simple press release
that put the blame on Beria

and absolved the Soviet Union
of all responsibility.

Not until the collapse
of the Soviet Union

would the Russian President
Boris Yeltsin

make the secret order public,

which clearly showed
that the USSR was guilty.

Finally, the last secret,

the burial sites of the Ostashkov

and Starobielsk victims
were revealed.

Those from Ostashkov were buried

in the Mednoye village mass graves
nearby Tver city.

Those from Starobielsk were buried
in Ukraine's Pyatykhatky mass grave.

Just next to a recreational area

for KGB staff and their children.

He wasn't shooting,
he was working."

Vladimir Zazubrin, 'The Chekist', 1923