During their period in the camps, the officers were
all subject to lengthy interrogations, as the NKVD attempted to determine who
of them could be coopted, who would possibly agree to work with and for the
Communists, additionally, the repeated questionings allowed the Soviets to
create a more complete database about the prisoners. The questioning period ended on March 5, 1940
when Stalin and the members of the Politburo signed the order calling for the
liquidation of the intransigent enemies of the Soviet State.
It was during the period of November to mid-March
1940, that the officers in Kozielsk were questioned by Kombrig Zarubin (AKA
Zublinin), he was described as being extremely cultured, well read,
multi-lingual and knowledgeable about Polish culture, customs and history. His questioning process was therefore (from
the victim’s viewpoint) even more insidious or (from the NKVD viewpoint) more
effective – he was courteous and elicited trust. The earlier questioners had only evoked
contempt in the majority of the officers.
Yet, presumably, his reports on the individual men,
more than any else’s, since they were the final ones, decided on whether they
would be sent to Malachowka (Villa of Bliss near Moscow) or to Kozie Gory. Zarubin left just before the transports
started. Shortly after Kozielsk was
liquidated, Zarubin and his wife (also an agent) were sent to the United
States, where he served as Station Chief in Washington of the NKVD illegals in
the United States. His is one of the
names linked to the Venona Files and his cable from Washington confirms the
level of anxiety, nay hysteria that the Rezident
was in as a result of the German announcement.
It is shortly after that when the liquidations in
all three camps began to occur. Because
of a number of exceptional circumstances more is known about the immediate
Kozielsk to Katyn (or actually Kozie Gory – which is where the massacre site is
located) process than is known about the other two sites. Three of the factors are that:
·
individual
officers, whom the Soviets thought to be malleable were separated from the main
group during the questioning process and brought to Malachowka near Moscow, and
they survived;
·
for some
reason the Soviets did not remove pen and pencil from the officers, who kept
mini-diaries, in some cases until they arrived at the very site of Kozie Gory
and these materials were not stripped from the bodies. The most famous of these diaries was written
by Major Solski, and it was secured from his body in the early days of the
German exhumation, the paper was treated and stabilized (to be precise, in the
body’s decomposition process fats are produced and they destabilize the
readability of the pencil lead on paper) and finally;
·
one man, who
was brought on April 29, 1940, as part of a group to the very station of
Gniezdowo, lying only several kilometers from Kozie Gory, and was separated off
from the group, was able to peer through a crack in the railroad cars walls and
observe how the off-loaded officers were loaded into lorries and transferred
away from the station, with the lorries returning for additional victims. That was Stanisław Swianiewicz, an extremely
well known economist, specializing in the German economy, who had not disclosed
this aspect of his identity during questioning. Clearly, his fellow officers had also not
disclosed this secret, and presumably, since victim lists were prepared, it was
only during a final check in Moscow, that someone determined who this
individual was and the message was sent to separate him from the group. In this case, despite Stalin’s oft quoted
blindness to German preparations to attack Soviet Russia, someone else must
have opined that it was better to hold onto this economist, since he could
always be liquidated at a later time, and in the interim his knowledge might
prove useful. Stanisław Swianiewicz testified in front of
the Madden Committee in 1952.
Although, many of the first group never
accommodated the Soviet desire for collaboration and joined the Polish Army in
Russia (as it was then known), they could not present any testimony about the
last days or hours, nonetheless, they submitted witness statements which were
collected by the Polish Army – these were not, for obvious reasons available to
the Germans. Similarly, Prof.
Swianiewicz’s statements were not available to the Germans.
However, the notebooks and diaries of the victims
proved invaluable to not only the Germans, but to the Technical Committee of
the Polish Red Cross and they were quoted in various wartime reports prepared
by the Polish Underground for the Polish Government in Exile.
In the interim the ICRC had attempted to propose an
alternative, given that it appeared clear that the Soviets did not appear to be
moving towards agreement for an investigation, and similar responses were sent
to both the Polish and German Red Cross representatives in Berne
The Int. Red Cross suggests that we endeavour
to obtain the consent of the Soviet Union either directly or through the intermediary
of one of the Allied States and the possibility of a direct intervention is not
ruled out. In my opinion the latter would be most advisable. The Commission would be under the Chairmanship
of a Swiss and would include members of Swedish, Portuguese and Swiss nationality.
By now the Soviet Union was now placing pressure on its British and US
Allies to silence the Polish Government, yet to be clear its ultimate intent
was not controlling the Poles about the Katyn Massacre, rather, this was a test
by Stalin to see how maleable the Western Allies would be when it came to
betraying the interests of their Central European Allies, among whom the Poles
formed the largest fighting contingent.
©Krystyna Piórkowska
