WAS KATYŃ GENOCIDE? Polish officers were killed

President Kaczyński equated Katyń with genocide because "Polish officers were killed just because they were Polish officers". But the ruling Platform oif Donald Tusk refuses to include that term in a resolution to be passed on 17th Sept. The Holocaust was definitely genocide, but what about the ethnic cleansing the Serbs unleashed in Bosnia and Kosovo or the elimination of tribal rivals in Rwanda? Or Stalin's artificially induced great famine in 1930s Ukraine?

I think it was as you select group of people to die base on some criteria but Katyn was just one part of genocide as others Poles ware to die in gulags and other ware killed or burn to dead in their villages because they ware Poles.

It was murder, but not genocide.

Define genocide according to the 1948 Convention then.

Seanus
Quote Wikipedia:
"...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such..."

You imply that the Soviets wanted to exterminate the Poles as a national group. Was that really their intent in Katyn?

It's a bad definition, isn't it? In part, what the heck does that mean? 0.0000000001%, 3%, 10%? I don't think so, war produces such results.

We probably have to go with what the common understanding of a genocide is: something unspeakable like the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda or Darfur with an extremely high number of civilian victims.

Well, they killed more than most mass murderers combined yet 20,000 of 37,000,000 isn't that many. The mind boggles!

You sir are an anti-Polish idiot, your repeated statements meant to belittle Polish achievements and generally sell Poland as insignificant betray the fact that you're nothing short of a little prejudiced fvck.


As i said before you're an idiot, read the definition again, extermination of any group based on its nationality is genocide.

It doesnt need to be murder of all Poles just any group based on their ethnicity but of course you wanted to turn this one around too didnt you? I'm starting to think you really are a sockpuppet of one of those anti-Polish fvcks who pester us here from time to timel.

That's true. If you think about it, the mind boggles indeed.


Get used to it that there are plenty of people out there who do not share your distorted view of history, man! And stop behaving like a 10 year old brat.


Then the killing of a group of ten people would be genocide. That's nonsense, and you know it.

While i don't deny that Katyn was a terrible crime, i myself am undecided on what 'category' it comes under, if genocide is what Seanus and ThOther say it is then i would hesitate to call it that. That does not take away the fact this was a crime and a very serious one at that, as far as i know though Katyn was the killing of Polish officers/soldiers?? i could be wrong about them 'all' being in either of these categories, so please correct me if i am.

No matter if it was soldiers/officers, that is not the way a soldier is meant to kill a soldier, that is meant to happen in battle, all i can say for sure is that this was nothing close to a battle!!!!

If your going to kill a man, atleast have the bollox to look him in the face/eyes as your doing it, the cowardly Ruskies could not even do that, alongside the fact they tried to lay it on the Germans by using Luger (German Officers Gun)

Polonius3

It was mass-murder, not genocide at Katyn. The number is too small to be a genocide and it was an one-off, not a thing that lasted for years or even for months. Also, it were militairy and not civilians. Genocide is when etremely large numbers of mainly civilians over a longer period of time are being killed based on ethnic grounds.

The ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks could be regarded as genocide, however, it is not exactly known how many ppl actually died during those cleansings. With genocide one talks about 100.000's or even million ppl perishing.

The Turkish slaughter of the Armenians was a genocide because it took place over a prolonged period of time and had over a million deaths as result.

M-G (genocide - the word explains itself)

I call it as it is, live with it you have no choice.


What i know is that you repeatedly ignore or willingly misinterpret facts to put Poland in negative light whenever you can and when i call you a biased uneducated prick you squirm like a princess fed cow dung, grow a pair of nuts if you cant grow a brain.

And yes killing 10 people that constitute a specific group (doctors, soldiers, teachers) based on their ethnicity is genocide if its calculated on wiping that group out completely.


It was genocide, neither genocide definition is not defined by numbers killed but by group inclusion and the size of the group.

If a nation has a group of 3 veterinarians and you want to wipe out said nations 3 veterinarians thats still genocide because you've been working towards an eradication of a group based on its nationality.

The Polish officers were a national group and their killing was ethnic and social based so it fits all the points of the definition.

It was genocide and mass murder since it fits both definitions perfectly.

Forgot to ask:
What did Salomon Morel commit? Murder or genocide?

By the same definition, Morel murdered people indiscriminately but did not attempt to wipe out specific group (he primarily killed Polish civilians but there was an odd German there as well it didnt matter to him that much) so unless you can prove that he was specifically targetting any group within a nation its mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity but not genocide.

Also he killed indiscriminately without any apparent goal, especially without the goal of whiping out any group in particular and without govermental consent there was also no systematic elimination of any group.

The guy was just a nutcase and a murderer but according to most definitions not a genocidal one.

Sokrates

Quote Wikipedia:
"Zgoda Labour Camp:
... but the majority consisted of Silesians from I and II categorie Volksliste and Germans (these two groups encompassed almost all Silesians), with some Poles and at least 38 inmates of other nationalities; often entire German villages were deported to such concentration camps. According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, after the World War II, "almost the entire local population (of Upper Silesia) became legally suspect of the crime of treason against the Polish state" [1] . At least 1,855 lost their lives at the Zgoda camp from February until November 1945. ... The inmates were systematically maltreated and tortured."

"Sometimes children were sent to the camp along with parents. Prisoners were not accused of any crime, but were sent by decision of Security Authorities. Authorities tried to convince society that prisoners were only Germans and Nazi Activists.[4] It is estimated that close to 2,000 inmates died in the camp, while torture and abuse of prisoners were rampant"

So, not an "odd German", but mostly German. And not "primarily Polish civilians", but "some Poles" (according to the source). Inmates maltreated and tortured on purpose until the were dead.


He was an animal, yes, and according to your definition he must have commited genocide because he killed based on the ethnic group his victims came from. So why do you call it murder then? Only because Morel was Polish? Try to answer without resorting to insults, please.

yup

According to definition provided above, Katyn was genocide. Anyway Kaczynski is a double faced twat willing to run endless historic policy. Why double faced? Because he used to completely ignore other genocide committed by Ukrainian OUN-UPA on Poles from Wolyn and Podole. The number of murdered is much higher and in opposition to Soviets they butchered everybody from a child to old people. Unlike Putin who don't worship people who committed genocide, Yushchenko building monuments to commemorate them! Of course Kaczynski supposedly so sensible about history prefer to ignore everything. This behaviour proof him to be a double faced liar with anti-Russian agenda.

Anyway this is not up to parliament to vote over history. This is just populist bread for politically ignorant voters.

Its not my definition you twat also genocide is a planned extermination with the aim of eliminating a certain group, Morel killed Silesians, Poles and Germans especially since Silesians fell into one of the two categories ethnically.


Sorry bud but Silesians were Polish, according to Russians and their local puppets they were not.


Because it was not aimed at elimination of any particular group thats for one, and because he worked without consent of the goverment which means the part about "organized" is also false.


Morel was a Polish citizen but for all intents and purposes he was a Jew and didnt identify himself with Poland, he participated in murder of Polish civilians based on their nationality so calling him Polish is a bit of a stretch, a Polish citizen ceirtanly but beyond that he was a Jew.


Again you mix mistreatment and murder with delibarete methodical elimination of an entire group, there were no standing orders to Morel (as far as we know) to do this to people, it was tolerated but not encouraged and it didnt lead to or was not aimed as total or partial elimination of any ethnic or political group and that intent makes all the diferrence in most definitions.

For all i care you can call it how you like it, genocide and mass murder are equally bad in my eyes but as far as legal definitions Morel was not guilty of genocide "just" mass murder.

Certainly not. Commies didn't fight nationalities. They fought "classes". This is their basic distinction from nazis. According to commies' stance there should be a "class war" after which there finally be a communism built. Soviet commies of Polish, Jewish, German, Latvian, Russian nationalities slaughter everybody who stand on their way regardless of their nationalities.

Do you really think if there were some Russians amongst Polish officers they wouldn't be murdered as well? If you still want to stand with a "genocide" word then add in front "all-non-commies".


What is finally your question?


Yawn... if you own this version then you should know why he did it. So what was the purpose? And how about the rest of Russia having famine at the very same time?

And thats puts into perspective your own opinion on how most common Russians are just civilized people rolling along, then you unconsciously go on to repeat whats basically Soviet propaganda of old.

Russia most ceirtanly did fight nationalities, Stalin resettled entire nations in conditions that amount to genocide.


The point of it was that Russia commited genocide against Russians as well, thats not a case of killing "everybody" but targetting a large number of groups based on their national or social membership.


Destroying the Ukrainians wealthy peasant class.


For the same reason. The famine was a genocidal operation triggered by forced collectivization and the murder of Kulaks, the goal of it was to starve the peasant class to death since independent food producers were exactly that, independent.

Over a million german civilians perished during the forced ethnic cleansing after WWII.
They died because they were Germans...that would be a genocide after MG's definition!

Sokrates

Stalin "genocided" his own people as much as the polish intelligentsia.
He tried to kill everybody who was able for an independent thought - because that could mean a potential enemy. That man was crazy paranoid!

The murder in Katyn didn't happen so much because those officers were polish but because those men were part of the polish elite!
That would be class-genocide as compared to race-genocide as the Holocaust...

What is worse???

That is a sick question, really! But in the end (in the long run) it is worse when you take the brightest heads of a people...that loss is much harder to overcome and is felt for generations!

The problem here is whether they were deliberately targetted for extermination or die due to harsh uncaring treatment.


Absolutely, i wrote that in the above post.


To be specific it happened because Poles defeated Russia in 1920.


None, i equate mass murder to genocide, the definitions differ but the end result is pretty much the same, i've got mixed feelings about German civilians getting a bullet back then for obvious reasons but whether you call it mass murder or genocide its all the same.

As far as Russia we should call it genocide simply because anything else might be used in the future to downplay the weight of our loss, as you have said our elites bought the farm and quite frankly we still havent recovered and its going to be generations before we pop a new intelectuall class on par with what we had.

Katyń itself was definitely not a genocide. Genocide is what Stalin did with Soviet Poles two years before the start of WWII.

Torny, I was doing my part in questioning the interpretation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. I didn't say either way if it was or wasn't. There are many canons of construction on how to read it. We must be aware of the prevailing climate of the times and also look at the nature of the crime.

The bit that got me was 'in part'. What I gather is that they targetted the inteligentsia to eradicate their influence. In Katyń, it was senior soldiers who were targetted as they held the cards in the Polish army. Remove them and you remove pivotal figures in the loop.

Anyway, Katyń is on TVP1 tonight at 20.20 for anyone that is interested.

First of all, that you need to resort to insults once again shows that you have a severe lack of social and communication skills. If you want to be taken serious, I suggest that you change that behaviour. Second, it was your definition, or your personal interpretation of the definition of genocide respectively. I just wanted to show how twisted your point of view is in this case.


Oh, all of a sudden all Volksliste I and II Silesians are Polish and not German traitors anymore? How interesting. I will remember that.


Morel specifically targeted the ethnic Germans, there's no doubt about it.

I personally believe that Morel was a mass murderer by the way, and for the same reasons I believe - like quite a few others here - that Katyn was a mass murder and not a genocide. In the end it doesn't matter though because both were horrific crimes.

Did with Soviet Poles, vetala? Ukrainians more like, that was genocide. It is my conclusion that the crime fitted the billing of a massacre but that Aleksander Savenkov was wrong to say that we can't talk of it in judicial terms (i.e as a genocide). Drafting legal documents is a precise art and we have to ascertain what the drafters had in mind when they said 'in part'. Otherwise, strict interpretations could be defended. 0.000000000001% is a part, isn't it? However, it didn't have the 'character' of a genocide. When you start targetting civilians on a massive scale, and not a tactical targetting of senior soldiers, then it fits the character better.

What I don't like about "Katyn story" is that it's being used as cover to hide Russian crimes in the East-Poland.

At least one million Poles in Kresy (today Belorussia and Ukraine) were killed, frozen to death, starved etc. etc.

My family had to escape to the German zone in order to survive.

Good point, Borrka. I hope you take the same view of the treatment of Serbs in Krajina (Knin). They were forced out by a Croatian special-forces operation in 1995.

That is genocide as you want to wipe out a whole race.

The Croats tried to wipe out ALL Serbs???