History /
WAS KATYŃ GENOCIDE? Polish officers were killed [237]
As some of you know I am at Harvard working on my Master's in History; my thesis is on Katyń. Though I do not profess to know-it-all.
In historical context, yes, Katyń was genocide in 1948; any Ph.D. will say that and substantiate it as I will. The very term "genocide" was created by a Pole (Raphael Lemkin) during the Nuremberg Trials explicitly to be applied to this crime. Poles say yes, hard-line ex-Soviets say no. Is all really fair in war?
However, nowadays, in this revisionist historical world we live in many government/political academics and historians consider Katyń to be a
"democide".A.D. = C.E.
B.C. = B.C.E.
Genocide = Democide
Philosophically, what is the difference between the NAZI party's purge of Poles and Jews compared to the purges committed by Lenin/Stalin? Less sheer numbers?! Both fulfill the legal definition of "genocide", as accepted by the UN.
As time moves forward, historical contexts become changed; for many reasons and political gains and losses.
I have read a lot of opinion here, I'd suggest people read the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of August 1939 from an unbiased analytical view. The truth is often simple, but brutal and easily ignored or supressed: Germany wanted the Poles gone so his master race could move to move Germania eastward, and the Soviet leadership believed the Poles were to hard-headed in an nationalistic sense to become communist and wanted to move westward.
Katyń is a Polish national cry, rightly so. It is an admitted mistake, by Stalin himself. A white-wash in political discussion of the Big Three Conferences from 1944 to the Nuremberg Trials. It should not be ignored or forgotten, but it cannot be the rule of life either. Trust me on the later, I have been studying Katyń for two years and sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed and in disbelief.
Henry.
