WAS KATYŃ GENOCIDE? Polish officers were killed

Katyn was a war crime not genocide.

They were targetted as ethnic Serbs and they were for the cleansing. Pretty much all the Serbs there, yes.

Katyń was a war crime, I agree.

Yes, a mass murder that was a war crime.

Well, the ethnic Serbs weren't so innocent either, weren't they...how many people did they kill because they weren't Serbs???

I really would leave that special cesspit out in a discussion...they deserve each other!

It's not about innocence, it's about the nature of the crime. Many of Knin's residents were old farmer types and presented no threat. It was the old lebensraum concept again.

But hardly genocide nor did the Croats try to wipe out the serbian peoples....

If you had paid attention to what I said earlier, you would've known why it was genocide, BB. It was part of the bigger objective to eradicate the Serbs from existence. You have to see it in its fuller context which was to wipe out the Serbs and remove their ethnic kind. Those people didn't have the significance that elite Polish soldiers had. They were just civilians living in a Serbian enclave who were singled out for being just that.

Said who? Your Serb friends???

Your friends massacred quite alot of people who were so unlucky to be of the wrong ethnicity and/or the wrong religion too, do I have to really remind you???

Google is still full of it...

It was a bloody civil war your friends startet!

Croats wanted their independence, their own country, nothing to do anymore with the Serbs - That was their goal, not the eradication of the serbian people...

To much youtube-conspiracy videos today again Seanie?

Said fair and balanced reporting, BB. BB, can't you see? I'm not discussing the broader conflict, I'm discussing the specific crime of genocide.

I don't know any Serbs personally. We all know that each group was as bad as the other.

Croats were pushed into their independence through German meddling. You had 2 cretins as foreign ministers who even blew off the Americans, such was their greed and arrogance.

There's nothing conspiratorial about this, it's documented material.

Ooooh pleeeeaaaaase! You start to sound like crazy Crow!

Now the Germans are to blame for everything that happened down there????

Ask a Croat if Germany is "guilty" for their independence and if they want back under the serbian boot!

Like an islamists nutter, right? It's always someone elses fault...better blame him than taking a good long look into the mirror...it's so much easier and soooo convenient!

No, not everything but EVERY side said that it was Germany that expedited the drive to independence. The Brits, the Americans, most Yugoslavs, you name it. More time was needed to put a viable solution on the table but your snakes triggered events before their time.

My German friend agrees completely. He has read more than I have on it and had many bad words for what Germany did there.

I can show you the phone numbers from german friends who agree with ME, so what?

Is that your argument? Your german friend and Crow agree with you? I would be double cautious if such a nutter agrees with me Seanus.

The yugoslavian cesspit doesn't need european/german meddling at all. They always hated and killed each other....abit like the ME actually.

Oh and the Croats are quite happy about their independence...why is that a bad thing?

Apropos the massacre in Knin...what about Vukovar?
Genocide too?

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6162474.stm

BB, are you listening? Everyone apart from Croatia criticised their intervention. They overstepped their mark.

Did I say it was a bad thing? They voted and they wanted to be separate, so fine. It just didn't need the German hand.

Morel targetted everyone in his camp, how can we discuss if you continue to invent stuff?:)

TheOther

When those killed represent the best and brightest (or so i have been told who were the majority murdered in Katyn) of a culture or ethnic population, then the implied objective would be to undermine that population, to the extent that that population does not have the historical footing with which to produce and pass on its legacy to another generation. Thus, it could be inferred that Katyn was a genocide. Katyn may not have had to the full bore technique Rowanda did, but studying USSRs methodology of eliminating those they oppose, such as the Ukrainian Holodrome (sp?), would lead me to believe this was just one of many such actual or planned acts by those powers. My Opinion.

Below a translation (Note to Moderators: it is not online) of the 1940 Katyń document signing the death warrant for the execution 27,500 mainly Poles considered counter-revolutionary and being enemies of Soviet power.

IMO this document clearly demonstrates that the killings were not part of a genocidal policy against Poles—as not all Poles were thus executed or deported from Eastern Poland.

An interesting adjunct to the Katyń story and what the Allies knew or did not know.

In the USA, a secret document (no. RA No. 35221) dated 15 March 1946 by the Department of State Office of Research and Intelligence (a foreunner of CIA) entitled: General Anders' Polish Second Corps as a Source of International Misunderstanding it states on page 9:


The question is, in March 1946 did the US Department of State Office of Research and Intelligence really believe the Germans were responsible? Or were they trying to convince the President that the Soviets did not murder the Polish officers knowing full well that the Soviets were responsible? If so to what end? Was the ORI infiltrated by the Soviet intelligence?

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Memorandum from the Head of the NKVD of the USSR L.Beria for Stalin (March 1940)
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USSR
People’s Commissariat Top Secret
For Internal Affairs 5 iii 1940
March 1940
No. 794/5
Moscow

Committee Of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)

To Comrade Stalin

At the present time a great number of former officers of the Polish Army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence services, members of Polish nationalist (counter-revolutionary) parties, members of declared (counter-revolutionary) insurgent organisations, fugitives and others are being held in NKVD POW camps in the USSR and in prisons in the western districts of the Ukraine and Belorussia. They are all fervent enemies of Soviet power and filled with hatred for the Soviet system.

The POWs, the officers and the policemen in the camps are trying to continue counter-revolutionary activities. Every one of them is only waiting to be freed in order to take an active role in the struggle against Soviet power.

In the Western districts of the Ukraine and Belorussia operatives of the NKVD have uncovered a number of insurrectionary organisations. Former officers of the former Polish Army, former policemen and gendarmes have been playing a leading role in these organisations.

Amongst the detained deserters and other persons who have violated state borders a considerable number of people have been discovered who are members of counter- revolutionary espionage and insurrectionary organisations.

Altogether 14,736 former officers, civil servants, landowners, policemen, gendarmes, prison guards, settlers and intelligence agents (not counting private soldiers and NCOs), over 97% of them Polish, are being held in the POW camps.

They include:
Generals, colonels and lieutenant colonels - 295
Majors and captains - 2,080
Lieutenants, second lieutenants and officer cadets - 6,049
Officers and junior leaders in the police, frontier guards
and gendarmerie - 1,030
Policemen, gendarmes, prison guards and intelligence agents - 5,138
Civil servants, landowners, Roman Catholic priests and
military settlers - 144

Altogether 18,632 people (including 10,685 Poles) are being held in prisons in the western districts of the Ukraine and Belorussia.

They include:
Former officers - 1,207
Former policemen, intelligence agents and gendarmes - 5,141
Spies and saboteurs - 347
Former landowners, factory owners and civil servants - 465
Members of various counter-revolutionary and insurrectionary organisations
and various counter-revolutionary elements - 5,345
Deserters - 6,127

Taking into account that they are all hardened opponents of Soviet power showing no signs of changing, the NKVD of the USSR considers it essential to:

I. Recommend to the NKVD of the USSR:

1). That the cases of the 14,700 people held in POW camps, the former Polish officers, civil servants, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, settlers and prison guards,

2). As well as the cases of all those 11,000 people held in prisons in western Ukraine and Belorussia, members of various counter-revolutionary, espionage and sabotage organisations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, civil servants and deserters

— be reviewed as a matter of urgency and that the supreme penalty—death by shooting—be imposed.

II. That the cases be reviewed, without calling the accused, without presenting accusations, or the decisions to end interrogations or guilty verdicts for the following:

(a) those held in POW camps based on the information provided by the NKVD Committee for POW Affairs of the USSR.

(b) those held based on information provided by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and the Belorussian SSR.

III. To empower a three-person panel composed of comrades (NN crossed out by hand), Merkulov Kabulov [?] (added by hand), and Bashtakov (Head of the NKVD of the USSR 1st Special Department).

The People’s Commissar
For Internal Affairs of the USSR

(signature)

L. Beria
P13/144
5 iii 1940

Handwritten
For action
(signature: Beria)

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Diagonally across the page are Stalin’s, Voroshilov’s, Molotov’s and Mikoyan’s signatures. In the margin of the official document are Comrade Kalinin’s and Comrade Kaganovich’s signatures.

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Sure, and the earth is flat. I give up - you're just too ignorant.

Are you Polack?...Then forget 'holocaust' and focus on addressing Katyn and Holodomor...Katyn was a 'small' genocide, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, however you want to describe it...Do not let your discourse be dictated by Khazar 'holocaust' worshippers.

A war crime?

I've always thought that you need A WAR to consider a crime comitted
during it a "WAR crime".

So, gentlemen, maybe you would be so kind as to explain to me what war did
Soviet Union fight against Poland in April 1940?

There was no war. The victims of Katyn were murdered only because of their
ethnicity, so it was clearly a genocide.

Not at all.

I recently posted an English translation (not available on the internet) from the original Soviet document (as supplied from Moscow state archives and notarised as an authentic copy taken from the originals) which was subsequently deleted by the PF moderators for reasons best known to whomever deleted my post but which unequivically showed that those prisoners from Poland, Ukraine, and Belorussia were recommended to be executed were considered 'enemies' of the people, members of anti-soviet organisations, etc and not because they were ethnic Poles. FYI the recommendation for execution came from NKVD to Stalin not Stalin to the NKVD. Stalin did not initiate the executions but certainly did not disagree with the NKVD execution request and signed the paperwork along with Molotov and others.

I think Seanus was the only person who got to read it before it was removed but I am certainly not going to waste my time re-typing and re-posting it to have it deleted again.

So, let me get this straight. They were murdered because they were considered
"enemies of the people", so it's not a genocide, but a war crime?


So, I have to ask again: what WAR was Soviet Union waging against Poland in April 1940?

There was no war, there wasn't even a Polish state at that time, so how could it be a war
crime? We can debate if it was a genocide because of ethnicity or because of political
reasons, but it was still a genocide.

Surely even you must know this? 17 September 1939 Red Army invades Poland, thousands lof Polish POWs deported in USSR. NKVD repression continues in Eastern Poland leading to the deoportations of some estimated 1.7 million Polish citizens to Soviet settlements, POW camps and slave labour camps up until 1941. What war you ask? What war indeed!


If you say so and who am I to disagree and I do not feel the need to argue the point further when the documents are emphatic ;-)

Sjam's document should have stayed, this is not a court of law. Forum non conveniens.

Surely even you must know that September campaign ended long time before April 1940
when Katyń victims were murdered. Surely, you must know that it was not only POWs
who were executed there but also civilian prisoners captured after the September
campaign was over (intellectuals, priests, land and factory owners, lawyers or as
you said "enemies of the people").

How could you class murdering them, long time after the war was over, as a "war crime"
is beyond me.


Yes, that is exactly what I'm asking. What war between Poland and Soviet Union
was waged in April 1940, that would justify calling the Katyn massacre a "war crime".


I would love to see the document which "proves" that murdering civilian prisoners
(some of them captured after the war) in the time of peace is a "war crime" :-)

Ha! I guess using the same nonsensical terms of your argument the war in Poland against the Nazis also ended with the September campaign!!

Where is your real evidence that a genocidial camapign against all Poles was perpetrated by Soviet Union? The Katyń crimes and the much larger criminal deportations does not provide evidence of this unless you are trying to argue that the percentage of total population of Eastern Poland included in these two crimes equate to the majority of the population from Esatern Poland? If this were the case then this would be genocide.

I await your evidence with interest!


Maybe the moderator who deleted my translation can reinstate it for you!

Interesting, since when did genocide had to be carried out against all Poles when according to most definitions targetting a specific group based on its nationality is genocide? Therefore we can speak of genocide commited on Polish elite or inteligentsia.

No one at any points spoke of genocide against all Poles, genocide was commited on elements of Polish nation based on their inclusion into said nation aka murder by ethnicity.

Thats called genocide.

no. It was mass murder

According to the actual NKVD document(s) ordering the execution of those we include under generic term 'Katyń' ethnicity played no part at all — the NKVD perceived threat against the imposition of Soviet communist control in Eastern Poland by those groups listed in the documents was the motivating factor. This is factual evidence from the NKVD documents. That they were mainly Poles in this specific case was of no importance to the NKVD as the policy of eliminating potential anti-communist threats was enacted ruthlessly in all Soviet controlled regions—before WWII, during WWII, and post WWII.


Precisely.

No, you are wrong again.

Even you must know that Poland was officialy in the state of war with Germany
at that time and Polish armed forces were fighting Germans on many fronts of the war
whilst there was no state of war between Poland and Soviet Union in April 1940, hence
it's nonsensical to call Katyń a "war crime".


That's just pure idiocy. Since when does the MAJORITY of the population have to
be murdered to consider it a genocide?


Ethnicity doesn't have to play a part. What Pol Pot did in Cambodia also
didn't have anything to do with ethnicity but certainly you wouldn't deny
that it was a genocide (murdering the "enemies of the people" as you put it).

And the war with Soviet Union that started with the Red Army's invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939 ended precisely when? The peace treaty was signed when exactly and by whom exactly? No of course Anders was not wounded fighting the war against the Soviets in 1939 as war was not declared and he was so anti-Soviet because he didn't hear about the Polish-Soviet peace treaty of 1940?


Again, I await with interest the presentation of your evidence that shows the executions we now generically refer to as Katyń were genocide? Show me the documents and I will look forward to comparing your evidence against the original Russian documents that give the reasons for recommending these executions by the NKVD. Ha!


I didn't say it did. It was held by a previous poster that those killed at Katyń were killed because the were Poles, when this was not the reason at all. The victims were murdered because they represented a potential future threat to the imposition of communist control, and that they were nearly all Poles was totally irrelevant to the NKVD.