The West’s controlled media ignored yesterday’s commemoration of the 1940 Massacre at Katyn, despite the presence of the Prime Minister of Poland, senior government figures, families of the victims, and the Polish military—because the atrocity perpetrators were Communists and not Nazis.

The Katyn Massacre saw 22,000 Polish officers executed in a forest outside Smolensk, Russia, by the Soviet Secret Police after being held in captivity since the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939.

Marta Krzysztalowicz, granddaughter of Captain Henry Tadeusz Narozanskiego, who was murdered by the Soviet secret police in Katyn, lays a wreath at the murder site.

The commemoration service—held in Russia at the massacre site, in full cooperation with the Russian authorities, saw Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo; Law and Justice Party Senator and Polish Foreign Minister Anna Maria Anders; the Polish ambassador to Russia, Catherine Pelczynska; family members of the victims, and a delegation of Polish army officers—take part in a moving service for the murdered soldiers.

Polish ambassador to Russia Katarzyna Pelczynska Nalecz, and Foreign Minister Anna Maria Anders, at the moving ceremony in Katyn.

According to a Polish radio report on the event, more than 180 people took part, including the representatives from the Council for Protection of Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, the Federation of Katyn Families, representatives of the Ministry of Culture, as well as social organizations and cultural institutions such as the Katyn Museum, clergy, scouts, and schoolchildren.

The senior bishop of the Diocese of Drohiczyn, Dydycz Antoni, said in his service that the massacre was a “victory of blood which led to freedom. This forest was the last resting place on earth for these victims of the sword, but their blood shed here created freedom for their descendants.”

“We are surrounded here by a couple of thousand names. These are the ones who gave their lives for Poland, and they direct vision to other souls further away, to all nations where there are graves of Polish soldiers, to all Tombs of the Unknown Soldier.”

The ceremony began with prayer and the placing of wreaths in the Russian part of the cemetery. Half an hour later, a tolling bell started the ceremony at the Polish part of the cemetery. The Polish national anthem was sung and Mass was celebrated by the participants amid a sea of red and white carnations, flags and wreaths—all in the Polish national colors.

The ceremony ended with the laying of wreaths and the lighting of candles in front of the Katyn Cross and the plaques which contain the names of all the victims.

The Russian delegation was represented by the head of the management board for International Relations of the Smolensk Oblast, Yevgeny Zacharienkow. The ceremony was attended also by the accredited defense attachés in Russia from several NATO and EU countries.

Anders told Polish radio that the visit to Katyn was an “incredibly moving moment” that she would never forget.

“I heard about Katyn as a child. It was to know what happened here which was something that my father set out as his purpose of life. From the outset, he insisted that the Soviets were responsible,” she added. Her father was commander of the Polish Army in the East, under whom the murdered soldiers served.

Anders said that she was happy at being offered the chance to chair the delegation. “I am here not only on behalf of the people who died here, but also on behalf of my father. I think he’s glad that I’m here.”

The complete lack of coverage of the ceremony is in marked contrast to the almost constant coverage given by the controlled media to any atrocity committed by German forces during World War II, whether real or imagined.

This coverage blackout of Katyn is, of course, because the controlled media is largely made up of far-leftists whose primary purpose is not to report news, but to espouse far left communist ideologies.

* The Katyn massacre was ordered on March 5, 1940, in a directive proposed by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) chief Lavrentiy Beria, and signed off personally by Joseph Stalin. The massacres were started during the first week of April 1940, and carried on until May.

German troops discovered the mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943, and allowed an international commission consisting of twelve forensic experts and their staffs from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and Hungary to witness the exhumations and post-mortems.

The Soviet Union claimed that the executions had been carried out by the Nazis, and, to “prove” this, even forced a confession from several senior German prisoners of war “admitting” to the massacre. These Germans were hanged by the Soviets after making their “confessions,” and the Katyn Massacre was also used as “evidence” against the Germans at the Nuremberg Trials.

Left: The December 1945 announcement of the execution of German army officers after they “confessed” to the Katyn Massacre, and right, the March 1940 memo from Beira to Stalin, which proposed the massacres. The original was found in the Soviet archives in 1990.

It was only in 1990, when the Soviet archives were opened up, that it was formally admitted that the NKVD had carried out the murders. An investigation conducted by the office of the Prosecutors General of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004) confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres but refused to classify it as a war crime or an act of genocide.

In November 2010, the Russian State Duma approved a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for having personally ordered the massacre.

Video below: An extract from the 2007 Polish film, Katyn—which all the major movie distribution houses in the West refused to show.