Madam, – Tomorrow, the Polish community in Ireland is commemorating two tragic events in recent Polish history. The Katyn Massacre in 1940 and Smolensk air-disaster on April 10th last year. The two events are connected as the 96 people killed in the air accident were on their way to Katyn to commemorate the mass murder of Polish officers in the Katyn forest in the spring of 1940.
The 4,500 bodies of murdered Polish officers were discovered by the Germans and this led to the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the Soviet government and the Polish emigrée government in London. The Soviets maintained that the Germans had committed these murders in 1942 and not the Russian NKVD in 1940. It took many decades for Yeltsin to finally admit that Stalin was responsible for this particular atrocity.
Further acts of mass murder of Polish frontier guards, soldiers and intellectuals were discovered many years later in various parts of Russia – approximately 24,000 victims – and now it is claimed all these are included in the Katyn Massacre number of victims.
The Katyn Memorial in Gunnersbury Cemetery in west London clearly states that the number of bodies discovered at Katyn is approximately 4,500. – Yours, etc,