Bardzo dziękuję bracie....
What book or reference material is it that you have? Also do you have any others like copies of Rocznik Oficerski and others?
Book is titled Charkov Ksiega Cmentarna. There were a series of books published : Katyn Ksiega Cmentarna, Miednoje Ksiega Cmentarna i Charkov Ksiega Cmentarna. I do not have very many copies of Rocznik Oficerski. I need also to look in Tucholski's book ; Mord w Katyniu.
Prosze bardzo.
I have have 4 volumes and 1 index volume of Polish Prisoners of War who died in Auschwitz who were transported from South Eastern Poland. The books have names, pictures and additional info in them of many people. Let me know if ever want to search for anyone from that. Great remembrance books but very difficult to look through.
Hi Cenowski, I am not familiar with this series of books. But it seems they follow a similar format to the ‘Ksiegi Cmentarne’ series discussed above.
I agree, these are very sobering and difficult books to go through. Like no other they powerfully convey the massive scope of it all. Page after page after endless page of faces, and lives cut short. Thousands upon thousands. Most being young well educated achievers in the prime of life with bright futures, and young families waiting for them at home. It leaves one bewildered and saddened how this all could have happened.
Regards,
Tony
All thoughts and opinions expressed are those of my own and should not be mistaken for medical and/or legal advice.
"Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday." - John Wayne
Its even harder when one of the names is someone you was looking for in your family or family in law.
I would like to get hold of more books with lists of Soldiers, Civilians, Prisoners of War, and so on so i think it would be good to get a list going of what people have here and anything anyone can find that can be bought.
Thought of sharing this image.
The holder was a well known doctor who was a major in the army when he was murdered at Katyn...
He used this 1939 issued passport to attend an international medical conference in Switzerland a month before the war broke out...
Interesting artifact.
Another doctor was involved in Katyn albeit under other circumstances.
Ive written about Helge Tramsen before - be it in this thread or else where (I couldnt be arsed to check all eleven pages).
A doctor from Denmark - Helge Tramsen - was one of those doctors from the international panel who joined the investigation into the graves of Katyn, when Germany discovered the horrors there.
Nothing good came out of it for HT. Amongst other things, he was hounded by the communists after WWII. It is mentioned in passing below, but the reaction was quite harsh and dire for HT. At one point he without a doubt had reason to fear for his life and/or the well being of his Family.
This is not a political statement - just mere historical fact. Keep in mind, that offcial communist dogma for decades after the War dictated that Germans were the perpetrators behind Katyn.
An international medical expert committee's participation in uncovering the truth on the liquidation of Polish officers found in mass graves at Katyn in the spring of 1943 and the biography of a Danish participant, Helge Tramsen (1910-1979).
The article is based on a paper read as a invited speaker at a conference, entitled "Medical experts and expertise in cases of humanitarian crises "convened by the University of Geneva and the Committee of the International Red Cross in April 2007. The article starts with an overview of Polish history from the end of World War I up to the disclosure of the mass graves in the spring of 1943, but is otherwise a translation of the original English lecture with some additions from new findings.in archives. Helge tramsen was born into a bourgois family in Copenhagen. After graduation in medicine from the University of Copenhegen in 1936 he married a British woman and joined the naval medical corps and also embarked on a surgical career.. From 1940 to 1943 he was prosector at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. After the finding of the mass graves at Katyn, Germany requested from a number of European countries under German control forensic experts to join an international commission to investigate the findings. As the professor of forensic medicine declined perobably due to health reasons Tramsen was sent. During the German occupation of Denmark 1940 to 1945 Tramsen according to family tradition participated in the resistance movement and he consulted with members of the more conservative part of it and was recommended to go to Germany with an added purpose of being able to transport material out of Germany. He went with special plane from Copenhagen to Berlin, where he joined the international group, which later flew to Smolensk via Warszawa. He conducted a post mortem on the body of a Polish officer, selected by himself. Following that he attended in the discussion on the final report, which later in Berlin was handed over to the German minister of health, and which later formed an important part of the official German material accusing the USSR for the killing. During his stay in Berlin he claimed to have collected material, which in his opinion was drawings of the Eder Möwe dams and brought it back to Copenhagen with the severed head of the body of the Polish officer, on which he has carried out the post mortem. After Tramsen's return to Denmark, a British agent obtained his travel report and sent it to London and he later obtained additional information from Tramsen on the unanimous and voluntary conclusion of the experts. No information on the drawings and the head can be found in British archives. According to Tramsen's own account as a naval officer on activities during the occupation, he participated in sabotage actions, but that can not be substantiated by other sources. However, he participated in July 1944 in an attach on a fortress north of Copenhagen, held by the German Navy; the attach failed, and Transen went under ground, but later returned to his flat in Copenhagen, where he was taken prisoner by German security police. As prisoner he underwent torture and was subjected to mocked execution. He was transferred to a concentration camp, but probably due to the intervention by the permanent secretary of the Danish Foreign office, which after the Danish Government has stopped functioning in August 1943 kept the administration running and retained contacts with the German occupation authorities, Tramsen was not sent to a concentration camp in Germany, where survival rates were very low, but to one in Denmark. After the German defeat in May 1945 Tramsen continued his career in surgery, but went into general practice in Copenhagen in 1947, when he also obtained a permanent position in the naval medical service., where he remained until normal retirement in 1970, in the latter part as the highest ranking medical naval officer. He also served as medical chief at the Danish hospital ship Jutlandia serving as Danish contribution to the UN off the coast of Korea during the Korean war. He also attended as representative of the Danish Ministry of Defence the conference on the revision of the Geneva Conventions. No doubt Tramsen feared Soviet retaliation, but on the other hand he also showed courage by giving evidence at the US congressional hearings in 1952, where he confirmed that there had been no German pressure on the participants, and their conclusions had been voluntary and unanimous. He also gave an interview on Radio Free Europe transmitted to Poland in 1962. in which he desribed his experiences in Katyn. In 1971 his eldest daughter died in Warsaw, offially by carbon-monoxid poisoning from a gas heater. In theory it could be an accident, homicide or suicide. He felt it could be a revenge and in his grief he felt responsible and had a nervous break down. He died from a somatic illness in 1979 and during his terminal illness he told about his experiences from the war to a nephew
Random source from the interweb for the English speakers:
[An international medical expert commi... [Dan Medicinhist Arbog. 2008] - PubMed - NCBI
Very sad. I did not know all of this.
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