Katyn memorial in England

[A.J. Zawadzki]

. . . strictly speaking it wasn't Stalin that ordered the murders but Lavrentiy Beria. Beria initiated the order and proposed the March 1940 list of POWs and others for execution to be approved and counter signed by Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov who all signed the Beria document.

It is said that Stalin gave Beria the order to prepare the document sentencing the captive Poles for execution. Regardless, Beria prepared the order and presented this formal request to Stalin. The decision to proceed rested first with Stalin. The others in Stalin’s inner circle dutifully signed in turn. Needless to say, nothing was going ahead without Stalin’s approval.

Are these numbers correct? 25,000? . . .

The count varies depending on who was included and what time span is considered. In the months of April and May 1940 about 22,000 were murdered as the order was implemented. In a 1959 memo from KGB chief Alexander Shelepin to Khrushchev (a copy of which was given by Boris Yeltsin’s envoy to Lech Wałęsa in 1992) it states that:

“21,857 people were shot, including 4,421 in the Katyn forest (Smolensk district), 3,820 in the Starobielsk camp near Kharkov, 6,311 in the Ostashkovo camp (Kalinin district), and 7,305 in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia”

Regards,
Tony

[StefanM]

Needless to say, nothing was going ahead without Stalin’s approval.

Of course.

The count varies depending on who was included and what time span is considered. In the months of April and May 1940 about 22,000 were murdered as the order was implemented. In a 1959 memo from KGB chief Alexander Shelepin to Khrushchev (a copy of which was given by Boris Yeltsin’s envoy to Lech Wałęsa in 1992) it states that:

“21,857 people were shot, including 4,421 in the Katyn forest (Smolensk district), 3,820 in the Starobielsk camp near Kharkov, 6,311 in the Ostashkovo camp (Kalinin district), and 7,305 in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia”

IMO as it is a memorial it would have been more poignant to use the figure 21,857 rather than the inflated rounded up number of 25,000.

21,857 conveys not only an historically more accurate number (important for a memorial IMHO) but it also imparts the human element of the war crime hidden in the number ...25,000 is a statisticians number without the intrinsic human element or meaning.

Any idea why the memorial was built at this location in the first place?

[Reg]

Hi guys
There is a memorial also in Southwell Cathedral in Nottinghamshire, I noticed it on a visit some weeks ago but did not get a picture sorry, there are also some CWG graves and a piece of the Dunkirk mole, if Im passing again soon Ill post the pics. The Katyn memotial is a large, bsrbed eire plaque in the small RAF chapel.
Cheers
Reg