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Surviving Katyn: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth
The Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war is a crime to which there are no witnesses.
Committed in utmost secrecy in April–May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake – the few survivors of the massacre and the Polish wartime forensic investigators – whose quest for the truth in the face of an inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ruthless enemy came at great personal cost.
Committed in utmost secrecy in April–May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake – the few survivors of the massacre and the Polish wartime forensic investigators – whose quest for the truth in the face of an inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ruthless enemy came at great personal cost.
400 pages, Hardcover
Published June 8, 2021
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November 10, 2024
The author investigates the fate of Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union who were captured by the Soviets when Stalin invaded Poland in 1939. She tries to reconstruct in detail what happened to them on the territory of the USSR. The majority of captured Polish officers were sent to three camps - Kozelsk, Starobelsk, and Ostashkov. After the liquidation of these camps, the trace of most of the prisoners held in them was lost. Some survived, but most did not.
In 1941-42 their fate was still unknown. It was a mystery to the Polish government in exile and the newly-appointed Polish ambassador in Moscow, who attempted to find the truth. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin signed an agreement with the exiled Polish government, and it was agreed that Polish POWs would form an army under the command of General Anders. Polish citizens currently in the Soviet Union were eligible to join it.
"For the men who emerged alive from Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov the Soviet episode was finally at an end. Over the next few months their lives were to be entirely taken up by the business of training and preparing to return to the war. From Iran the army was transferred to Iraq, where it was absorbed into the British Army under the command of General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson."
The Soviet-sponsored Polish infantry division within the Red Army, led by General Berling, was also created. When it transpired that more than 14000 men were missing, the Poles expected an answer from the Soviet authorities. They kept asking about the whereabouts of the former Polish prisoners, who were supposed to be released according to the signed agreement.
They were members of the Polish elite - officers, doctors, writers, scientists.
The NKVD continued to give elusive answers, claiming that all the prisoners had been released. If they cannot say where they are, it may be because of the chaos of the war. These men may have been sent to labor camps in the far north of Russia, and it will be some time before they return.
The Poles seem to have accepted this version. As one of the survivors later wrote, they wanted to believe in some remnants of respect for human life in the upper echelons of the Soviet authorities. They waited, but the missing men did not turn up, except for the one survivor from the Kozelsk camp. His testimony shed little light on the fate of the missing Poles. Only later did his story fit into the picture. "We made a big mistake," the words attributed to NKVD chief Beria when asked about the Polish POWs, did not clarify the uncertain situation either.
The Poles, as the author suggests, could not grasp the brutal logic behind many decisions in Stalin's Soviet empire. They believed their comrades were still alive. The missing men were not criminals. They were foreign nationals, prisoners of war protected by international regulations. Although the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, their treatment was relatively "mild." They were not beaten, starved, or made to labor. Many Soviet citizens experienced much worse at the hands of the secret police. At some point, the Soviets hinted that the missing men might have fallen into the hands of the Germans.
In 1943, the German army discovered the mass graves in the Khatyn forest near Smolensk. Nazi propaganda and Goebbels himself immediately sensed an opportunity to use the discovery of the murdered Polish officers to drive a wedge between the Allies and the Soviets. German propaganda accused the Bolsheviks of the heinous crime of murdering thousands of Polish POWs.
The Nazis went to great lengths to prove Soviet guilt. The Soviets swiftly countered this narrative with their version of events. They blamed the Germans for this massacre, claiming that the Polish officers were killed in 1941 and not in 1940.
Eventually, the Germans had to admit that the propaganda battle was lost. The Allies were focused on fighting Hitler and did not want to upset Stalin. The context of the war was not conducive to discussing Soviet guilt. It was convenient to declare that the evidence was inconclusive, which it probably was at the time.
The truth remained hidden until after the collapse of communism. When some of the documents in the Soviet archives were declassified, it was possible to prove that the Khatyn massacre was a Soviet crime. However, many questions remain unanswered. Why did Stalin decide to kill the Polish prisoners? Why were some of the Poles spared? Why did the Soviets make so many efforts to cover up this crime? We will probably never know the exact reasons why Stalin fixed on killing the prisoners at that particular time, as the surviving documents are scarce. The author offers a few possible motives. The crime can be placed in the context of the Great Terror. The Polish prisoners were considered "class enemies," "hardened, irredeemable enemies of Soviet power," and that was enough for Stalin, Beria, or other NKVD leaders to order their murder. Stalin may have been motivated by some vengeful feelings. The killing may have been seen as a riposte to the humiliation in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919–20. Thousands of Soviet prisoners of war held on Polish territory perished due to "extremely poor sanitary conditions in overcrowded camps, leading to severe outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dysentery and other infectious diseases." It should be added that prisoners were held by both sides as a result of that war. On both sides they died from a combination of hunger and disease.
The fact that most of the Polish POWs refused to cooperate with the NKVD may also have influenced Stalin's reasoning in 1940.
No matter what Stalin thought when he made or approved the decision to 'eliminate' the Polish POWs, what makes this tragic page in history stand out is that it was surrounded by denial and lies for decades.
What strikes me as particularly horrible is the way the condemned prisoners were described, not as individuals but as members of a category that was considered hostile to Soviet interests. They were to be executed not because of personal guilt, real or imaginable, but because they belonged to a particular group of people.
The author also relays the heartbreaking story of the Warsaw Rising and mentions a failed attempt of the Polish force fighting in the Red Army to help the rising. The defeat of the Armia Krajowa was convenient for Stalin. That said, how much the Soviets could have done to change the tragic outcome is debatable.
"And what of the thousands of Russian soldiers held in German POW camps in 1943, when the bodies were discovered? What consequences might follow for them if it came out that the Soviets had murdered their own prisoners of war?"
This observation sounds dubious. It is known that the Nazis treated Soviet POWs appallingly, with or without the knowledge of the Khatyn.
Although the Katyń Forest has become the symbol of the tragedy, the majority of the prisoners in Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobelsk had been shot inside the NKVD prisons. Their bodies were then taken to burial sites nearby.
To sum up, the writing is very accessible. The book looks at the crimes committed against the captured Polish POWs from different angles. Around 22,000 people were killed in these massacres overall. Many of the survivors had to live their lives asking themselves: "Why have I survived while my friends and colleagues perished?"
At the end, Jane Rogoyska makes a pertinent remark.
"In an era of fake news and political manipulation, the false narrative of Katyń does not appear so much an exception as part of a continuum in keeping with a tradition of elaborate state-sponsored deceit that can, at times, seem almost absurd. These parallels with the past may well be a good reason for telling this story now."
In 1941-42 their fate was still unknown. It was a mystery to the Polish government in exile and the newly-appointed Polish ambassador in Moscow, who attempted to find the truth. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin signed an agreement with the exiled Polish government, and it was agreed that Polish POWs would form an army under the command of General Anders. Polish citizens currently in the Soviet Union were eligible to join it.
"For the men who emerged alive from Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov the Soviet episode was finally at an end. Over the next few months their lives were to be entirely taken up by the business of training and preparing to return to the war. From Iran the army was transferred to Iraq, where it was absorbed into the British Army under the command of General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson."
The Soviet-sponsored Polish infantry division within the Red Army, led by General Berling, was also created. When it transpired that more than 14000 men were missing, the Poles expected an answer from the Soviet authorities. They kept asking about the whereabouts of the former Polish prisoners, who were supposed to be released according to the signed agreement.
They were members of the Polish elite - officers, doctors, writers, scientists.
The NKVD continued to give elusive answers, claiming that all the prisoners had been released. If they cannot say where they are, it may be because of the chaos of the war. These men may have been sent to labor camps in the far north of Russia, and it will be some time before they return.
The Poles seem to have accepted this version. As one of the survivors later wrote, they wanted to believe in some remnants of respect for human life in the upper echelons of the Soviet authorities. They waited, but the missing men did not turn up, except for the one survivor from the Kozelsk camp. His testimony shed little light on the fate of the missing Poles. Only later did his story fit into the picture. "We made a big mistake," the words attributed to NKVD chief Beria when asked about the Polish POWs, did not clarify the uncertain situation either.
The Poles, as the author suggests, could not grasp the brutal logic behind many decisions in Stalin's Soviet empire. They believed their comrades were still alive. The missing men were not criminals. They were foreign nationals, prisoners of war protected by international regulations. Although the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, their treatment was relatively "mild." They were not beaten, starved, or made to labor. Many Soviet citizens experienced much worse at the hands of the secret police. At some point, the Soviets hinted that the missing men might have fallen into the hands of the Germans.
In 1943, the German army discovered the mass graves in the Khatyn forest near Smolensk. Nazi propaganda and Goebbels himself immediately sensed an opportunity to use the discovery of the murdered Polish officers to drive a wedge between the Allies and the Soviets. German propaganda accused the Bolsheviks of the heinous crime of murdering thousands of Polish POWs.
The Nazis went to great lengths to prove Soviet guilt. The Soviets swiftly countered this narrative with their version of events. They blamed the Germans for this massacre, claiming that the Polish officers were killed in 1941 and not in 1940.
Eventually, the Germans had to admit that the propaganda battle was lost. The Allies were focused on fighting Hitler and did not want to upset Stalin. The context of the war was not conducive to discussing Soviet guilt. It was convenient to declare that the evidence was inconclusive, which it probably was at the time.
The truth remained hidden until after the collapse of communism. When some of the documents in the Soviet archives were declassified, it was possible to prove that the Khatyn massacre was a Soviet crime. However, many questions remain unanswered. Why did Stalin decide to kill the Polish prisoners? Why were some of the Poles spared? Why did the Soviets make so many efforts to cover up this crime? We will probably never know the exact reasons why Stalin fixed on killing the prisoners at that particular time, as the surviving documents are scarce. The author offers a few possible motives. The crime can be placed in the context of the Great Terror. The Polish prisoners were considered "class enemies," "hardened, irredeemable enemies of Soviet power," and that was enough for Stalin, Beria, or other NKVD leaders to order their murder. Stalin may have been motivated by some vengeful feelings. The killing may have been seen as a riposte to the humiliation in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919–20. Thousands of Soviet prisoners of war held on Polish territory perished due to "extremely poor sanitary conditions in overcrowded camps, leading to severe outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dysentery and other infectious diseases." It should be added that prisoners were held by both sides as a result of that war. On both sides they died from a combination of hunger and disease.
The fact that most of the Polish POWs refused to cooperate with the NKVD may also have influenced Stalin's reasoning in 1940.
No matter what Stalin thought when he made or approved the decision to 'eliminate' the Polish POWs, what makes this tragic page in history stand out is that it was surrounded by denial and lies for decades.
What strikes me as particularly horrible is the way the condemned prisoners were described, not as individuals but as members of a category that was considered hostile to Soviet interests. They were to be executed not because of personal guilt, real or imaginable, but because they belonged to a particular group of people.
The author also relays the heartbreaking story of the Warsaw Rising and mentions a failed attempt of the Polish force fighting in the Red Army to help the rising. The defeat of the Armia Krajowa was convenient for Stalin. That said, how much the Soviets could have done to change the tragic outcome is debatable.
"And what of the thousands of Russian soldiers held in German POW camps in 1943, when the bodies were discovered? What consequences might follow for them if it came out that the Soviets had murdered their own prisoners of war?"
This observation sounds dubious. It is known that the Nazis treated Soviet POWs appallingly, with or without the knowledge of the Khatyn.
Although the Katyń Forest has become the symbol of the tragedy, the majority of the prisoners in Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobelsk had been shot inside the NKVD prisons. Their bodies were then taken to burial sites nearby.
To sum up, the writing is very accessible. The book looks at the crimes committed against the captured Polish POWs from different angles. Around 22,000 people were killed in these massacres overall. Many of the survivors had to live their lives asking themselves: "Why have I survived while my friends and colleagues perished?"
At the end, Jane Rogoyska makes a pertinent remark.
"In an era of fake news and political manipulation, the false narrative of Katyń does not appear so much an exception as part of a continuum in keeping with a tradition of elaborate state-sponsored deceit that can, at times, seem almost absurd. These parallels with the past may well be a good reason for telling this story now."
June 23, 2022
An excellent book, extremely well researched and incredible prose - it makes sense now that I know the author is actually also a novelist. Very timely, unfortunately, given the political developments in Europe and the Russian invasion. I am grateful to the author in giving life to the characters in this story that were previously only a footnote in what might otherwise seem like only one in a long series of Soviet crimes amidst the horror of the 20th century.
December 3, 2024
Learned a lot from this well-researched and well-written book. While I heard about Kaytn and the 20K+ soldiers killed by the Soviets in 1940, discovered by the Nazis in 1943, but the crime is blamed on the Nazis until 1989, when the USSR finally starts to admit that they committed the mass murders, I didn’t know much beyond that.
This follows the fates of various Polish officers captured by the Soviets in 1939. Their treatment is surprisingly good, but as they are moved deeper into the country, they find that many of the colleagues have gone missing. It is that question that haunts the survivors. The Soviet treatment is mysterious, as they can be humane, but they don’t tell all that they know, and for good reason.
It is a hard book to read at times. The full story of Kaytn is likely never to be known. Even today, the Russians will acknowledge it, but they do not dwell on it. The Poles seek answers and some restitutions, but know they are not likely to get it. All in all, a book that you should take the time to read.
This follows the fates of various Polish officers captured by the Soviets in 1939. Their treatment is surprisingly good, but as they are moved deeper into the country, they find that many of the colleagues have gone missing. It is that question that haunts the survivors. The Soviet treatment is mysterious, as they can be humane, but they don’t tell all that they know, and for good reason.
It is a hard book to read at times. The full story of Kaytn is likely never to be known. Even today, the Russians will acknowledge it, but they do not dwell on it. The Poles seek answers and some restitutions, but know they are not likely to get it. All in all, a book that you should take the time to read.
January 15, 2022
I would wholly recommend purchasing the audio version of this book, if you are not Polish, in addition to the written version. Jane Rogoyska reads it herself, and her pronunciation of names and places was invaluable to me.
It has taken me 10 weeks to finish this epic, but I am so glad that I have persevered. The detail and research are amazing, but the topic is deeply harrowing.
Jane Rogoyska has put together a historic record of the details of the secret murder of thousands of Polish Officers in 1940, and the complex lies that were told by the Soviet Union’s secret police to cover up what they had done.
Linking her writing to recent revelations uncovered by historians in the past few years, the author reminds the listener, in her conclusion, of fake news and a complex spiders web of truth and untruth!
It has taken me 10 weeks to finish this epic, but I am so glad that I have persevered. The detail and research are amazing, but the topic is deeply harrowing.
Jane Rogoyska has put together a historic record of the details of the secret murder of thousands of Polish Officers in 1940, and the complex lies that were told by the Soviet Union’s secret police to cover up what they had done.
Linking her writing to recent revelations uncovered by historians in the past few years, the author reminds the listener, in her conclusion, of fake news and a complex spiders web of truth and untruth!
December 6, 2025
The Katyn forest massacre committed by the Soviet Union occurred between April and May 1940. Though killings took place in Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons operated by the NKVD and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest where mass graves were first discovered by the Nazis in April1943. Roughly 22,000 Polish military, police officers, border guards, intellectual prisoners of war were executed by the Soviet Secret Police, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin issued the orders. Once the Nazis announced their findings Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London based Polish government in exile because they asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbles realized the publicity value of the find he immediately contacted the Polish Red Cross to investigate but the Kremlin denied culpability and blamed the Germans. The British and their allies, dependent upon Soviet participation to defeat the Nazis, went along with the falsehood. The Kremlin continued to deny responsibility for the massacre until 1990, when it finally accepted accountability for NKVD’s actions and the concealment of the truth by the Soviet government.
At that time Russian president Boris Yerltsin released top-secret documents pertaining to the investigation and forwarded them to Lech Walesa, Poland’s new President. Among the documents was a plan written by Lavrentiev Beria, the head of the NKVD until 1953 dated March 5, 1940, calling for the execution of 25,700 Poles from the Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobelsk prisoner of war camps, and from prisons in Ukraine and Belarus. After the fall of the Soviet Union the prosecutors general of the Russian Federation admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres but refused to admit to a war crime or an act of mass murder.
The historical record acknowledges that Stalin was behind the genocidal atrocity and it was part of his larger plan to remove anyone who might conceivably pose a threat to the imposition of future Soviet rule in Poland – “a decapitation of Polish society strikingly similar to Nazi policy in occupied Poland at the same time.” He wanted to eliminate large elements of the Polish elite to remove any potential obstacle to the later imposition of communist rule. For Stalin, Poland was an artificial creation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty that undid the 1772, 1793 and 1795 partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire. Because of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 26, 1939, Poland would be divided a fourth time between Germany and the Soviet Union. Stalin could retake Russia’s Polish holdings, Western Ukraine and Belorussia without worrying about German opposition. A second line of reasoning for Stalin centers around the Soviet dictator’s knowledge of Adolf Hitler’s intentions. Stalin had read MEIN KAMPF and was fully cognizant of Hitler’s endgame- Lebensraum or “living space” in the east, and how Russia was to be Germany’s “breadbasket.” By invading Poland on September 16, 1939, completing the fourth partition of Poland he would create a buffer zone for the eventual German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. For Stalin it was a defensive measure.
The mystery clouding responsibility over the massacre is the subject of historian and biographer Jane Rogoyska’s book, SURVIVING KATYN: STALIN’S POLISH MASSACRE AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH which chronicles how the NKVD worked to reshape the facts pertaining to the massacre blaming it on the Nazis. Planting documents on dead bodies to pursuing a truck full of evidence across Europe, destroying records, to staging incidents in European capitals the Stalinist government left no stone unturned in quashing the truth. Only 395 men survived the massacre who were unwitting witnesses to a crime that theoretically never officially happened. In a striking narrative, Rogoyska brings the victims out of the shadows, telling their stories as well as those of the people who desperately searched for them. In a work of moral clarity and precision, the author does not just supply statistics about another World War II atrocity, but how individuals were sacrificed for no reason and whose memory was lost, a sideshow in the battle between two psychotic and demented dictators.
At the outset Rogoyska introduces the reader to the prisoners of war and their overseers. She lays out the incarceration process, the paranoia of the NKVD, and the incompetence of the bureaucracy of those in charge. Recounting the interrogation process, attempts to propagandize the Poles, and presenting intimate pictures of the prisoners, the author employs interviews, memoirs, and whatever documentation was available in order to the provide the most complete picture of the personalities and events pertaining to the massacre since Allen Paul’s KATYN: STALIN’S MASSACRE AND THE TRIUMPH OF TRUTH.
Initially the prisoners were taken to three camps, Starobelsk, Kozelsk, and Ostashkov. Rogoyska discusses life in all three camps and focuses mostly on Starobelsk as she follows the lives of Bronislav Mlynarski, Jozef Czapski, and Zygmunt Kwarcinke. They would be among the last group that left Starobelsk and were sent to a transit camp at Pavlishchev Bor in a group of 395 out of 14,800 from all three prison camps. On June 14, 1940, they were taken to the Griazovets camp located halfway between Moscow and the Arctic port of Arkhangelsk.
While in Griazovets, Beria, with Stalin’s support, worked to create a Polish Division within the Red Army, a topic that Rogoyska spends a great deal of time discussing. Beria and his henchmen tried to recruit Polish officers to lead it, most refused, but a few from a pro-Soviet group from Starobelsk known as the “Red Corner” agreed. The NKVD was concerned about the officer’s attitudes toward the exiled Polish government in London. While questioning other officers who remained POWs who wanted information about the whereabouts and availability of their compatriots, Beria responded “no, we made a big mistake.” From this phrase the author develops Beria’s guilt in the death of thousands. It would take until May of 1943 for the creation of the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kosciuszko infantry division within the Red Army led by General Zigmunt Berling, an NKVD collaborator. This would satisfy Beria’s goal of a division with a “Polish Face” within the Soviet military.
During training at Griazovets, the NKVD invested a great deal of time trying to gain the loyalty of the Poles. They created a cultural school employing film, lectures, music, better treatment, etc. to no avail. The NKVD attempt to re-educate these men was an abject failure.
Finally on June 22, 1941, Stalin’s greatest fear came to fruition when the Nazis invaded Russia. The invasion impacted the prisoners in a number of ways. First, conditions at Griazovets worsened as rations were cut 50%, clothing became unavailable, and freedoms were lessened. Secondly, the Polish POWs feared as the Russians collapsed they would be seized and imprisoned by the Germans. Thirdly, a large influx of new prisoners created chaos. Lastly, the London Poles came to an agreement with the Kremlin, known as the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement, restored diplomatic relations between Poland and Russia, instituted an amnesty for all prisoners in Russia, including thousands of women and children. It was decided that General Wladyslaw Andres would command the Polish army after his release from prison on August 4, 1941. The Poles, no longer prisoners, wondered the fate of their comrades – they had no idea that 14,500 of them from the three camps had been massacred.
From this point on Rogoyska explores who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of POWs, who was responsible for their deaths, and how the truth was covered up. Despite the amnesty for prisoners during their arrests they were sent deeper into Russia. These deportations took place between 1940 and 1941 numbered between 1.25 and 1.6 million, though the NKVD argues it “was only” 400,000. The death toll was about 30%.
Rogoyska focuses on the major players in her investigation. Generals Anders and Zygmunt Bohusz-Szysk met with Marshal Georgy Zuhkov and General Ivan Pantilov asking for a list of Polish soldiers taken by the Soviet Union. They met six times and meetings were pleasant until the fate of the prisoners were brought up and Zhukov would change the subject and remarked they would eventually be found. Professor Stanislaw Kot, a Polish academic was placed in charge of the prisoner issue by Andres, but he also was stonewalled and got nowhere. His meetings with Andrey Vyshinsky (Stalin’s purge prosecutor in the 1930s) and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov who offered to assist but claimed the NKVD did not maintain detailed records on the missing officers. Kot knew it was a lie, and the author details the meticulous records the NKVD kept. Rogoyska integrates transcripts of their meetings and Kot grows increasingly angry and frustrated with Vyshinsky’s responses. Molotov wrote General Sikorski in December 1941 that “all Polish citizens detained as POWs had now been released and that Soviet authorities had given them all necessary assistance.”
The author addresses the silence surrounding the missing men that gave rise to theories as to their fate. The most plausible thing was that they had been sent to one of the Soviet Union’s remote regions and had not yet been able to make their way south. Another theory rests on the claim that Polish prisoners were working in the mines and construction of military facilities in the Gulag region of Kolyma in the far east of Russia. Andres put former prisoner Jozef Czapski in charge of investigating the plight of these men and basically took over from Professor Kot. After meeting with Major Lenoid Raikhman, who was in charge of the Polish section at the notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow who plead ignorance about the fate of the 14,500 officers, Czapski concluded they were probably sent to the remotest parts of the country and very few returned, and even those who made it back could not provide any useful information. Czapski was limited because he was appointed by the exiled Polish government in London and since the British were dependent on their Soviet allies in defeating Hitler they did not want to create waves.
Another key figure in the investigation was Lt. Stanislaw Swianiewicz, a former prisoner in the Kozelek camp and a distinguished professor of economics. The NKVD was interested in him because he had authored a book explaining how the Germans had rearmed. His story is right out of a movie set as the Russians interrogated him, released him, and tried to rearrest him but he escaped. Rogoyska’s chapters on his escapades provide a glimpse into Soviet thinking, the diplomatic game that was taking place between the Polish government in exile, the allies, and the Soviet Union, and Russian duplicity throughout. Swianiewicz was important to the Stalin because he was a witness to Soviet war crimes.
The Soviet smokescreen began in the fall of 1943 after the Red Army retook the Smolensk area. Before the Soviets arrived, the Germans allowed a group of Allied journalists to watch an autopsy prepared by Professor Gerhard Buhtz, the head of Germany’s Army Group Medical Services who pointed out that the bodies were all shot through the back of the head. Not to be out done, the Soviet Union conducted its own investigation headed by Lt. General of the Medical Corps and one time doctor to Stalin, brain specialist Nikolai Burdenko. NKVD operational workers arrived at Katyn in September 1943 under the direction of BG Major Leonid Raikhman whose men proceeded to rearrange the site, swaying witnesses, planting documents on dead bodies to support the charge that the massacre did not occur in 1940, but in August 1941 during the Nazi occupation. After allowing a group of journalists to visit the site, Alexander Werth, British journalist concluded that the evidence was very thin, and the site had a “prefabricated appearance.” He agreed with others that Moscow had committed the massacre. To her credit, the author delves into minute detail of the investigations and the personalities involved who could only conclude based on their findings it was not Germany that was responsible, but the Stalinist regime. She also includes primary source material like the Burdenko Commission report and others that were issued after careful investigations of the site and the exhumed bodies.
The British and the Poles were convinced the NKVD was responsible, but it did not matter as the Soviet Union was needed to defeat Germany, so the allies swallowed their concerns. After the war, the communist government in Warsaw pursued anyone who tried to alter occurrences that would contradict the Soviet rendering of events.
Since the topic of the massacre has fostered a great deal of scholarship it is not surprising that the author does not contain any new revelations. But to her credit her account is lucid and powerful as she recreates the lives of the officers who were artists, scientists, engineers, poets, lawyers, as well as career military men. She chose to examine her topic through the lens of the investigation rather than describing it as it happened which may have been more thought provoking for the reader.
At that time Russian president Boris Yerltsin released top-secret documents pertaining to the investigation and forwarded them to Lech Walesa, Poland’s new President. Among the documents was a plan written by Lavrentiev Beria, the head of the NKVD until 1953 dated March 5, 1940, calling for the execution of 25,700 Poles from the Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobelsk prisoner of war camps, and from prisons in Ukraine and Belarus. After the fall of the Soviet Union the prosecutors general of the Russian Federation admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres but refused to admit to a war crime or an act of mass murder.
The historical record acknowledges that Stalin was behind the genocidal atrocity and it was part of his larger plan to remove anyone who might conceivably pose a threat to the imposition of future Soviet rule in Poland – “a decapitation of Polish society strikingly similar to Nazi policy in occupied Poland at the same time.” He wanted to eliminate large elements of the Polish elite to remove any potential obstacle to the later imposition of communist rule. For Stalin, Poland was an artificial creation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty that undid the 1772, 1793 and 1795 partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire. Because of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 26, 1939, Poland would be divided a fourth time between Germany and the Soviet Union. Stalin could retake Russia’s Polish holdings, Western Ukraine and Belorussia without worrying about German opposition. A second line of reasoning for Stalin centers around the Soviet dictator’s knowledge of Adolf Hitler’s intentions. Stalin had read MEIN KAMPF and was fully cognizant of Hitler’s endgame- Lebensraum or “living space” in the east, and how Russia was to be Germany’s “breadbasket.” By invading Poland on September 16, 1939, completing the fourth partition of Poland he would create a buffer zone for the eventual German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. For Stalin it was a defensive measure.
The mystery clouding responsibility over the massacre is the subject of historian and biographer Jane Rogoyska’s book, SURVIVING KATYN: STALIN’S POLISH MASSACRE AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH which chronicles how the NKVD worked to reshape the facts pertaining to the massacre blaming it on the Nazis. Planting documents on dead bodies to pursuing a truck full of evidence across Europe, destroying records, to staging incidents in European capitals the Stalinist government left no stone unturned in quashing the truth. Only 395 men survived the massacre who were unwitting witnesses to a crime that theoretically never officially happened. In a striking narrative, Rogoyska brings the victims out of the shadows, telling their stories as well as those of the people who desperately searched for them. In a work of moral clarity and precision, the author does not just supply statistics about another World War II atrocity, but how individuals were sacrificed for no reason and whose memory was lost, a sideshow in the battle between two psychotic and demented dictators.
At the outset Rogoyska introduces the reader to the prisoners of war and their overseers. She lays out the incarceration process, the paranoia of the NKVD, and the incompetence of the bureaucracy of those in charge. Recounting the interrogation process, attempts to propagandize the Poles, and presenting intimate pictures of the prisoners, the author employs interviews, memoirs, and whatever documentation was available in order to the provide the most complete picture of the personalities and events pertaining to the massacre since Allen Paul’s KATYN: STALIN’S MASSACRE AND THE TRIUMPH OF TRUTH.
Initially the prisoners were taken to three camps, Starobelsk, Kozelsk, and Ostashkov. Rogoyska discusses life in all three camps and focuses mostly on Starobelsk as she follows the lives of Bronislav Mlynarski, Jozef Czapski, and Zygmunt Kwarcinke. They would be among the last group that left Starobelsk and were sent to a transit camp at Pavlishchev Bor in a group of 395 out of 14,800 from all three prison camps. On June 14, 1940, they were taken to the Griazovets camp located halfway between Moscow and the Arctic port of Arkhangelsk.
While in Griazovets, Beria, with Stalin’s support, worked to create a Polish Division within the Red Army, a topic that Rogoyska spends a great deal of time discussing. Beria and his henchmen tried to recruit Polish officers to lead it, most refused, but a few from a pro-Soviet group from Starobelsk known as the “Red Corner” agreed. The NKVD was concerned about the officer’s attitudes toward the exiled Polish government in London. While questioning other officers who remained POWs who wanted information about the whereabouts and availability of their compatriots, Beria responded “no, we made a big mistake.” From this phrase the author develops Beria’s guilt in the death of thousands. It would take until May of 1943 for the creation of the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kosciuszko infantry division within the Red Army led by General Zigmunt Berling, an NKVD collaborator. This would satisfy Beria’s goal of a division with a “Polish Face” within the Soviet military.
During training at Griazovets, the NKVD invested a great deal of time trying to gain the loyalty of the Poles. They created a cultural school employing film, lectures, music, better treatment, etc. to no avail. The NKVD attempt to re-educate these men was an abject failure.
Finally on June 22, 1941, Stalin’s greatest fear came to fruition when the Nazis invaded Russia. The invasion impacted the prisoners in a number of ways. First, conditions at Griazovets worsened as rations were cut 50%, clothing became unavailable, and freedoms were lessened. Secondly, the Polish POWs feared as the Russians collapsed they would be seized and imprisoned by the Germans. Thirdly, a large influx of new prisoners created chaos. Lastly, the London Poles came to an agreement with the Kremlin, known as the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement, restored diplomatic relations between Poland and Russia, instituted an amnesty for all prisoners in Russia, including thousands of women and children. It was decided that General Wladyslaw Andres would command the Polish army after his release from prison on August 4, 1941. The Poles, no longer prisoners, wondered the fate of their comrades – they had no idea that 14,500 of them from the three camps had been massacred.
From this point on Rogoyska explores who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of POWs, who was responsible for their deaths, and how the truth was covered up. Despite the amnesty for prisoners during their arrests they were sent deeper into Russia. These deportations took place between 1940 and 1941 numbered between 1.25 and 1.6 million, though the NKVD argues it “was only” 400,000. The death toll was about 30%.
Rogoyska focuses on the major players in her investigation. Generals Anders and Zygmunt Bohusz-Szysk met with Marshal Georgy Zuhkov and General Ivan Pantilov asking for a list of Polish soldiers taken by the Soviet Union. They met six times and meetings were pleasant until the fate of the prisoners were brought up and Zhukov would change the subject and remarked they would eventually be found. Professor Stanislaw Kot, a Polish academic was placed in charge of the prisoner issue by Andres, but he also was stonewalled and got nowhere. His meetings with Andrey Vyshinsky (Stalin’s purge prosecutor in the 1930s) and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov who offered to assist but claimed the NKVD did not maintain detailed records on the missing officers. Kot knew it was a lie, and the author details the meticulous records the NKVD kept. Rogoyska integrates transcripts of their meetings and Kot grows increasingly angry and frustrated with Vyshinsky’s responses. Molotov wrote General Sikorski in December 1941 that “all Polish citizens detained as POWs had now been released and that Soviet authorities had given them all necessary assistance.”
The author addresses the silence surrounding the missing men that gave rise to theories as to their fate. The most plausible thing was that they had been sent to one of the Soviet Union’s remote regions and had not yet been able to make their way south. Another theory rests on the claim that Polish prisoners were working in the mines and construction of military facilities in the Gulag region of Kolyma in the far east of Russia. Andres put former prisoner Jozef Czapski in charge of investigating the plight of these men and basically took over from Professor Kot. After meeting with Major Lenoid Raikhman, who was in charge of the Polish section at the notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow who plead ignorance about the fate of the 14,500 officers, Czapski concluded they were probably sent to the remotest parts of the country and very few returned, and even those who made it back could not provide any useful information. Czapski was limited because he was appointed by the exiled Polish government in London and since the British were dependent on their Soviet allies in defeating Hitler they did not want to create waves.
Another key figure in the investigation was Lt. Stanislaw Swianiewicz, a former prisoner in the Kozelek camp and a distinguished professor of economics. The NKVD was interested in him because he had authored a book explaining how the Germans had rearmed. His story is right out of a movie set as the Russians interrogated him, released him, and tried to rearrest him but he escaped. Rogoyska’s chapters on his escapades provide a glimpse into Soviet thinking, the diplomatic game that was taking place between the Polish government in exile, the allies, and the Soviet Union, and Russian duplicity throughout. Swianiewicz was important to the Stalin because he was a witness to Soviet war crimes.
The Soviet smokescreen began in the fall of 1943 after the Red Army retook the Smolensk area. Before the Soviets arrived, the Germans allowed a group of Allied journalists to watch an autopsy prepared by Professor Gerhard Buhtz, the head of Germany’s Army Group Medical Services who pointed out that the bodies were all shot through the back of the head. Not to be out done, the Soviet Union conducted its own investigation headed by Lt. General of the Medical Corps and one time doctor to Stalin, brain specialist Nikolai Burdenko. NKVD operational workers arrived at Katyn in September 1943 under the direction of BG Major Leonid Raikhman whose men proceeded to rearrange the site, swaying witnesses, planting documents on dead bodies to support the charge that the massacre did not occur in 1940, but in August 1941 during the Nazi occupation. After allowing a group of journalists to visit the site, Alexander Werth, British journalist concluded that the evidence was very thin, and the site had a “prefabricated appearance.” He agreed with others that Moscow had committed the massacre. To her credit, the author delves into minute detail of the investigations and the personalities involved who could only conclude based on their findings it was not Germany that was responsible, but the Stalinist regime. She also includes primary source material like the Burdenko Commission report and others that were issued after careful investigations of the site and the exhumed bodies.
The British and the Poles were convinced the NKVD was responsible, but it did not matter as the Soviet Union was needed to defeat Germany, so the allies swallowed their concerns. After the war, the communist government in Warsaw pursued anyone who tried to alter occurrences that would contradict the Soviet rendering of events.
Since the topic of the massacre has fostered a great deal of scholarship it is not surprising that the author does not contain any new revelations. But to her credit her account is lucid and powerful as she recreates the lives of the officers who were artists, scientists, engineers, poets, lawyers, as well as career military men. She chose to examine her topic through the lens of the investigation rather than describing it as it happened which may have been more thought provoking for the reader.
February 5, 2023
It is probably a stupid comment, but Surviving Katyń may represent something like perfection as to how history books should be written. Why stupid? Because there likely isn't some sort of prototype structure or approach that would suit every topic for a history book. But if we allow the conceit then this book is surely it. I often find myself feeling like a book on some directly gripping or engrossing topic just gets a lot for free. Think: books about major episodes of World War II or recent crises - that sort of thing. I probably rate books more harshly when I feel like the underlying story is automatically worthy of attention (it's the same reason I tend to be particularly tough on Best Picture nominees - like The Trial of the Chicago 7 that utilise real events).
So a book about a grim atrocity committed in the depths of World War II, with resonance today due to never-ending issues of autocratic states burying the truth and 'fake news' - has a very high bar for me to consider it top class. So coming out of this feeling like I'd read something special, something perfectly crafted - is set against the backdrop of an automatic bias against it in the first place.
Ergo, it must be doing something really, very right.
So what is so great about it? As I've said, it's not just it's gripping topic: a Soviet atrocity committed in World War II in which thousands of Poles were killed; the Soviets blaming the Nazis and the allies acquiescing since the Soviets were fighting the Nazis; followed by the USSR burying the topic for decades until Glasnost led to some of the details being released and the truth officially coming out. It's not even the great style of the author or the seemingly deep research that has gone into the book.
It is the fantastic use of structure to help solve one of the most inextricable problems history books face. The challenge of balancing chronology with the messy realities of historical understanding which is often bitty and scarcely ordered at all. This often leads to turgidly regimented blow-by-blow historical treatises that piece together all the evidence into a chronological flow - with huge numbers of names entering at once and lots of gaps where evidence is missing. Players in the history come in briefly and then may re-appear hundreds of pages later (or have their outcome relegated to a footnote). Or else, history books veer towards the thematic - grouping ideas, topics, notions into areas and discussing a whole histories worth of information within these - making the narrative of events hard to discern.
This book - I believe - brilliantly blends the thematic with the chronological. The opening chapters on prison life - based on scraps of evidence - are thematic but closely tied to the events of the camp. Each chapter may speak to particular aspects of life, but Jane Rogoyska is not dogmatic - allowing the narrative to move forward within the context of particular themes. But once the book switches over to after the massacre and the subsequent follow-up - she engages a tight narrative and much clearer sense of time. Yet even here, she allows herself to step into the future regularly - tying up a particular person's loose end far off into the future rather than leave a particular threat hanging.
Perhaps I'm making too much of it and I'm certainly not a historian of history books. But - to my amateur eye - if you want a gripping, poignant, relevant and impeccably well told look into a dark chapter of history, you would struggle to do much better than this masterpiece of historical writing.
So a book about a grim atrocity committed in the depths of World War II, with resonance today due to never-ending issues of autocratic states burying the truth and 'fake news' - has a very high bar for me to consider it top class. So coming out of this feeling like I'd read something special, something perfectly crafted - is set against the backdrop of an automatic bias against it in the first place.
Ergo, it must be doing something really, very right.
So what is so great about it? As I've said, it's not just it's gripping topic: a Soviet atrocity committed in World War II in which thousands of Poles were killed; the Soviets blaming the Nazis and the allies acquiescing since the Soviets were fighting the Nazis; followed by the USSR burying the topic for decades until Glasnost led to some of the details being released and the truth officially coming out. It's not even the great style of the author or the seemingly deep research that has gone into the book.
It is the fantastic use of structure to help solve one of the most inextricable problems history books face. The challenge of balancing chronology with the messy realities of historical understanding which is often bitty and scarcely ordered at all. This often leads to turgidly regimented blow-by-blow historical treatises that piece together all the evidence into a chronological flow - with huge numbers of names entering at once and lots of gaps where evidence is missing. Players in the history come in briefly and then may re-appear hundreds of pages later (or have their outcome relegated to a footnote). Or else, history books veer towards the thematic - grouping ideas, topics, notions into areas and discussing a whole histories worth of information within these - making the narrative of events hard to discern.
This book - I believe - brilliantly blends the thematic with the chronological. The opening chapters on prison life - based on scraps of evidence - are thematic but closely tied to the events of the camp. Each chapter may speak to particular aspects of life, but Jane Rogoyska is not dogmatic - allowing the narrative to move forward within the context of particular themes. But once the book switches over to after the massacre and the subsequent follow-up - she engages a tight narrative and much clearer sense of time. Yet even here, she allows herself to step into the future regularly - tying up a particular person's loose end far off into the future rather than leave a particular threat hanging.
Perhaps I'm making too much of it and I'm certainly not a historian of history books. But - to my amateur eye - if you want a gripping, poignant, relevant and impeccably well told look into a dark chapter of history, you would struggle to do much better than this masterpiece of historical writing.
March 6, 2023
An outstanding history of vital events
I grew up with the shadow of Katyń. My father was an officer cadet on one of the trains taking officers from Eastern Poland to the three Prisoner of War camps. Against orders, when Polish rail men opened the cattle trucks, my father jumped and hid. He had been told by the senior officers that the jump was suicidal because the rail men were almost certainly acting on Soviet orders to provide a pretext for him to be shot as soon as he left the train. As a Prisoner of War there was a chance of release and the opportunity to fight for Poland again.
His fellow officers perished, he survived. For the rest of his life the perfidy of the cover-up, particularly by the British, upset him deeply. My mother is buried at Gunnersbury in sight of the Katyń memorial.
I learnt a great deal from Jane’s outstanding book. I found it a riveting page turner because it is very well written, but also a very considered commentary on the evidence, and lack of evidence, about the rationale for the massacre. It was always put to me that this was an intentional part of the decapitation of the Polish Nation, but Jane’s account tells you so much more than that.
An outstanding book. I thoroughly recommend it whether you have a personal connection or not. It is also extremely timely and sheds light on some of Putin’s motivation in Ukraine.
I grew up with the shadow of Katyń. My father was an officer cadet on one of the trains taking officers from Eastern Poland to the three Prisoner of War camps. Against orders, when Polish rail men opened the cattle trucks, my father jumped and hid. He had been told by the senior officers that the jump was suicidal because the rail men were almost certainly acting on Soviet orders to provide a pretext for him to be shot as soon as he left the train. As a Prisoner of War there was a chance of release and the opportunity to fight for Poland again.
His fellow officers perished, he survived. For the rest of his life the perfidy of the cover-up, particularly by the British, upset him deeply. My mother is buried at Gunnersbury in sight of the Katyń memorial.
I learnt a great deal from Jane’s outstanding book. I found it a riveting page turner because it is very well written, but also a very considered commentary on the evidence, and lack of evidence, about the rationale for the massacre. It was always put to me that this was an intentional part of the decapitation of the Polish Nation, but Jane’s account tells you so much more than that.
An outstanding book. I thoroughly recommend it whether you have a personal connection or not. It is also extremely timely and sheds light on some of Putin’s motivation in Ukraine.
July 12, 2021
This book is an authoritative volume on the details of the Katyn massacre and how those events affected not only WWII, but the post war world right up to today.
November 8, 2021
Well written and full of information. Sadly, this isn't something that I knew about prior to reading this book. Can we please teach more history in schools?? Especially the stuff that really matters.
October 7, 2024
This important study uses primary sources from the Soviet archives and survivor accounts to finally fully explain what happened to 22,000 Polish military officers, police and border guard officers, and a few civilians who disappeared after being transported to the USSR in October 1939. Some of their bodies were discovered during a war that had claimed millions of lives and would go on to claim millions more. In that context, Ms. Rogoyska explains why their deaths were important then and still are now. They represent how differently the International Community addressed the crimes of Stalin's USSR compared to its universal condemnation of the crimes of the NSDAP regime in Germany. That difference engendered a corrupt world view built on deceit that became woven into the fabric of Soviet society. It was accepted and abetted by the Western democracies because any attempt to hold the Soviets accountable was construed as sympathy for Fascism by the Communist and Socialist parties that participated in elections while openly professing admiration for the USSR. Ms. Rogoyska tells the full story of the Katyn crime but more importantly she examines its legacy. By admitting to Katyn, Gorbachev (and then Yeltsin) opened a Pandora's box of Stalinist horrors, most of which were committed against citizens of the USSR. Krushchev's famous "secret speech" denouncing Stalin was carefully crafted. It narrowly defined his crimes as "creating a cult of personality" and carrying out a purge of political opponents within the upper ranks of the Politburo. It avoided a full accounting which would have revealed not just mass murder but actual genocide enthusiastically implemented both within the USSR and in conquered nations by apparatchiks including Krushchev. In short, it would have revealed to the world a USSR that resembled the Third Reich and conspired with Hitler to divide and subjugate Europe. The Allies forced the Germans to confront, acknowledge and atone for the sins of the NSDAP dictatorship. By doing so, they laid the foundation for a democratic, peaceful Germany. By allowing the USSR to act as a partner, the Allies tacitly endorsed Stalin's imaginary nation and its fabricated world view: the heroic, peace-loving USSR. The collapse of that nation so traumatized loyal Soviet citizens (like Putin) that they set out to prove their world view is real, that everything wrong with the USSR was caused by the "Fascist" West. The publication of this book in June, 2021 was oddly prophetic. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022 marked the triumphant return of the Stalinist world view (with Putin's ultra-Nationalist Orthodox Christianity tacked on). We are marching along the road from Katyn that began in 1990 with the delivery to the Polish government of Soviet records documenting the crime. That led to a Russian investigation that was finally shut down in 2005 by Yeltsin without any result. (His justification was that "everyone [involved] was dead.") As Ms. Rogoyska writes in her conclusion, [the new Russia embraces the USSR's] "legacy of decades of falsification: a never-ending hall of mirrors in which historical truths are warped, distorted and, if we are not careful, permanently disfigured." Sadly, end of the story of Katyn, like its beginning, will be written in blood.
December 13, 2023
Admittedly, this was my first exposure to the Katyń massacre, so I can’t directly gauge the relevance of ‘Surviving Katyń’ in its scholarly lineage. However, from this selfsame position, I can undoubtedly say that Rogoyska’s account represents something close to the ideal form of accessible history. Rogoyska renders the Katyń massacre and its aftermath not only with a lucid attention to detail, but with an unflinching, unwavering focus on its human element, replete with diary entries and survivor’s memoirs. She balances chronological and personal narratives without ever losing either thread. There’s an intimate sense of the maelstrom that the survivors found themselves in, first crashing against Soviet silence surrounding their friends (and many of the Belorussian files remain inaccessible to modern historians) and then never finding any discernible reasons for their survival over the other people in the camps.
Moreover, the account functions as a microcosm of Poland’s position during WWII, caught between two reprehensible regimes, both with a vehement hatred of Polish people and who together killed 20% of their population, each eager to leverage the massacre against the other when an alliance with Poland became politically expedient (‘We have made a great mistake’). In turn, the Allied powers, especially Churchill and Britain, chose the narrative most suitable to them, in contravention of the 3,000 pieces of evidence against the Soviets (compared to the nine against the Nazis); Poland stabbed in the back yet again by an ally after the Soviet mobilisation against them at the start of WW2. From a very clinical perspective, the British decision makes sense, the massacre barely a drop compared even to the 700,000 people killed in Warsaw alone, and the ability of Britain and Poland to defeat either one of Nazi Germany or the USSR alone distinctly vanishing. But, as aforementioned, Rogoyska never loses sight of the human element, of the travesty of any evil, even one believed to be the lesser one.
I've finished the book wanting to know more, especially about the leveraging of Polish ‘victimhood’ by successive right-wing governments and contemporaneous media responses to the Smolensk air disaster, which Rogoyska touches on, but rightfully finds beyond the scope of ‘Surviving Katyń’. For an anglophone reader, ‘Surviving Katyń’ is an infallible entry point.
SUMIENIE ŚWIATA WOŁA O ŚWIADECTWO PRAWDZIE
Moreover, the account functions as a microcosm of Poland’s position during WWII, caught between two reprehensible regimes, both with a vehement hatred of Polish people and who together killed 20% of their population, each eager to leverage the massacre against the other when an alliance with Poland became politically expedient (‘We have made a great mistake’). In turn, the Allied powers, especially Churchill and Britain, chose the narrative most suitable to them, in contravention of the 3,000 pieces of evidence against the Soviets (compared to the nine against the Nazis); Poland stabbed in the back yet again by an ally after the Soviet mobilisation against them at the start of WW2. From a very clinical perspective, the British decision makes sense, the massacre barely a drop compared even to the 700,000 people killed in Warsaw alone, and the ability of Britain and Poland to defeat either one of Nazi Germany or the USSR alone distinctly vanishing. But, as aforementioned, Rogoyska never loses sight of the human element, of the travesty of any evil, even one believed to be the lesser one.
I've finished the book wanting to know more, especially about the leveraging of Polish ‘victimhood’ by successive right-wing governments and contemporaneous media responses to the Smolensk air disaster, which Rogoyska touches on, but rightfully finds beyond the scope of ‘Surviving Katyń’. For an anglophone reader, ‘Surviving Katyń’ is an infallible entry point.
SUMIENIE ŚWIATA WOŁA O ŚWIADECTWO PRAWDZIE
September 24, 2022
An excellent account but not quite what I expected. This book doesn't quite focus on Katyn itself, its survivors or its aftermath. A majority of the book is spent on examining the lives of Polish PoWs in Soviet NKVD incarceration, most of whom were massacred as part of the 'Katyn Lie', rendering much of the book a kind of Polish PoW version of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The book in its second half does look into the various investigations of Katyn - the Nazi reveal, the Red Cross, Soviet cover-ups and denouncements etc but these aren't focused on the survivors themselves. Rogoyska does routinely allude to the thoughts, experiences and feelings of survivors, through testimony or written record (eg diaries) but they don't feel like the driving force of the narrative. And for understandable reasons, as Rogoyska delves into: the truth of Katyn was submerged until the fall of the Soviet Union and while new Russia emerged, the willingness to expend political capital on Soviet war crimes existed but only to an extent; by the time Katyn could come back on the agenda, many of the ~400 survivors had passed; in any case many survivors over the course of the decades were in perilous positions where it would not have done well to speak up; those who did speak up may have also had political motivations (not to falsely accuse but in interpretation of events). The direct record of the survivors is therefore somewhat sparse.
Rogosyka ends with modern developments in recognising Katyn and I feel here we could have seen more detail. I would have wanted to see more coverage of how the Smolensk air disaster impacted how Katyn has been rendered in Russian and Polish life. I would have been interested to see more about how Belarus and Ukraine have seen Katyn at a national level (at the time of the atrocity the geographic organisation of eastern Europe was rapidly changing).
Overall, a compelling read and important for, as the author says, Katyn remains a living crime with apology and full accounting of it remaining elusive.
Rogosyka ends with modern developments in recognising Katyn and I feel here we could have seen more detail. I would have wanted to see more coverage of how the Smolensk air disaster impacted how Katyn has been rendered in Russian and Polish life. I would have been interested to see more about how Belarus and Ukraine have seen Katyn at a national level (at the time of the atrocity the geographic organisation of eastern Europe was rapidly changing).
Overall, a compelling read and important for, as the author says, Katyn remains a living crime with apology and full accounting of it remaining elusive.
May 25, 2023
This is an excellent book. Well-researched, and beautifully written, it represents one of the best works on Katyn to date.
I particularly liked this book as the author doesn't cover what my Masters thesis is on - meaning I'm contributing to new research. I also rate it four stars because the author doesn't include what my Masters thesis is on (a scholary oversight on her part).
I particularly liked this book as the author doesn't cover what my Masters thesis is on - meaning I'm contributing to new research. I also rate it four stars because the author doesn't include what my Masters thesis is on (a scholary oversight on her part).
July 27, 2025
UK writer and filmmaker Jane Rogoyska's 2021 book Surviving Katyń is a sombre account of the brutally efficient murder of 22,000 elite Polish prisoners of war in Russia in early 1940, and the subsequent largely successful attempt by the Soviet Union to claim the killings were carried out by the Nazis when invading Soviet Russia. The Germans had uncovered the mass graves, and publicized their finding internationally in an attempt to divide the so called Grand Alliance between Great Britain, the US, and the Soviet Union in WW2.
The truth was finally revealed in the 1990s, after the collapse of Soviet Russia and the opening of historical government files to researchers.
The murdered POWs had been captured in 1939, when the Soviets and Germans invaded Poland as part of their 1939 non-aggression Pact. The Soviets released most of the captured soldiers back into Poland, but detained the senior ranks as part of a broader strategy to eliminate Polish opposition to Soviet Marxism. The detained forces comprised substantial members of Poland's most successful military, business, intelligentsia, and artistic classes.
Rogoyska's account is narrated with novelistic skill: she describes in detail the daily misery of the detainees' internment, the fortuitous events that saved a few hundred from execution, their subsequent forlorn attempts to discover the fate of their comrades, the development of the Russian propaganda that shifted blame to the Germans following discovery of the mass graves after the termination of the Soviet-German Pact, and finally the chilling methodical detail of the murders as revealed in later investigations, by bullet to the back of the head, mostly in underground cellars, and sometimes more brutally on the edge of one of the mass graves.
The book concludes with sober reflections on modern parallels of state sponsored deceit and propaganda. The reproduction of memos from the head of the Soviet secret police (the NKVD) and Stalin authorizing the murders are prime examples of detached bureaucracy in the service of an authoritarian and murderous state. Recent events in Ukraine suggest the nature and character of Russia’s treatment of its neighbours has changed little in the intervening 80+ years ...
Rogoyska won several awards for her exceptional, thorough research and expert narration of one of the many barbaric crimes of the Second World War. The book is compulsive reading, exposing yet another horrific incident in that most savage war. A film about the massacres was released in 2007, made by renowned Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. It provides a further disturbing complement to Rogoyska's comprehensive history.
The truth was finally revealed in the 1990s, after the collapse of Soviet Russia and the opening of historical government files to researchers.
The murdered POWs had been captured in 1939, when the Soviets and Germans invaded Poland as part of their 1939 non-aggression Pact. The Soviets released most of the captured soldiers back into Poland, but detained the senior ranks as part of a broader strategy to eliminate Polish opposition to Soviet Marxism. The detained forces comprised substantial members of Poland's most successful military, business, intelligentsia, and artistic classes.
Rogoyska's account is narrated with novelistic skill: she describes in detail the daily misery of the detainees' internment, the fortuitous events that saved a few hundred from execution, their subsequent forlorn attempts to discover the fate of their comrades, the development of the Russian propaganda that shifted blame to the Germans following discovery of the mass graves after the termination of the Soviet-German Pact, and finally the chilling methodical detail of the murders as revealed in later investigations, by bullet to the back of the head, mostly in underground cellars, and sometimes more brutally on the edge of one of the mass graves.
The book concludes with sober reflections on modern parallels of state sponsored deceit and propaganda. The reproduction of memos from the head of the Soviet secret police (the NKVD) and Stalin authorizing the murders are prime examples of detached bureaucracy in the service of an authoritarian and murderous state. Recent events in Ukraine suggest the nature and character of Russia’s treatment of its neighbours has changed little in the intervening 80+ years ...
Rogoyska won several awards for her exceptional, thorough research and expert narration of one of the many barbaric crimes of the Second World War. The book is compulsive reading, exposing yet another horrific incident in that most savage war. A film about the massacres was released in 2007, made by renowned Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. It provides a further disturbing complement to Rogoyska's comprehensive history.
September 22, 2021
Outstanding book beautifully written account of the war crime perpetrated by the Soviets on the cream of Polish Army officers ....swept up when they invaded Poland as part of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact....one they vainly tried to add to the Holocaust and other unspeakable crimes of the Nazis but failed to do so. Such was their fervour to cover up their crime they sought those Poles who had visited Katyn under orders from the Nazis to conduct autopsies etc to convince them to change their opinions or else be suitably punished...to that end they succeeded in tracking down priceless files and destroying them. There is fascinating detail on those disparate groups of Polish officers from the patriots/nationalists to the Communist sympathisers like Colonel Berling and others -- very few admittedly -- who remained behind when the great majority left the Soviet Union for Iran and relative safety. Suffice to say there is too much to recount here but leave you with a few lines...about the west's refusal to pin it on the Soviets for realpolitik reasons.."Let sleeping dogs lie...It was an unhappy time to be a Pole." On how the carve up of Poland post WWII deprived the country of its multi-ethnicity quite apart from the loss of three million Jews murdered by the Nazis. 'The change was a profound one, its effect still resonant today. The Nazi occupation of Poland had lasted six years. Soviet rule was to endure for nearly half a century.' And....to round it up...the total. 21,857 victims....395 survivors....says it all of how brutal and evil a regime Stalin's was despite the apologists that still exist.
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July 12, 2022Fantastic book, it is well researched and well presented. This is a book, incredibly, relevant today, with all what is happening in Ukraine, so many similarities.
There are some photos in the book and one of the reminded me of the man in the brown coat killed in Bucha with his hands behind his back. I showed that picture to my husband, without saying anything and he said the same thing.
I think this book is useful today to understand what Russia acts as it does as there are snippets of what NKVD (forerunner to KGB) did, talking about Katyn as a "provocation" and their propaganda using journalists (one of which was working at the BBC and Guardian).
This is a must read!
There are some photos in the book and one of the reminded me of the man in the brown coat killed in Bucha with his hands behind his back. I showed that picture to my husband, without saying anything and he said the same thing.
I think this book is useful today to understand what Russia acts as it does as there are snippets of what NKVD (forerunner to KGB) did, talking about Katyn as a "provocation" and their propaganda using journalists (one of which was working at the BBC and Guardian).
This is a must read!
March 13, 2023
A very fact dense book that is a slower read, as it touches on 100s of peoples lives. It is difficult to keep all the names straight. Well researched. Thought-provoking book that wraps up well at the end. Sad part of history.
October 16, 2021
Over 5 decades we were led to believe the Nazis killed over 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals. 50 years we believed what we were told. It was all a lie to appease Stalin and future Soviet leaders during the Cold War. This book goes to in depth to expose the truth and the lengths the Russians went to cover up their mass murder.
September 11, 2021
This is the best book of the five that I have read about Katyn. It is well researched , superbly written and brings this horrible event up to date with all of its ramifications. It deserves to be widely read. George S Bobinski
August 13, 2021
4.5.
Fantastic, perhaps due to the personal connection. Latter part was particularly good
Fantastic, perhaps due to the personal connection. Latter part was particularly good
December 28, 2022
Extremely fascinating but also quite horrifying.
January 8, 2025
This book is exceptional.
December 22, 2025
Overview:
Surviving Katyn tells the story of one of the most brutal and long-hidden war crimes of World War II. In 1940, the Soviet NKVD, under orders signed by Stalin, murdered 22,000 Polish citizens—soldiers of all ranks, intellectuals, scholars, doctors, thinkers—anyone who might threaten future Soviet rule in Poland. The victims had fled the Nazis, only to be captured by the Russians and imprisoned in camps like Kozelsk and Starobelsk in 1939. In April 1940, they were taken to execution sites such as Katyn Forest, still wearing the same clothes they’d been arrested in months earlier.
For decades, Soviet authorities denied responsibility, blaming the Nazis and destroying or falsifying records. Out of thousands, only 395 men survived—and even that survival was strategic.
My Thoughts:
I picked this book up randomly at a book fair, thinking it was historical fiction—but it turned out to be very much a history book, filled with facts, dates, names, and documented evidence. That’s usually not my preferred style, but the importance of this story cannot be ignored. Some histories are uncomfortable, but they need to be remembered.
The book details the harsh camp conditions: constant surveillance, restricted movement, forced exposure to propaganda, interrogations that amounted to torture, and rations that reflected rank—senior officers were given slightly more, while others starved. Reading this, it was impossible not to see how similar these camps were to Nazi concentration camps—proof that cruelty wasn’t exclusive to one regime.
One moment that really stayed with me was about prisoners sharing their scarce food with stray dogs, showing kindness even when they themselves were starving. It was such a small detail, but incredibly powerful.
There were many names in this book—too many to remember—but one survivor, Stanisław Swianiewicz, stood out. He survived by lying among piles of dead bodies for hours, so that when he finally stood up, the freezing cold felt less unbearable. That image is haunting.
The book also explores how the truth was buried for decades. In 1943, the Germans revealed mass graves in Katyn, but the Soviets denied responsibility. Even into the late 1980s, it was dangerous to speak publicly about Katyn. Families lived with silence, children saying their fathers “went away and never came back.” Still, people refused to forget. Polish historians eventually accessed documents proving the massacre was carried out by the NKVD.
What struck me most is how deliberate it all was. These killings weren’t random—Stalin saw human lives as expendable. The few who survived did so because they were considered useful: informers, skilled officers, intelligence assets, or those willing to cooperate.
This isn’t an easy or emotional comfort read. It’s heavy, factual, and grim—but necessary. History should never be forgotten, especially when it was deliberately erased.
Overall, not my usual kind of book, but an important one. Read it if you want to understand a tragedy that the world tried to silence. 🕊️📖
Surviving Katyn tells the story of one of the most brutal and long-hidden war crimes of World War II. In 1940, the Soviet NKVD, under orders signed by Stalin, murdered 22,000 Polish citizens—soldiers of all ranks, intellectuals, scholars, doctors, thinkers—anyone who might threaten future Soviet rule in Poland. The victims had fled the Nazis, only to be captured by the Russians and imprisoned in camps like Kozelsk and Starobelsk in 1939. In April 1940, they were taken to execution sites such as Katyn Forest, still wearing the same clothes they’d been arrested in months earlier.
For decades, Soviet authorities denied responsibility, blaming the Nazis and destroying or falsifying records. Out of thousands, only 395 men survived—and even that survival was strategic.
My Thoughts:
I picked this book up randomly at a book fair, thinking it was historical fiction—but it turned out to be very much a history book, filled with facts, dates, names, and documented evidence. That’s usually not my preferred style, but the importance of this story cannot be ignored. Some histories are uncomfortable, but they need to be remembered.
The book details the harsh camp conditions: constant surveillance, restricted movement, forced exposure to propaganda, interrogations that amounted to torture, and rations that reflected rank—senior officers were given slightly more, while others starved. Reading this, it was impossible not to see how similar these camps were to Nazi concentration camps—proof that cruelty wasn’t exclusive to one regime.
One moment that really stayed with me was about prisoners sharing their scarce food with stray dogs, showing kindness even when they themselves were starving. It was such a small detail, but incredibly powerful.
There were many names in this book—too many to remember—but one survivor, Stanisław Swianiewicz, stood out. He survived by lying among piles of dead bodies for hours, so that when he finally stood up, the freezing cold felt less unbearable. That image is haunting.
The book also explores how the truth was buried for decades. In 1943, the Germans revealed mass graves in Katyn, but the Soviets denied responsibility. Even into the late 1980s, it was dangerous to speak publicly about Katyn. Families lived with silence, children saying their fathers “went away and never came back.” Still, people refused to forget. Polish historians eventually accessed documents proving the massacre was carried out by the NKVD.
What struck me most is how deliberate it all was. These killings weren’t random—Stalin saw human lives as expendable. The few who survived did so because they were considered useful: informers, skilled officers, intelligence assets, or those willing to cooperate.
This isn’t an easy or emotional comfort read. It’s heavy, factual, and grim—but necessary. History should never be forgotten, especially when it was deliberately erased.
Overall, not my usual kind of book, but an important one. Read it if you want to understand a tragedy that the world tried to silence. 🕊️📖
September 23, 2024
If you have never heard of the Katyn massacre by Russia, please read on....
Imagine, if you will, 22,000 Polish nationals, half of which are professional soldiers; the others are reservists, engaged in civilian professions as lawyers, engineers, teachers, politicians, journalists, scientists, writers, doctors, and priests. They are Poland’s elite and a generation of thinkers - the intelligentsia. Now imagine them massacred by the very people they thought would liberate their country.
Here are the disturbing facts. On 17 September 1939, just two weeks after Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany following its invasion of Poland from the west, the Red Army invaded Poland from the east. No declaration of war was made, no hostilities from Poland, but the consequences of the 'Treaty of Non-Aggression' between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Thousands of members of the Polish armed forces and Poland’s elite were captured as they retreated from the German onslaught, only to be taken into prison camps across the Soviet Union and the rest is history – the secret 50 year history. They were shot and buried in mass graves, a war crime committed by Stalin’s forces.
Transcripts included in the book:
This shocking revelation led to one of the most bitterly fought propaganda battles of World War II. While the Nazis sought to divide the Allies with evidence of ‘Stalin’s bestiality’, the Soviets pointed the finger at Hitler’s ‘fascist regime’, claiming the massacre had taken place not in 1940 but 1941. Given the Allied position of dependence on Stalin to win the war against Hitler, neither Britain nor the US challenged the Soviet version of events, and so the lies continued for over 50 years. Germany was to blame - evidence manufactured complete with fake dates and fake monuments. It was not until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Russia and sought to heal the relationships with Poland that he finally declared that it was in fact Russia who carried out the bloody deed, in today’s language – genocide.
The book contains the crucial execution order of 5 March 1940, signed by Beria, and sent to Stalin for his approval, which emerged only with the final collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This explosive document was contained in a special envelope, along with other secret files that had apparently been passed from one Soviet president to the next ever since the war. On 14 October 1992 it was finally handed, along with other secret documents relating to Katyń to the Polish president, Lech Wałęsa, in Warsaw. After 50 years, Russia owned up to committing the massacre providing the evidence of documents, orders, eye witness accounts and artefacts recovered from the site. These artefacts, letters, photos, as many had suspected confirmed the massacre occurred in 1940 when Russia was in control of the region the men were taken from.
An eyewitness account from the book
“On arrival, the prisoners were ordered to leave their suitcases, to undress down to their shirts and trousers, and to remove their belts. Each prisoner was led individually, hands tied, down a corridor and across a courtyard to a separate building where he was taken down to a sound-proofed cellar. Here, the guard would open the door and ask, ‘May I?’ to which the response was ‘Come in.’ Inside the room a prosecutor was seated next to Kupry. The prosecutor asked the prisoner for his name and date of birth, then said, ‘You may go.’ At this point there was a noise, a ‘clack’, after which Kupry would call the guards to take the body away and load it onto a truck.”
For obvious reasons this was not an easy book to read, digest, and come to terms with. Not just for the shocking brutality, savagery, and evil that was delivered onto a defenceless nation, as it was then, but because it would appear that in today’s world we have all the hallmarks of history repeating itself. Who is left out of Mariupol in Ukraine for example? Where are all the intelligentsia from the Ukrainian territories now occupied by Russia? What has happened to the children that have been taken into Russia?. Is there any truth in the allegations that Russia is using mobile incinerators / crematoriums to destroy evidence of war crimes in Ukraine?. It is also difficult to avoid drawing comparisons to the carnage in Palestine, and in Israel on a dark day in their recent history, and the needless slaughter of innocent people. However, I am here to comment on this book and this distressing part of history, when Poland was at the mercy of state sponsored terrorism.
Neither Boris Yeltsin nor his successor, Vladimir Putin, have accepted any equivalence between Nazi crimes and Stalinist repression. From the Russian perspective there were many more Soviet victims of Stalinism, and Russia had lost so many during the war, so this somehow justifies the massacre of 22,000 Poles who had strategic and political importance for Russia. It cannot.
What was also difficult about this story was the role the West played in suppressing and not admitting to this story to the point many people around the world have not even heard of it. Either through embarrassment or allowing world politics to stand in the way - it’s all unclear, but the West has been guilty of inaction at a minimum. When the West has a role to play - then do it regardless of whether the aggressor is an ‘Ally’. Whilst it may have been impossible to conduct a proper investigation into the burial site whilst WWII was raging, it should never have taken 50 years for the truth to come out especially when Roosevelt and Churchill had their suspicions, as evidenced in some of their correspondence shown in the book and on other media outlets. It also didn’t help that appropriate and independent forensic investigations were ‘controlled’ or ‘denied’ for many years.
This is my fourth stop on the world book tour, and its quite sad that it is about one of the most tragic and shocking events in history, and the casualty along with the 22,000 needless deaths – the truth. I confess to feeling very emotional after reading this book. This great terror and state sponsored lie and massacre was both sickening and heartbreaking. All those families not only deprived of the opportunity to mourn, but also deprived of the truth about the terrible crimes carried out under the majesty of Soviet rule. The Polish intelligentsia was eliminated to paralyse a nation and the eliminate any potential threat of retaliation or offensive that might have taken place against the detestable invasion of their country.
The book is incredibly well researched and along with multiple other sources I read over the last few months, ‘surviving Katyn’ confirms these harrowing events in Katyn. I loved that the author let the facts tell the story. I love that the author has brought this story to light through literature. How Jane Rogoyska stayed calm enough to write this is nothing short of miraculous. A fabulous non-fiction book with lots more detail and content about such shocking events that left me speechless.
Inexcusable, cynical, sobering, brutal, and evil.
Imagine, if you will, 22,000 Polish nationals, half of which are professional soldiers; the others are reservists, engaged in civilian professions as lawyers, engineers, teachers, politicians, journalists, scientists, writers, doctors, and priests. They are Poland’s elite and a generation of thinkers - the intelligentsia. Now imagine them massacred by the very people they thought would liberate their country.
Here are the disturbing facts. On 17 September 1939, just two weeks after Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany following its invasion of Poland from the west, the Red Army invaded Poland from the east. No declaration of war was made, no hostilities from Poland, but the consequences of the 'Treaty of Non-Aggression' between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Thousands of members of the Polish armed forces and Poland’s elite were captured as they retreated from the German onslaught, only to be taken into prison camps across the Soviet Union and the rest is history – the secret 50 year history. They were shot and buried in mass graves, a war crime committed by Stalin’s forces.
Transcripts included in the book:
This shocking revelation led to one of the most bitterly fought propaganda battles of World War II. While the Nazis sought to divide the Allies with evidence of ‘Stalin’s bestiality’, the Soviets pointed the finger at Hitler’s ‘fascist regime’, claiming the massacre had taken place not in 1940 but 1941. Given the Allied position of dependence on Stalin to win the war against Hitler, neither Britain nor the US challenged the Soviet version of events, and so the lies continued for over 50 years. Germany was to blame - evidence manufactured complete with fake dates and fake monuments. It was not until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Russia and sought to heal the relationships with Poland that he finally declared that it was in fact Russia who carried out the bloody deed, in today’s language – genocide.
The book contains the crucial execution order of 5 March 1940, signed by Beria, and sent to Stalin for his approval, which emerged only with the final collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This explosive document was contained in a special envelope, along with other secret files that had apparently been passed from one Soviet president to the next ever since the war. On 14 October 1992 it was finally handed, along with other secret documents relating to Katyń to the Polish president, Lech Wałęsa, in Warsaw. After 50 years, Russia owned up to committing the massacre providing the evidence of documents, orders, eye witness accounts and artefacts recovered from the site. These artefacts, letters, photos, as many had suspected confirmed the massacre occurred in 1940 when Russia was in control of the region the men were taken from.
An eyewitness account from the book
“On arrival, the prisoners were ordered to leave their suitcases, to undress down to their shirts and trousers, and to remove their belts. Each prisoner was led individually, hands tied, down a corridor and across a courtyard to a separate building where he was taken down to a sound-proofed cellar. Here, the guard would open the door and ask, ‘May I?’ to which the response was ‘Come in.’ Inside the room a prosecutor was seated next to Kupry. The prosecutor asked the prisoner for his name and date of birth, then said, ‘You may go.’ At this point there was a noise, a ‘clack’, after which Kupry would call the guards to take the body away and load it onto a truck.”
For obvious reasons this was not an easy book to read, digest, and come to terms with. Not just for the shocking brutality, savagery, and evil that was delivered onto a defenceless nation, as it was then, but because it would appear that in today’s world we have all the hallmarks of history repeating itself. Who is left out of Mariupol in Ukraine for example? Where are all the intelligentsia from the Ukrainian territories now occupied by Russia? What has happened to the children that have been taken into Russia?. Is there any truth in the allegations that Russia is using mobile incinerators / crematoriums to destroy evidence of war crimes in Ukraine?. It is also difficult to avoid drawing comparisons to the carnage in Palestine, and in Israel on a dark day in their recent history, and the needless slaughter of innocent people. However, I am here to comment on this book and this distressing part of history, when Poland was at the mercy of state sponsored terrorism.
Neither Boris Yeltsin nor his successor, Vladimir Putin, have accepted any equivalence between Nazi crimes and Stalinist repression. From the Russian perspective there were many more Soviet victims of Stalinism, and Russia had lost so many during the war, so this somehow justifies the massacre of 22,000 Poles who had strategic and political importance for Russia. It cannot.
What was also difficult about this story was the role the West played in suppressing and not admitting to this story to the point many people around the world have not even heard of it. Either through embarrassment or allowing world politics to stand in the way - it’s all unclear, but the West has been guilty of inaction at a minimum. When the West has a role to play - then do it regardless of whether the aggressor is an ‘Ally’. Whilst it may have been impossible to conduct a proper investigation into the burial site whilst WWII was raging, it should never have taken 50 years for the truth to come out especially when Roosevelt and Churchill had their suspicions, as evidenced in some of their correspondence shown in the book and on other media outlets. It also didn’t help that appropriate and independent forensic investigations were ‘controlled’ or ‘denied’ for many years.
This is my fourth stop on the world book tour, and its quite sad that it is about one of the most tragic and shocking events in history, and the casualty along with the 22,000 needless deaths – the truth. I confess to feeling very emotional after reading this book. This great terror and state sponsored lie and massacre was both sickening and heartbreaking. All those families not only deprived of the opportunity to mourn, but also deprived of the truth about the terrible crimes carried out under the majesty of Soviet rule. The Polish intelligentsia was eliminated to paralyse a nation and the eliminate any potential threat of retaliation or offensive that might have taken place against the detestable invasion of their country.
The book is incredibly well researched and along with multiple other sources I read over the last few months, ‘surviving Katyn’ confirms these harrowing events in Katyn. I loved that the author let the facts tell the story. I love that the author has brought this story to light through literature. How Jane Rogoyska stayed calm enough to write this is nothing short of miraculous. A fabulous non-fiction book with lots more detail and content about such shocking events that left me speechless.
Inexcusable, cynical, sobering, brutal, and evil.
December 2, 2025
Hands down, the best book I read in 2025.
When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Stalin carried out a counter-invasion, leading to the imprisonment of Polish soldiers, officers, doctors, scientists, and other professionals. Keeping 22,000 Poles confined in three places across Russia, the fate of those arrested remained a mystery for the next two years. All the diplomatic efforts to trace them failed, with Stalin denying their holdup and continuing to maintain the stand that they were released. When the Nazis dug their graves in 1943, the Soviets conveniently placed the blame on the Germans. While the evidence collected overwhelmingly supported the truth that the NKVD (now KGB) committed the heinous crime of killing 22,000 Poles and burying them in the forest, the truth was brought out into the open only in 1991, after fifty years of denial and lies. If not for Glasnost, the present-day Communists would still be denying the murders committed by Stalin. In 2010, marking the seventieth anniversary, Putin himself decided to release the pending archives related to Katyn to the international community and arranged a service in memory of the dead. There is a reason the countries that broke away from the USSR still fear their sovereignty, because the evil of Joseph Stalin lives on, in their memories and monuments.
When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Stalin carried out a counter-invasion, leading to the imprisonment of Polish soldiers, officers, doctors, scientists, and other professionals. Keeping 22,000 Poles confined in three places across Russia, the fate of those arrested remained a mystery for the next two years. All the diplomatic efforts to trace them failed, with Stalin denying their holdup and continuing to maintain the stand that they were released. When the Nazis dug their graves in 1943, the Soviets conveniently placed the blame on the Germans. While the evidence collected overwhelmingly supported the truth that the NKVD (now KGB) committed the heinous crime of killing 22,000 Poles and burying them in the forest, the truth was brought out into the open only in 1991, after fifty years of denial and lies. If not for Glasnost, the present-day Communists would still be denying the murders committed by Stalin. In 2010, marking the seventieth anniversary, Putin himself decided to release the pending archives related to Katyn to the international community and arranged a service in memory of the dead. There is a reason the countries that broke away from the USSR still fear their sovereignty, because the evil of Joseph Stalin lives on, in their memories and monuments.
September 1, 2025
• Event: In April–May 1940, the Soviet NKVD executed ~22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals, and prisoners of war
• Order: Directly authorized by Joseph Stalin
• Secrecy: No witnesses; bodies buried in mass graves in Katyn Forest and other sites
• Cover-up: USSR blamed Nazis for decades; Western governments remained silent to preserve wartime alliances
• Obstacles: Disinformation, Cold War politics, and personal risk hindered efforts
• Breakthroughs: Evidence slowly emerged, including Nazi discovery of graves in 1943 and later Soviet admissions in 1990s
• Order: Directly authorized by Joseph Stalin
• Secrecy: No witnesses; bodies buried in mass graves in Katyn Forest and other sites
• Cover-up: USSR blamed Nazis for decades; Western governments remained silent to preserve wartime alliances
• Obstacles: Disinformation, Cold War politics, and personal risk hindered efforts
• Breakthroughs: Evidence slowly emerged, including Nazi discovery of graves in 1943 and later Soviet admissions in 1990s
June 3, 2022
A very relevant telling of the Katyn massacres through the stories of the 1% of Polish officers inexplicably spared by their Russian captors. The utter lack of any semblance of humanity amongst the NKVD robot killers was perhaps the most chilling aspect of this story. It certainly explains why Poland will never trust Russia nor never should .
September 13, 2023
A 13 hour audiobook. It was so good that I immediately checked to see what other books the author has written.
Covering a few decades of history the easiest way is to do so chronologically. But that isn't always the best way to tell a story. The author struck just the right balance. Thoroughly researched and easy to listen to. It's the book I've enjoyed the most this year. Highly recommended.
Covering a few decades of history the easiest way is to do so chronologically. But that isn't always the best way to tell a story. The author struck just the right balance. Thoroughly researched and easy to listen to. It's the book I've enjoyed the most this year. Highly recommended.
October 12, 2021
Excellent well written read. And the lesson continues.
November 28, 2021
Hidden part of history
Saw this book revieed on another site and had to read it. I had no idea this had happened. Ama I well done book.
Saw this book revieed on another site and had to read it. I had no idea this had happened. Ama I well done book.
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