Laying the blame on the Nazis: the anniversary of the Katyn massacre

71 years ago, on 13 April 1943, Radio Berlin reported that the German military forces had discovered a mass grave in the Katyn forest near Soviet Smolensk. Quoting from David Engel's Facing a Holocaust, the Germans -

uncovered “a ditch... 28 metres long and 16 metres wide, in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in twelve layers.” The German broadcast charged that these officers had been shot by the Soviets in March 1940 and announced that the German forces expected to find additional pits containing up to 10,000 bodies. Two days later the Soviet government had responded, claiming that the dead were “former Polish prisoners of war, who... fell into the hands of the German-Fascist hangmen in the summer of 1941”.

Poland's sons butchered by the Soviet allies of Nazi Germany

It was only 47 years later, on 13 April 1990, when the Soviet government admitted that Polish officers and soldiers had been murdered in cold blood by Soviet butchers from the secret police (NKVD) after the USSR invaded the Eastern regions of Poland in accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Pact. It is estimated that around 22.000 Poland's best sons were executed by the Soviets in 1940

On the day of the Soviet invasion of Poland, on 17 September 1939, Vyacheslav Molotov issued a declaration of war on Poland, where he, in particular, stated:

The Polish-German War has revealed the internal bankruptcy of the Polish State. [...] The Polish Government has disintegrated, and no longer shows any sign of life. This means that the Polish State and its Government have, in point of fact, ceased to exist. [...]

The Soviet Government also cannot view with indifference the fact that the kindred Ukrainian and White Russian people, who live on Polish territory and who are at the mercy of fate, should be left defenceless.

In these circumstances, the Soviet Government have directed the High Command of the Red Army to order troops to cross the frontier and to take under their protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western White Russia.

The history now seems to repeat itself. On 1 March 2014, Vladimir Putin appealed to Russia's Federation Council where he stated, in particular:

In connection with the extraordinary situation that has developed in Ukraine and the threat to citizens of the Russian Federation, our compatriots, [...] I hereby appeal to the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation to use the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine.

Today, on Palm Sunday, we pause for a moment to commemorate tens of thousands of Polish officers and soldiers who fell victim to the Soviet murderous brutality and lies. And the best way to commemorate these victims will be to prevent this bloody history from repeating itself.