Poland has received documents from Ukraine containing the names of NKVD officers responsible for the 1940 Katyn massacre, Polish Radio reports. The documents, handed over by Ukraine’s Secret Service (SBU) to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in Warsaw, shed light on the Katyn executioners, who they were and why they killed 350 Poles in the Roviensky oblast in 1939 and 1940.
The killings were just part of the slaughter of over 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD, Polish Radio notes.
The documents show that the aim of the NKVD massacre was to ‘decapitate’ Polish society by murdering a whole class of intellectuals, officers, landowners and others. Consequently, the NKVD functionaries were ordered to arrest and execute “officers, landowners or agents of noble Poland,” say the documents, dating from 1956, according to the radio.
The documents handed to Poland by the Ukrainian secret services, however, point to the deliberate attempt by the Soviet Union to deprive Poland of a whole class of people. As such, Katyn falls under a UN convention of 1948 which describes genocide as: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, Polish Radio concludes.
