Katyñ in England

[doomtrader]

To all British/English/Scottish/Walish(?) mates:

You might want to go and see the movie about Katyñ. In London it's going to be played in Curzon Mayfair, Barbican, Renoir, Curzon Richmond and Cine Lumiere cinemas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

[Ursa MAior]

Too bad that there is so little the world knows about communist crimes like this. Too bad that Stalin is still seen as significantly better than Hitler. 'cuz there is little difference if any.

This fillm rocks. As most americans wont forgive Pearl Harbour we wont forgive Katyn and the rest.

[redcoat]

doomtrader,
 
this link may be of interest to you:
 
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/katyn/akuras.html
 
The Katyn Memorial at Gunnersbury Cemetery, Chiswick, England.

[leastonh1]

The wiki article makes grim reading. It's horrific. I knew about some of what happened at Katyn, but not the extent of the massacre. Words fail me.

[sapper_astro]

I have never understood why they did this. The SS had their insane eugenics programs, what reason have the Commies to do this? And of course, when the Poles found out and got angry, Stalin used it as the perfect excuse to stop listening to Churchill and refuse to deal with anyone but the Lublin puppet comittee.

[Helpless]

ORIGINAL: sapper_astro

I have never understood why they did this. The SS had their insane eugenics programs, what reason have the Commies to do this? And of course, when the Poles found out and got angry, Stalin used it as the perfect excuse to stop listening to Churchill and refuse to deal with anyone but the Lublin puppet comittee.

I think it was "in-rush" revenge decision. Don't forget that Red Army suffered stunning defeat in Soviet-Polish war in 1920. The fate of Russian POWs in polish camps was not much better of the poor men in Katyn. Various sources giving from 20K to 60K dead there. Hopefully someone will make the movie about them as well.

[doomtrader]

The fate of Russian POWs in polish camps was not much better of the poor men in Katyn. Various sources giving from 20K to 60K dead there.

AFAIK, they were dying most due the disaese, not by shooting in the head.

The Germans have their 'race programm' and the Russians have their 'class programm'. Officers were the inteligence class in Poland.

[Capt. Harlock]

I think it was "in-rush" revenge decision. Don't forget that Red Army suffered stunning defeat in Soviet-Polish war in 1920.

Possible, but what I've read says that it was a more deliberate decision on Stalin's part. The idea was to eliminate the potential leaders of Polish society to make it impossible for the Poles to revolt against Soviet occupation. (At a conference, Stalin suggested a similar massacre of the German officer corps once the Allies had conquered Germany. Roosevelt deflected the idea by pretending it was a joke.)

[Helpless]

AFAIK, they were dying most due the disaese, not by shooting in the head.

There was a question about the reason. The slow death of desease is not much better (if not the worse) then the shooting..

I'm not defending any of the "approach", but there is more chance to change "class" then the race.. btw, Commies were not "clean" ethnic russians..

[Helpless]

Possible, but what I've read says that it was a more deliberate decision on Stalin's part. The idea was to eliminate the potential leaders of Polish society to make it impossible for the Poles to revolt against Soviet occupation.

that's possible.. but we can only guess.

(At a conference, Stalin suggested a similar massacre of the German officer corps once the Allies had conquered Germany. Roosevelt deflected the idea by pretending it was a joke.)

do you have any source on that?

There is numerous officials orders for good (as good as it could be) treatment on German POWs.

[Anraz]

ORIGINAL: Helpless
The fate of Russian POWs in polish camps was not much better of the poor men in Katyn. Various sources giving from 20K to 60K dead there. Hopefully someone will make the movie about them as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camps_for_ ... ontroversy
It is worth to read the whole text:

Until the source documents were published in Moscow in 2004,[2] some Russian historians have estimated the number of prisoners and the death toll to be much higher, estimating that the death toll was between 40,000 to over 100,000.[1] For example, Irina Mikhutina in her 1995 publications estimated the number of prisoners to be 165,000 and the death toll to be 70,000.[6] In 1998 Russian popular press reported that Polish internment camp in Tuchola was particularly notorious for the large number of Soviet POW's deaths and was dubbed a "death camp" by the Russian Emigrant press from within Poland.[7]>[not in citation given] There have also been accusations from the Russian side that the death toll was influenced by the indifference of the camp authorities. F.e. «From the moment of opening an infirmary in February, 1921 till May, 11, 1921 there was registered epidemic diseases 6491, not epidemic 12294, 2561 deaths.»[2] Some Russian historians used those numbers to justify the Katyn massacre[1].[8]
The Russian historians arrived at this number by first estimating the number of POWs, then subtracting the number that has been repatriated to the Soviet Union after the hostilities ended, and then assuming that most of the remainder died in POW camps[2]. Polish historians always countered this by arguing that: (a) the number of POWs was very difficult to estimate accurately, due to the chaotic situation prevailing for most of the war, and (b) many Soviet POWs lost that status after they switched sides and entered units fighting alongside Polish forces against the Red Army, or were transferred to the Whites rather than the Bolsheviks[2]. There was also the problem that significant number of Russian POWs were left in the territory of Poland since World War I (about 3.9 million soldiers of the Russian Empire were taken captive by the Central Powers) and obviously when the Polish-Soviet conflict deteriorated, these POWs were not released to Russia.[2][3]
The issue was finally settled in 2004, where a joint team of Polish and Russian historians (prof. Waldemar Rezmer and prof. Zbigniew Karpus from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and prof. Gennady Matveyev from Moscow State University), after reexamining documents from Polish and Russian archives published their results (printed in Russia by Federal Agency for Russian Archives). Their findings show that the number of Russian POWs can be estimated at between 80,000 and 85,000, and that the number of deaths in the camps can be estimated from 16,000 (Karpus, Rezmer) to 20,000 (Matveyev). Existing documents and proofs does not also confirm thesis made by many Russian historians that Russian POWs were specially exterminated in Polish camps because of their nationality, religion or other issues.[9][1] They also show that the main cause of death were various illnesses and epidemics (influenza, typhus, cholera and dysentery), noting that these diseases also took a heavy toll among fighting soldiers and the civilian population.[1].
A similar number of Polish POWs - about 20,000 out of about 51,000 - died in Soviet and Lithuanian camps.[10]

[Anraz]

to delete by a mod

[Helpless]

ORIGINAL: Anraz

A similar number of Polish POWs - about 20,000 out of about 51,000 - died in Soviet and Lithuanian camps.[10]

Once again, i'm not commenting who won the "competition". The comment was about the reason.

[Ursa MAior]

Reason? Communism's cruelty. Or Stalin's, makes no difference. The average western people now a lot about nazi crimes but very little about similar commie attrocities. There are still! many apologetas for communism. Probably because many liberals and leftist intellectuels still dare not to face the fact it was a monster (almost as terrible as nazism) they have supported.