Polish Relatives Visiting Katyn Want Soviet Forest’s Dark Secret of Murder Spotlighted

KATYN, Soviet Union —  Jerzy Rudzinski took one look at the Soviet memorial at Katyn, dedicated “to victims of Fascism--Polish officers shot by the Nazis in 1941.”

Then, the 53-year-old sculptor turned away, quickly climbed 15 feet up a pine tree and nailed up a small wooden plaque inscribed with his father’s name and true date of death: 1940.

Uniformed and plainclothes Soviet police watched from afar but did nothing.

Rudzinski, one of the relatives of the 4,300 murdered Polish officers whose deaths in this Soviet forest have been wrapped in mystery and lies for more than 45 years, was part of the largest group of Poles ever allowed to go to Katyn.

For the first time, the family members were able to mourn in the secluded wood where, according to the weight of historical evidence, the young officers--the elite of their generation--were shot and stacked into mass graves by the Soviet secret police, known then as the NKVD.

More than 15,000 Polish officers deported to three camps in the Soviet Union in 1939 after the outbreak of World War II were never heard from again after the spring of 1940. The Katyn bodies were found by the Germans in 1943. Remains of the 11,000 other men have never been located.

Relatives of the victims accounted for most of the 468 Poles who boarded a special train organized by a Polish state tourist agency for a chance to spend several hours in the forest.

“Poles don’t want those graves to be anonymous, because we know the names,” Rudzinski said. “These are not unknown soldiers, but the Russians don’t allow us to personify the deaths.

“I wanted to climb the tree, to put up a symbol high so that they wouldn’t be able to take it down so easily,” he said.

Seeing Rudzinski, Iwona Mlokosiewicz hurried over and asked him also to nail up a brass plaque for her father, whom she knows only from photographs.

“My mother received one card. She was pregnant when my father left, so he probably didn’t even know I was born when he died,” said Mlokosiewicz, holding a bag of dirt from the forest for her 77-year-old mother, who couldn’t make the trip.

The Soviet Union maintains that the officers were murdered by the Nazis in 1941. But most Poles and Western historians, based on an International Red Cross investigation and other inquiries, have long concluded that the Soviet secret police committed the crime in April or May of 1940.

With Poland in the Soviet orbit after World War II, it was impossible to speak openly in Poland about Soviet responsibility until the 1980s, when the birth of the Solidarity trade union movement ushered in a period of openness.

Even so, it was not until this year that the Polish side of a joint historical commission set up in 1987 by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and then-Polish leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski conceded that there is no reasonable doubt that the Soviets were responsible.

Katyn remains an emotional wound for Poles, an obstacle to reconciliation and a major source of Polish mistrust of the Soviets.

Many in the group became irritable when the train was late and the guides told them to stay in the train at Smolensk until they boarded the buses for Katyn, about 17 miles away. The presence of a police car that led the buses also upset them. Tension built when someone saw a statue of Josef Stalin along the route.

“We are very nervous. It is our first time here. For the past 50 years my mother promised that before she died she would lay flowers for her brother at Katyn,” said Jozef Skotnicki, a zoo director who accompanied his 82-year-old mother and an aunt.

Once there, the Poles walked to the memorial, a 45-foot-long, chest-high polished stone wall set in a grove of pine and birch trees.

A Solidarity sticker quickly was used to fasten a piece of paper with the letters NKVD on it over the word Nazi on the monument.

Tears streaming down her face, one woman stood motionless behind the monument holding a candle in the shape of “1940” with a lighted wick on each numeral.

Hundreds of other candles were lighted, dozens of wreaths laid, a Polish flag planted in the damp soil and a table set up for a Mass in front of a wooden cross. At least one man broke down and was carried to an ambulance brought to cope with those overcome with emotion.

There was one Soviet broadcaster present who had mixed results trying to conduct interviews in Russian.

“Go away!” one Pole told him.

“It’s high time this thing is regulated by our countries, and you can start by saying this deed was done by the NKVD,” another said.

Many said they hope the Soviets will acknowledge the NKVD’s guilt by the time Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki visits Moscow on Nov. 23.

“The fate of every lie is that sooner or later it will be revealed,” Rudzinski said.

In Warsaw recently, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said the Soviet Union is committed to establishing the truth. But a Soviet admission of responsibility could lead to compensation claims and even homicide trials for those still alive who may have taken part in the massacre.

For now, Poles intend to take advantage of the new opportunities to travel to the site since Gorbachev assumed power.

“It seems to me that this will become a traditional place of pilgrimage,” said Maria Kowalska, who came on her own in the spring and served as a guide this time for another chance to pay tribute to her father, who lies somewhere in the forest.