The Katyń memorial in Manchester's Southern Cemetery
13/4/2020
The memorial was created on the initiative of Manchester's Polish community, who not only funded it but had to go to great lengths to persuade the local council to grant the required planning permission. The memorial is located next to Princess Parkway, in an area in which there are many Polish graves. This year is the 80th anniversary of the Katyń massacre ("zbrodnia katyńska" in Polish), which was the mass murder of approximately 22000 Polish nationals carried out by the Soviet secret police (NKVD) in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by a proposal (dated 5th March 1940) from Lavrentiy Beria, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps who had been imprisoned by the USSR following the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. This official document was approved and signed by the Soviet Politburo, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. As well as the approximately 8000 Polish army officers captured during the invasion of Poland, the victims also included 6000 police officers and thousands of Polish university lecturers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, officials, priests and others considered to be members of the “bourgeoisie”. Most of the victims were interned at three Soviet camps (Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostaszków) before being taken to NKVD mass murder sites, where they were killed and buried in mass graves. The graves of the Kozielsk prisoners were found in 1943 at Katyń forest. The fate of the other victims and the location of their graves was not known until five decades later. After the discovery of the Katyń grave site the USSR denied responsibility for the massacre and tried to blame it on the Germans - and continued to lie about the killings for 50 years until finally admitting Soviet guilt in 1990. However, neither the Soviet government nor successive governments of Russia have ever permitted a full investigation of the massacre, and none of the perpetrators of this war crime have ever been brought to justice. The memorial in Manchester was unveiled in 1990 and soil from the Katyń site was buried inside. Soil from the mass murder site at Charków (Kharkiv), at which the victims interned at Starobielsk were killed was added in 1992. Soil from the mass murder site at Miednoje (Mednoye), at which the victims interned at Ostazków were killed was added in 2001. RIP....
