Posted on 11/26/2008 12:20:14 PM PST by lizol
Russian NO to Katyn massacre victims 25.11.2008
The Municipal Court in Moscow has dismissed a legal complaint filed by families of Polish officers murdered in Katyn in 1940 concerning the rehabilitation of the victims.
Thus the October verdict of the lower Regional Court has been upheld.
Russian lawyers representing the Katyn victims’ families have complained against proceedings of the Supreme Military Prosecutors Office which denied the rehabilitation of the murdered Polish officers on grounds of incomplete records contained in Russian military archives.
Attorney Anna Stawicka said her clients would be filing the case with the European Human Rights Tribunal in Strasbourg.
My understanding of the issue is that, when the bodies were first discovered by the Nazis during the invasion of Russia, the Soviet government maintained no Polish officers were murdered in Katyn in 1940 and that it was the later work of the Germans.
Your posting of the short article seems to imply that the case was dismissed by the Moscow municipal court due to a report by the Russian prosecutors there were no records on the event in Russian military archives. How convenient - for Russia.
Is filing the complaint in Russia, having it dismissed, then taking it to the European Court of Justice all part of a single strategy for bringing Russia into an international legal forum and making it admit to the role the previous Soviet government played in the the killings?
The use of the term rehabilitation is also interesting. Is it the case that the Soviets later maintained that the Poles were criminals that were executed? (Hence the need for rehabilitation.)
I read a very good book about that explains the Polish plight a bit better. It is “When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption” by Wesley Adamczyk. I have met Mr. Adamczyk quite a few times. A very enlightened man and someone I always like to speak with. He actually lived through it and his father was one of those Polish officers murdered in the Katyn forest.
This book shows you how the Poles were treated by both the Germans and the Russians, and for that matter, the Allies.
it is very well written and by that I mean that you will read it cover to cover and not be bored.
The bottom line here is that the Russians are still Russians i.e. not to be trusted. The Germans are taking all the blame for the war atrocities only because Russia helped us. Russia has hated Poland since the Poles kicked their asses in 1920 (I believe) and used this opportunity to get erase that black mark against their armed forces from everyone’s memory. They not only wiped out the officers, they also got rid of the Polish white collar workers, essentially taking all the thinkers out of a population. This is where all the dumb polish jokes come from. We had a nation filled with doers, but no thinkers. That is like a brain-damage body. It still functions, but it only does what it is told.
It is a very sad chapter in our (Allies) history. Where have you ever heard of a country that won a war and then had to give their country up as a consequence? The Poles that escaped both the Germans and the Russians formed their own army and was an official part of the Allied forces.
They were known as some of the fiercest fighters in WWII and showed no mercy to the Germans. We then turned around and rewarded them by giving them to Russia. Russia really effed them up after that and it took almost 6 decades for Poland to re-emerge as a future force. Germany will be first on their list. Seeing that they cannot do much to Germany, you will see (and already can see) that they will try everything in their power to piss Germany off.
Germany is going to rue the day they allowed Poland in as part of the EU.
Also try reading an earlier work, “Katyn: A Crime Without Parallel”. I was told about Katyn since childhood, but this book was the first in my experience to document the Soviets’ blaming the Nazis (who were actually telling the truth when they unearthed the mass graves in 1943).
Meanwhile,
“Russki! Eko chortovo otrodye!”
There was a parallel to Katyn, it was called "Palmiry."
I thought Gorbachev already admitted to the NKVD’s responsibility for the massacre, including the release of damning documents.
Actually, I wish that Polish Catholics would come west en mass and displace the Muslim immigrant flood that is currently plaguing Western Europe. If a foreign language must become prominent in the streets of London, Paris, and Berlin, let it be Polish, not Arabic.
Agree with your comment concerning the Russians (at least the government). Even "trust but verify" may be too careless an attitude when dealing with them. The government simply cannot be trusted. Too many simultaneous hidden agandas.
You know, I seem to recall that too. But I think under Putin there has been a move to retrench and obscure the official Soviet/Russian role; the inability to locate documents in Soviet archives perhaps being an indicator of this.
“We can’t find any report on this in our files, so it must have never happened. You are lying! It’s a provocation! We won’t put up with this abuse! Alert the Army for deployment to the border!”
Gaas, I've been told that the fate of the Poles was sealed even during the war. I need a hend from top notch military history buff. Is it true that the Brits have warned Germans of Polish 2nd Corps onslaught on Monte Cassino and thus indirectly inflicted huge causalties to the Poles? According to the story I have heard, it was done on purpose, to decimate Anders' forces and prevent them having a say after the war.
Russia is not alone. Two years ago, in case Alpern vs. Vatican Bank, legal counsel of The Holy See admitted that genocide of over 500 000 Serbs, Roma and Jews did take place in Croatia in WWII, admitted that Vatican aided and abetted perpetrators and hid the proceeds of the crime on their behalf, but claimed that Vatican's activities were not illegal, because Genocide was not sanctioned as a crime until UN Genocide convention was enforced in 1951.
Russia took the same line of defense.
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