…and the public didn’t know yet about Katyn.
It was not yet official.
That same day, Minister Goebbels noted in his diary
that “some 10,000” graves (!) had been discovered in Katyn Forest” and he
delineated the steps he planned for in dealing with this matter:
I saw to
it that the Polish graves be inspected, that neutral journalists from Berlin be
sent to conduct an inspection of the site of the mass Polish graves. I also
ordered that Polish intellectuals be brought there. They can see with their own
eyes what awaits them if their desire is fulfilled and Germany is vanquished by
the Bolsheviks.
Lt. Voss had been
collecting testimony from various local citizens as early as February 27 and
they included Parfeon Kiselov (age 72), Ivan Grivasorov (age 26), and Ivan
Andreyev (age 26) and it is Kiselov’s testimony that Voss quoted extensively in
his March 4 report. Three lesser known
local witnesses testified somewhat later: Ivan Krivozercov’s (age 27) statement
was taken on April 5, and on April 6, the final two appeared: Mikhail Schigulov
(age 28) and Alexei Sladkov (age 68). Their statements concurred as to dates,
locations, the fact that it had been Polish officers who had been brought there
and the reputation of the site. It is clear that the Wehrmacht Special Police
Unit was working on determining the facts prior to any instructions or responses
from the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin.
It is also clear
that the Wehrmacht Medical Committee under the command of Dr. Buhtz, who had
been stationed in Smolensk, must already have been in situ prior to April 9 and
conducting its work as the Polish representatives who were brought there in
early April could note. General von Gersdorff noted that the Wehrmacht Medical
Commission (actually members of the Institute of Forensic Medicine then located
in Breslau) under Dr. Buhtz were working in Katyn in March, and Albert Pfeiffer,
assigned to Lt. Voss’ unit stated the exhumations started in the second half of
March, similarly Hans Bless, a reconnaissance officer in the Wehrmacht stated
he had been in Katyn and seen exhumations no later than March 20-25.
In addition to the Wehrmacht, there were
Volksdeutsch working with the forensic team on the exhumation, primarily used
for typing the reports or reading the written materials hidden in the uniform
pockets. The presence of the Volksdeutsch at the site is generally not specifically
noted, in part perhaps, because included
in that group were the only women present, on an ongoing basis, at the Katyn
Massacre site during the German exhumations.
Almost none of the reports mention that
women worked at the site of the exhumations, and none of them were ever called
as witnesses either in Nuremberg or at the Madden Committee Hearings – however
German propaganda photos certainly do show them and those images even appear as
evidence in the Madden Committee Testimony.
©Krystyna Piórkowska
