THE KATYŃ MASSACRE OF APRIL 1940
“THE DESTRUCTION OF THE POLISH ELITE. OPERATION AB – KATYŃ”
AN EXHIBITION AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
International Affairs Building, ground floor
From April 9 to April 18, 2013.
Acting upon a proposal by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs submitted to the Politburo by Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria of March 5, 1940 and approved in an archived document by Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, Vyatcheslav Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan, around 22,000 Polish prisoners of war, almost without exception officers, were executed at several locations in the Katyn Forest near villages in the proximity of Smolensk in April and May 1940 by the NKVD. The executions were largely carried out with German Walther PPK pistols, but also with Russian/Soviet-made Nagant M1895 models. 7,000 were personally executed by the NKVD’s chief executioner, Vassili Mikhailovich Blokhin.
“THE DESTRUCTION OF THE POLISH ELITE. OPERATION AB – KATYŃ”
AN EXHIBITION AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
International Affairs Building, ground floor
From April 9 to April 18, 2013.
Acting upon a proposal by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs submitted to the Politburo by Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria of March 5, 1940 and approved in an archived document by Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, Vyatcheslav Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan, around 22,000 Polish prisoners of war, almost without exception officers, were executed at several locations in the Katyn Forest near villages in the proximity of Smolensk in April and May 1940 by the NKVD. The executions were largely carried out with German Walther PPK pistols, but also with Russian/Soviet-made Nagant M1895 models. 7,000 were personally executed by the NKVD’s chief executioner, Vassili Mikhailovich Blokhin.