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Honoring the victims of the Katyn Massacre

25.02.2020

The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, tasked with researching the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet region, organized a panel discussion on the 80th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre with Prof. Andrzej Nowak and Dr. Alexander Guryanov of the Memorial Group, in partnership with the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, D.C.

WIlson Center

Opening the discussion, Polish Ambassador Piotr Wilczek emphasized the ongoing significance of the victims of the Polish intelligentsia in Katyn in light of mass murders still taking place in the world.

Prof. Andrzej Nowak of the Institute of History PAN pointed to the similar goals guiding both Stalin and Hitler’s actions. During World War II, the Soviet NKVD and the German SS came to an agreement, among others, on the mass elimination of the Polish elite. He also spoke of the Katyn Massacre’s legacy in the context of the falsification and manipulation of history within the USSR, as well as within modern-day Russia.

Alexander Guryanov of the Memorial Group acknowledged the falsification of Katyn's history as a “moral problem for the Russian state.” He added, that “solving this problem would aid in building Russia’s future.” The Russia historian assessed the Katyn Massacre as “first and foremost our problem, and secondly as a problem for Poland-Russia relations.”

Over the next two months, an exhibition dedicated to the Katyn Massacre will be on public display in the Wilson Center.

 

Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, D.C.

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