This is a great film from Poland I watched last night. It tells the story of the wives and families of the victims of the Katyn Forest Massacre in 1940. It is very accurate and the ending scene is simply chilling to say the least. I did a little reading up on this event and found a great website with the names of both the NKVD killers and the Polish POWs who were killed. Unfortunately it is unavailable on my computer, I'll post it later. A little background information, drawn from the Encyclopedia, "The Holocaust Chronicle..." In April 1943, German soldiers (with aid from the local populace) made a horrific discovery in Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, Russia. They unearthed a series of mass graves containing the bodies of Polish POWs - 4,143 bodies were found in total, but thousands more were believed to have been murdered. German scientists and anthropologists dated that the POWs had been killed in 1940. Each of the victims was bound by the neck and hands and shot in the back of the head. The evidence gathered at the graves states that the POWs were executed by the NKVD in April/May 1940. Bullet analysis concluded that most of the bullets had come from Walther PPK pistols imported to the NKVD from Moscow. Also, Russian Nagant revolver rounds were found, indicating the use of that weapon to shoot the victims as well. The Russians denied all responsibility. In 1944-45, when the Red Army retook the Katyn area, the Soviets "found" the graves and claimed that the Germans had excecuted the Polish POWs. The world held this claim to be true into 1952, when the US sent an investigative committee in to review the evience. They concluded that the Russians were responsible, who still denied. In 1990, the Russian government acknowledged, finally, that the NKVD had indeed killed over 4000 POWs at Katyn. They also revealed the locations of two more mass graves nearby, also filled with the bodies of Polish POWs, hidden for over a half century. The executions, grouped together to be called the Katyn Forest Massacre, brought the total death toll to over 22,000. These dead included an admiral, two generals, and many civilians as well as soldiers. RIP
A brilliant film. It really is rather shocking how, even today, the Russians will somehow try to absolve themselves of all this and try to marginalize it. They were utter neanderthal animals and there is no hiding that. This is well before the Germans did their dirty work in the "ussr" too.
