Katyn Forest Massacre
“Your ‘yes’ to God requires a ‘no’
to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies,
to all oppression and violation
of the weak and poor.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi forces from the west and Soviet troops advancing from the east. In the spring of 1940, acting on an order signed by Joseph Stalin, the Soviet NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs – secret police) forces rounded up nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers - almost half the Polish officer corps, twenty university professors, 300 physicians, several hundred lawyers, engineers and teachers; and more than 100 writers. journalists and intelligentsia, as well as Ukrainians, Belarusians and 700 – 900 Polish Jews and transported them to the area of the Katyn Forest outside Smolensk.
There, they were massacred and buried in unmarked mass graves.
Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and pushed into the Polish territory once held by the Russians. In 1943, the Germans announced the discovery of thousands of unearthed corpses. When representatives of the London-based Polish government-in-exile visited the sites, U.S. and British officials – worried that properly accusing the Soviets of the atrocities would lose badly needed Soviet support against the Germans - pressured them to keep their findings secret.
After the war, Stalin maintained the lie and continued to blame Hitler’s forces for the Katyn Forest Massacre.
In 1990, as the Soviet Union was losing much of its power over its “allies” in Eastern Europe and after Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity trade union, won Poland’s first free democratic election, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev turned over troves of documents conclusively demonstrating Russia’s absolute responsibility for the Katyn Forest Massacre.
On April 13, 1990, Tass, the Soviets’ official news agency reported:
“'The discovery of the archival material allows us to conclude the direct responsiblity for the atrocities of the Katyn Forest lies with (security police head) Lavrenti Beria and his henchmen. The Soviet side expressed profound regret over the Katyn tragedy, declaring that it was one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalin era.'
It took almost half a century for the Soviet/Russian government to admit the truth: They were responsible for the Massacre in the Katyn Forrest. They lied for almost half a century.
In recent weeks, the world has been cursed by another lie. The current American administration is attempting to tell the world that what we have all seen with our own eyes isn’t true. They would have us believe January 6 was a peaceful celebration, those who assaulted police officers were unjustly prosecuted and imprisoned and Ukraine attacked Russia.
Lies.
On June 15, 2024, Reuters news service reported:
“Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children is an attempt to steal the country's future and has left the youngsters with deep psychological scars, campaigners from Ukraine said on Saturday as they called for international efforts to bring them home.
“Kyiv says about 20,000 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians since the war began, calling the abductions a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide.”
On Thursday, February 26, Mykhed Oleksandr, author of nine books and with many of his essays translated into ten languages, wrote in The Guardian:
“Orders and statements from the new US president come at us daily now, with unremitting speed, and international politics is reduced to an endless series of justifications and denials of unfounded accusations.
“It’s hard to believe, but Ukrainian activists have had to write explainers for a global audience, reminding them who the true dictator is, that it was not Ukraine that started the war with Russia and that we are actually just trying to defend what is ours. And, you know, to survive a little bit…
“I don’t know, I tell them, how one can get used to the reality of war. Every night, the Russians launch dozens of deadly Shahed drones targeting energy and civilian infrastructure. Right now, when it’s -10C [14 degrees Fahrenheit] outside. A strike this month on a thermal power plant in Mykolaiv, in the south of the country, left 100,000 Ukrainians without heat. And after the latest assault on Odesa, the Russians have left 14 schools, 13 kindergartens, a children’s hospital and 250,000 residents without electricity and heating. Every night, Kyiv is shaken by explosions. Every day, Russians occupy new settlements…
“The massacre in Bucha. The siege of Mariupol and the deadly shelling of the local theatre. A missile attack on the Kramatorsk railway station. Mass graves in Izium. Torture chambers in Kherson. A rocket attack on a children’s hospital in Kyiv. Destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Nearly a quarter of the country occupied. Crimea. Parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. Hundreds of destroyed towns: Vuhledar, Bakhmut, Avdiivka. Now Pokrovsk. Kostiantynivka is next.
“Thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russians. Thousands of missing Ukrainian soldiers. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed. Thousands in Russian captivity. Dozens of executions captured on camera, when Russians killed those who surrendered.
“Every Russian war crime has a perpetrator. Someone who pulled the trigger, someone who equipped the missiles. Someone who supplied parts for their weapons. Someone who stole the children. Someone who settled in the occupied Ukrainian cities. And now, in addition to Russian and Iranian shells (and support from about 20 countries around the world) we are being attacked by the military from North Korea.
“Now justice is under threat. Right before our eyes, a world order is being formed in which truth as a category does not exist. Donald Trump says, look, here is my truth. There is your truth. But my truth is on top. That was not a Nazi salute at the inauguration celebrations. Belief is not a fact. Tribunals are impossible. The rule of law is irrelevant.
“If during the first term of Trump’s presidency we talked of the post-truth era, now we find ourselves in a world in which the truth is taken out, tortured and shot. This means that there will be no justice. This means that anything goes.
“Russia has been living like this for centuries. But now the two macho presidents, both in their 70s, one with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court, and the other the first US president to have a mugshot taken after being criminally charged, seem to be getting along well.
“The world is looking at the body of truth that is dying and bleeding before our eyes. I beg you, if you can’t stop the bleeding, at least don’t turn away from the sight of blood.”
The Massacres and Mass Graves of the Katyn Forrest outside Smolensk are a lesson about Truth.
The Massacres and Mass Graves throughout areas of Ukraine invaded by Putin’s army are a modern-day lesson.
The Ukrainian children kidnapped into Russia scream to us their lesson.
They put the lie to Stalinist, Putinist, Trumpist declaration that Ukraine provoked the current war.
Forty years was a long, long time to continue lying.
Nonetheless, like the lie that Ukraine started the now three-years-old-plus war with Russia that President Donald Trump continues to blather from the White House, the world knows he lies.
Ash Wednesday has come and gone.
Good Friday, when Christians of almost every religion will sit quietly in their pews, approaches.
Christians of every religion will hear, again, the dialogue between the abandoned Jesus and the about-to-expose-his-cowardous Pilate:
‘“For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’”
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
Please God, Christians around the world live now in anticipation of the most sacred moment of the liturgical year – the announcement “Christ is Risen! He is Risen, indeed.”
[NOTE TO ALL: Holy Saturday/Easter is the most sacred, the most important moment/and day of the Christian calendar. Not Christmas. Despite its hoopla! In his First Letter to the Christian Community at Corinth, St. Paul pulls no punches:
“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has, indeed, been raised from the dead….” (I Corinthians 15:12-20)
Not too many years ago and 9,666 air miles from Miami, Bishop Les Tomlinson of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sandhurst, Australia reflected on that exchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate:
“At the core of the trial of Jesus, Pontius Pilate asks a question, self-servingly and flippantly, ‘What is truth?’ Pilate scoffs at Jesus’ idea of bearing witness to the truth. From Pilate’s position of power, truth is optional, inconsequential even; truth can be defined anyway one wants.
“In many ways it seems as though the same attitude to truth prevails in the world of today. People talk of being ‘economical’ with the truth, of ‘mis-speaking’ instead of ‘lying,’ and of ‘fake news’ as the news that is inconvenient.
‘The truth, the whole truth about the past can be covered up, manipulated, revised and presented to suit the agendas of the powerful today. But truth matters infinitely. Christians must not be content to keep silent in a world where truth has almost become a disposable commodity – occasionally of value, but capable of being twisted or discarded when awkward, disturbing or embarrassing.
“‘The corrosion of truth in these strange times is terrifying,’ wrote journalist and author, Richard Franklin, late last year. ‘And when Donald Trump lies, when Vladimir Putin lies, when corporations and power lie about climate change, about refugees, about our world, it is not simply that they are lying about a particular issue. It is that they are saying the truth is of no consequence.
“’And it is this corrosion of the very idea of truth that is so terrifying.’
“Humanity searches for answers to the truth about our identity and purpose – who are we, where do we come from, how should I live, what is right, what is wrong, what happens when this life is over? For Christian disciples the answers to these questions are ultimately to be found in the dramatic events of the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ.
“It is Truth that is at the heart of the story of Holy Week and Easter. Jesus Christ goes to the Cross because he is the embodiment of Truth, betrayed by grubby ambition and squalid self-interest. The Resurrection is the ultimate vindication of the Truth that the God who is Love will in the end prevail over darkness, hatred and suffering.
The great German Lutheran theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, preaching in Berlin as Hitler was coming to power, reflected on Pontius Pilate’s question, ‘What is truth?’ He said that although we may ask for the truth, there is also a Truth that is asking for us, seeking us out. We may live in a miasma of half-truths and untruths, but the Truth that is Christ himself is challenging us, on a daily basis, to take our place at his side in the name of unconditional truth and of absolute integrity.
“In these weeks of Lent, we have an opportunity to delve more deeply into the mystery of the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord and allow ourselves to be taken over by the Truth who seeks us out. In opening ourselves up to Jesus who is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life,’ we can courageously face the truth of our own lives, and become people who live by and bear witness to the Truth.”
“Your ‘yes’ to God requires a ‘no’
to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies,
to all oppression and violation
of the weak and poor.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer