Metadata language
Konfabulacje Wacława Pycha w sprawie zbrodni katyńskiej (1952 rok)
Subtitle:Polska 1944/45-1989 : studia i materiały 10 (2011)
Creator: Contributor:
Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Publisher: Place of publishing: Date issued/created: Description:p. 7-21 ; Annex included ; Eng. summary
Type of object: Subject and Keywords:Katyn massacre (Katyn, Russia ; 1940) ; investigation - Poland - 1944- ; Katyn massacre (Katyn, Russia ; 1940) - foreign public opinion, American ; Select Committee to Investigate and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre (1951-1952)
Abstract:At the beginning of the 1950s, in relation to the Ray J. Madden Committee established to conduct an investigation concerning the Katyn Massacre, the Ministry of Public Security launched a nation-wide campaign to find and prepare several Polish witnesses who would call into question the German information from 1943 about the Soviet responsibility for the massacre and beyond all doubt bear testimony to the innocence of the NKVD in the matter. The plan of the Ministry anticipated that to that purpose the persons would be used who in 1943 went to survey the place of the massacre as the members of German delegations. The Ministry, however, was unable to force all of them to agree to take an active part in the dealings, since some of them defected to the West. Some got mislaid. The plan’s originators did not exclude the cooperation of new witnesses who would be able to contribute to the matter. Such were the circumstances in which Wacław Pych emerged, a former soldier of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, an alleged witness to the Katyn massacre. It was him who said that the massacre of Polish officers was perpetrated by the Germans in the autumn of 1941, and it was done in his presence. His unreliable account he presented to the editors of “Sztandar Ludu”, a Lublin organ of the Polish United Workers’ Party, and the information about it he passed on to the propaganda broadcast of the Polish Radio, “Fala 49” and, of course, to the Ministry of Public Security.Considering that Wacław Pych during the war was a NKVD collaborator, and after the war he was for various reasons kept under surveillance of the security services, his revelations were treated with great reserve. Wacław Pych confabulations about the Katyn massacre were never publicised by the Ministry and was kept untouched in its documentation. It seems that even the Ministry’s officials arrived at the conclusion that Wacław Pych fabricated the whole story.
Relation:Polska 1944/45-1989 : studia i materiały
Volume: Start page: End page: Resource type: Detailed Resource Type: Format: Resource Identifier: Source:IH PAN, sygn. B.155/10 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. B.156/10 ; click here to follow the link
Language: Language of abstract: Rights:Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license
Terms of use:Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -
Digitizing institution:Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Original in:Library of the Institute of History PAS
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