Subtitle:

Polska 1944/45-1989 : studia i materiały 10 (2011)

Contributor:

Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Publisher:

Instytut Historii PAN

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Description:

s. 7-21 ; Zawiera : Aneks źródłowy ; Streszcz. ang

Type of object:

Czasopismo/Artykuł

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:

10

Start page:

7

End page:

21

Detailed Resource Type:

Artykuł naukowy oryginalny

Format:

application/pdf

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:59702 ; 2450-8357

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. B.155/10 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. B.156/10 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

pol

Language of abstract:

eng

Rights:

Licencja Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 4.0

Terms of use:

Zasób chroniony prawem autorskim. [CC BY-ND 4.0 Międzynarodowe] Korzystanie dozwolone zgodnie z licencją Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 4.0, której pełne postanowienia dostępne są pod adresem: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Original in:

Biblioteka Instytutu Historii PAN

Access:

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