Katyn

   Following the Soviets occupation of the eastern part of Poland on 17 September 1939, the Red Army interned 200,000 Polish prisoners of war, many of whom were subsequently released or transferred to forced labor camps in southeastern Poland. The Polish officers, however, were deported to camps in the Soviet Union, where they were soon joined by Polish police, prison guards, and military police, but during April and May 1940 some 4,443 were taken by the Soviet NKVD to the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, where they were individually shot in the back of the head and buried in mass graves. An additional 20,000 Polish prisoners were killed, including reserve officers, doctors, professionals, landowners, civil servants, and others. Initially, the Soviet Union charged that the killings were committed by the Germans, but eventually it was proved that the murders were perpetrated by the Soviets. The extermination of the Polish prisoners of war was part of a much larger objective by the Soviets to eradicate the Polish national culture.