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Katyn massacre memorial unveiled in Budapest
14.11.2008
The local council of Budapest's District III has named a square in Óbuda in memory of the 22,000 Poles who died in the Katyn massacre, one of the Second World War's most appalling Stalinist atrocities. A ceremony last Thursday, when a plaque was unveiled on the wall of the Árpád Gymnasium school was attended by Joanna Stempinska, the Polish ambassador to Hungary, and the leader of the opposition Fidesz caucus on Budapest City Council and former District III mayor István Tarlós.
The district's current mayor, Balázs Bús (Fidesz) said, "the memorial represents our opposition to the Russian viewpoint that what happened in Katyn was not a war crime". The slaughter of Polish citizens, many of whom were intellectuals and officers, was ordered by Stalin in 1940 and took place in the Katyn forest, which was then part of eastern Poland.
Although the Nazi German army announced the discovery of the mass graves in 1943, many in the West believed that it was the Germans themselves who were responsible for the crime. Russia only accepted responsibility in 1990 when President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the murders had been carried out by the NKVD, the Stalinist secret police. His successor, Boris Yeltsin, released archive material the following year that confirmed the orders to the NKVD.
The current refusal of Russia to acknowledge the acts as a war crime is still a cause of bad blood between Poland and its eastern neighbour. Last year saw the release of a film about the atrocity made by the legendary Polish film director Andrzej Wajda, whose father was murdered by the NKVD. The release was followed by reports in some Russian newspapers, including state-owned Rossiiskaya Gazeta, that cast doubt on the idea that the Soviet Union was responsible for the slaughter, which prompted outrage in Poland.
Source: The Budapest Times
Facts
- August 6, 1940 - Estonia became a part of Soviet Union
- From June 1940 until August 1941, more than 7000 Estonian citizens were arrested
