Katyn Forest

Press, 12 August 1986, Page 20

Katyn Forest

Sir, —The Soviet Union did not “invade Poland” as A. C. Grant (August 6) asserts. On September 17, 1939, when Polish military resistance to Nazi Germany had virtually collapsed, the Red Army repossessed those areas of the Western Ukraine and Byelorussia wrested from the Soviet Republic in an attack by Poland in 1920, and occupied by Poland for 19 years. The rest of his letter is of similar veracity. D. Adams’s claim (August 6) that “the British were more inclined to credit the opinion of the international experts brought to the spot by the Germans,” is a damning indictment of the British, if true. “The Press” of May 5, 1943, quoting Berlin Radio, reported that “the commission consisted of representatives of Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Croatia, Bulgaria, Moravia, Bohemia, Slovakia,

Hungary and - Switzerland;” all, except Switzerland, either allies of, or occupied by, Nazi Germany. Those representatives were all Nazis or Nazi collaborators, • including the Swiss. — Yours, etc., M. CREEL. August 7, 1986.

Sir—Further quotations from pro a. d anti works have reached a cul-de-sac; as though one were selecting verses from the one and only true holy book. They no longer impress me. But I resist being swayed by prejudice, so I look elsewhere for something more impartial but factual. This one finally finds in two letters from an unexpected source, by a sincere-sounding correspondent, E. P. Steciurenko, a person who was on the spot, knows geography, the disposal of Russian and Nazi forces, dates, the allegiances of the officers and other data. These criteria I accept as true and genuine. I think we all, mature and fairly knowledgeable people, look at times within ourselves, intuitively, to sort out the chaff from the wheat and where the scales of justice fall. The spirit of the Steciurenko letters suggests unequivocal truth. Unlike the Russians, the Germans were past masters at the disposal, layout and "covering up” of useless humans.— Yours, etc., W. J. COLLINS. August 10, 1986.