Russia Says Germans Mass Shot The Poles

Wanganui Chronicle, 7 January 1949, Page 4

Russia Says Germans Mass Shot The Poles

WELLINGTON, Last Night (PA), —With reference to the cabled report of charges by Mr. Mikolaczky, that the Russian secret police massacred Polish officers and other ranks and buried bodies in a wood at Katyn, the Legation of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics has drawn attention to the report of a special commission, dated Smolensk, January 24, 1944.

The commission consisted of: The chairman of the Extraordinary State Commission, Academician Burdenko, a member of the Extraordinary State Commission, Academician Alexei To! stoy, a member of the Extraordinary State Commission, the Metropolitan Nikolai, chairman of the All-Slav Committee, Lieutenant-General Gundorov, chairman of the executive committee of the Union of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Mr. Kolesnikov, Peoples Commissar for Education of the Russian S.E.S.R, Academician Potemkin, the chief of the central medical administration of the Red Army, Colonol-General Smirnov, and chairman of the Smolensk Regional Executive Committee Mr. Melnikov.

The commission, giving its conclusions, stated that in the Katyn forest m the autumn of 1941, German occupation authorities carried out mass shootings of Polish war prisoners. In connection with the deterioration of the general military and political situation for Germany at the beginning of .1943, the German occupation authorities, with provocations! aims, took steps to ascribe their own crimes to the organs of the Soviet power, calculating on setting the Russians and Poles at loggerheads. lhe commission held that it had been established beyond doubt from evidence of medical and legal experts, that the time of shooting had been the autumn of 1941, and that j£ h G r m , ans . had applied th e same method of pistol shots in the back of the head as they had applied in in executlon of Soviet citizens m other towns. In the shooting of Polish war prisoners, the Germans had consistently carried out a policy of physical extermination of Slav peoples.