The Katyn Museum has published the first volume of the bilingual documentary publication Katyn Forest Massacre 1940. A Selection of Declassified U.S. Government Documents / Zbrodnia w Lesie Katyńskim 1940 roku. Wybór odtajnionych dokumentów rządu Stanów Zjednoczonych, compiled by David A. Stewart. The publication features a foreword by Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr., Professor Tadeusz Wolsza, Professor Witold Wasilewski, Sławomir Z. Frątczak, Director of the Katyn Museum and publisher of the volume, and Dr Bartłomiej Bydoń, Head of the Museum’s Research Section, which supported the editorial work.
The publication is dedicated to the memory of the Polish Army officers murdered in the Katyn Forest, as well as Captain Donald B. Stewart, Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr and Lieutenant Colonel Henry I. Szymanski – officers of the United States Army who, in April 1944, 330 days after visiting Katyn during the exhumations being carried out there, secretly transmitted encrypted reports from Oflag 64 in Szubin to MIS-X, identifying the Soviet Union as the perpetrator of the crime.
The first volume contains documents produced up to the end of 1943, a period when information was reaching the United States about the liquidation of the special prisoner-of-war camps in the USSR and the search for the missing Polish prisoners of war, as well as reports from the German side concerning the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest and the exhumation work carried out there.
David Stewart has brought together recently declassified documents relating to the Katyn massacre from the state archives of the United States. The publication contains not only scholarly editions of selected documents, but also reproductions of the originals.
In his foreword, Colonel John H. Van Vliet III notes: David Stewart follows in his father’s footsteps, serving the cause of truth. […] Captain Donald B. Stewart and my father, Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr, were American prisoners of war whom the Germans ordered to witness the exhumation of the remains of Poles buried in mass graves at Katyn. They saw documented evidence, dated letters, diaries and newspapers which the International Medical Commission had recovered in 1943 from among the bodies of the victims to demonstrate that the murders had taken place in the spring of 1940, when the Soviet Union controlled the territory and Germany and the Soviet Union were still allies. Expecting Nazi propaganda tricks, Lieutenant Colonel Van Vliet and Captain Stewart were prepared to treat the documents with scepticism, considering the possibility that they might have been manipulated. However, […] as prisoners of war themselves, they were able to determine the length of time the victims had spent in captivity from the condition of their uniforms, particularly their officers’ boots. The boots of the Katyn victims were in good condition. The heels showed no signs of wear. There was no doubt that the prisoners had been held in captivity for several months. The condition of the officers’ boots and uniforms corroborated the documentary evidence. Although it was difficult for them to accept, Lieutenant Colonel Van Vliet and Captain Stewart concluded that the crime had taken place while Katyn was under Soviet control, long before Nazi Germany attacked its Soviet ally in June 1941. The Soviets were responsible. Lieutenant Colonel Van Vliet and Captain Stewart did everything in their power to ensure that American military intelligence learned the truth about Katyn.

Product details

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Editor: David A. Stewart
Academic consultation: Sławmomir Z. Frątczak, Bartłomiej Bydoń, Sebastian Karwat, Piotr Skotnicki, Tomasz Szczepański, Jakub Zielonka; with contributions from Karolina Kosiak, Karolina Wesołowska, Grzegorz Jakubczyk, Kacper Ciesielski
Translation: Jakub Zielonka with contributions from Anastazja Pindor, Paulina Mazur
Publisher: Polish Army Museum in Warsaw
ISBN: 978-83-96903-00-6
Languages: Polish, English
Format: B5, hardback
Extent: 824 pages
Year of publication: 2023
Retail price: 100 PLN