Lecture by Dr Tomasz Szczepański: “The Katyn Massacre of 1940 – Truth and Remembrance” at the Museum in Gostyń
On Friday, 28 March 2025, the conference hall of the Museum in Gostyń hosted a lecture by Dr Tomasz Szczepański entitled “The Katyn Massacre of 1940 – Truth and Remembrance”.
During the event, the Katyń Museum researcher emphasised that, even 85 years after the crime was committed, Katyn remains a symbol of an unpunished mass murder carried out against Polish citizens by the Soviet authorities. The massacre was the result of a decision taken by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 5 March 1940. The order authorised the execution of Polish military officers and state officials held in Soviet special camps at Starobilsk, Kozelsk and Ostashkov, as well as Polish citizens imprisoned in the territories then referred to as Western Belarus and Western Ukraine.
As a result of this decision, approximately 22,000 Polish citizens were murdered. Today, in Poland, there is little doubt about who was responsible for the crime and what its purpose was. Unfortunately, this awareness is not always equally widespread among Western societies or among people living in the territory of the Russian Federation.
