photo - IPN
Close to 1000 documents, including items that were hitherto classified, will be made available on the web sites of the Polish Embassy in Washington, as well as on other sites connected to the Foreign Ministry.
“Some of the documents were already known from other publications, but they have never been collected in the same place,” said Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Boguslaw Winid.
Nevertheless, in spite of the inclusion of previously classified files, historians are not expecting any startling revelations concerning the Allies' handling of the Katyn Affair.
It is broadly accepted that British and American leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt were fully aware that the April 1940 execution of over 22,000 Poles, a large number of whom were reserve officers, was carried out on Stalin's orders, and not by the Nazis, as Soviet propaganda claimed.
Owing to the alliance with the Soviet Union, alleged Russian culpability was given short shrift in the British and American press.
Sir Alexander Cadogan, London's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, did not circulate a report that indicted the Russians. He questioned whether there was “any advantage in exposing more individuals than necessary to the spiritual conflict that a reading of this dispatch excites?”
However, the document referred to was sent to Roosevelt.
Moscow did not officially acknowledge guilt until after the 1989 collapse of the Iron Curtain.
Speaking to Polish Radio, historian Professor Wojciech Materski highlighted that at present, Warsaw is most keen to receive supplementary documentation from Moscow.
Although a large proportion of the Russian documents relating to Katyn have been handed over to Warsaw, not all have been released.
Polish victims were executed as various sites across the Soviet Union besides the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. Notable gaps in documentation remain regarding the so-called “Belarusian list”, relating to Poles arrested on territory that currently belongs to Belarus.
As far as obtaining classified documents is concerned, Professor Materski added that historians are also keen to obtain outstanding documents from London relating to the Gibraltar plane crash that killed wartime Polish leader General Wladyslaw Sikorski.
The American Katyn documents are expected to be available on Monday evening, Polish time. (nh)