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WWII Katyn victim identified after 72 years

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 03.10.2012 17:23
The remains of one of the victims of the WWII Katyn massacre by the Soviets appear to have been identified after a police identity number was spotted on a pre-war photograph.

Bykivnia
Bykivnia war cemetery: photo - prezydent.pl/Lukasz Kaminski

The discovery comes in the wake of the 21 September opening of a Polish war cemetery at Bykivnia in Ukraine, one of several sites of mass killings of Poles by the Soviet secret police (NKVD).

Polish archaeologists had found a policeman's identity tag while working at the site in Bykivnia, but had been unable to clarify who it belonged to.

However, following the opening ceremony, the family of the late policeman Mikolaj Cholewa contacted Poland's state-backed Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites (ROPWiM) concerning the number.

As it turned out, the family had found a pre-war photograph in which the number emblazoned on the policeman's collar matched that of the exhumed identity tag.

Although 3435 Polish citizens are believed to have been murdered at the site in 1940, corresponding with the so-called Ukrainian Katyn List, it has been virtually impossible to identify most of the remains.

A dog tag belonging to one army officer was discovered, as well as a comb with five names inscribed onto it by hand (all of the names tallied with missing Poles on the Ukrainian List.)

The list of the 3435 dead, largely reserve army officers, makes up about 15 percent of the Poles executed during the Katyn Crime.

The killings were carried out at various sites across the Soviet Union – most famously in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.

Moscow only officially admitted guilt following the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989.

The Bykivnia war cemetery near Kiev was opened by President Bronislaw Komorowski and his Ukrainian counterpart Vikor Yanukovich.

Estimates of the overall number of victims of Stalin murdered at Bykivnia – including many ethnic Ukrainians - range from 16,000 to 100,000, with Poles representing just a portion of the death toll. (nh)

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