The bodies of Polish military officers massacred by the Soviet Red Army were exhumed from the mass grave in the Katyn Forest. The bodies were piled up in the mass grave in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in western Soviet Union.

   The bodies of Polish military officers massacred by the Soviet Red Army were exhumed from the mass grave in the Katyn Forest. A Polish military delegation witnessed the German military propaganda operation. The bodies were piled up in the mass grave in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in western Soviet Russia.

   The Germans discovered eight mass graves in the Katyn Forest on April 13th 1943 and accused the Soviet Red Army of the massacre. The bodies, including the remains of around 4,000 Polish military officers, were discovered in mass graves near Katyn. An investigation committee of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had been convened by the Germans, established that the victims had been killed with German ammunition, but that the mass killings had taken place in early 1940, before the Germans had occupied the area of the Katyn Forest. The London-based Polish government in exile had long been demanding that the Soviet government report on what had happened to prisoners of war taken by Nazi Germany.

   The Polish prisoners of war taken from eastern Poland by the Soviet Red Army in 1939 included around 8,000 officers, 6,000 policemen and 8,000 other intellectuals. The Soviet secret police (NKVD) murdered Polish prisoners of war in April and May 1940. The executions by the NKVD were carried out in complete secrecy, only at night or at dawn. The prisoners were taken to a basement, where they were killed in solitary, silent rooms. Those who resisted were tied up and shot in the back of the head.

   A fierce debate broke out, and relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government in exile broke down. Stalin established the Polish National Committee in Moscow, and decided to establish a Polish army with its cooperation. Nazi propaganda used the Katyn massacre to condemn the fate of Soviet prisoners of war. In 1992, the Russian government released documents proving that the Soviet Politburo and NKVD were responsible for the massacre and its cover-up. It suggested that there may have been more than 20,000 victims. In November 2010, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly officially declared that Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders were responsible for ordering the executions of Polish officers and others in Katyn Forest.