On April 30th 1943, members of the International Commission looked down on the mass grave in the Katyn Forest in Smolensk, Poland, where the bodies of Polish officers and others were buried.

      On April 30th 1943, the bodies of Poles who had fallen victim to Stalin's terror were exhumed from the Katyn Forest in Smolensk, Poland. Members of the international commission looked down on the mass grave where the bodies of Polish officers and others were buried. The bodies discovered in the mass grave in Katyn Forest had all been shot once or several times with a 7.65mm pistol at close range in the back of the head. Most of the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs, and bayonet wounds were found on many of the bodies. In the spring of 1943, 4,140 bodies were discovered in the mass grave in Katyn Forest.

    On April 13th 1943, Nazi Germany announced the Katyn massacre by the Soviet army on a broadcast from Berlin. Local residents from Smolensk reported to the German authorities that mass executions had been carried out by Soviet Bolsheviks, and that the Soviet secret police (NKVD) had killed 10,000 Polish officers. The German authorities went to the Katyn Forest, a Russian holiday resort known as “Goat Hill” located 12km west of Smolensk, and discovered a mass grave.

    On September 1st 1939, the German army invaded Poland, and on September 17th the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland. In September 1939, the Soviet army handed over Polish officers who had been taken prisoner to the Soviet secret police (NKVD), and they were imprisoned in various Soviet camps for seven months. On March 5th 1940, Stalin signed an order for their liquidation by mass murder. In April and May, the NKVD of the Soviet Union murdered a total of 21,857 Polish officers and members of the intelligentsia in various locations. In summary, the NKVD of the Soviet Union murdered a total of 21,857 Polish officers and members of the intelligentsia in various locations.

    In 1943, as the war against Russia worsened, the German army announced that they had exhumed thousands of bodies in the Katyn Forest. The Polish government in exile (based in London) visited the site and determined that the killings were the responsibility of the Soviets, not the Nazis. The delegates were pressured by the US and British authorities to keep the report secret for fear of diplomatic rupture with the Soviets. After World War II, the Soviet Union pinned the war crime of the massacre on the Nazis. In 1990, the Soviet government assessed it as the worst atrocity of Stalinism.