FAS

Records of 1940 Katyn Massacre Declassified

09.10.12 | 1 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

The National Archives announced that it has declassified over a thousand pages of records pertaining to the 1940 massacre of thousands of Polish Army officers and intellectuals in the Katyn Forest in the Soviet Union.

The Katyn massacre has been a subject of intense interest and controversy in Poland, as well as a perennial irritant in Polish-Russian relations.  The question of US knowledge of the massacre, and the possibility of a US coverup designed to protect the World War II alliance with the Soviet Union, has been a topic of speculation in the Polish press which some Polish observers hoped might be confirmed by the newly declassified records.