According to the Polish record of the Stalin-Anders conversation of 18 March 1942, Stalin suggested that the prisoners might have dispersed in territories taken by the Germans; see note 239 (doc. 98).

The spelling is as in the DPSR, vol. I, no 306. The reference was to the well-known Gnezdovo “Kurhan” burial mounds. The name of the village was Gnezdovo, and the use of “Gnezdova” and “Gnezdovaya” was due to writing the text in a hurry. According to a statement made in March 1989 to the Russian journalist Vladimir Abarinov by General Leonid Fedorovich Raikhman, head of the 2nd Department (Counterintelligence) in GUGB NKVD in 1939-1941, the author of the Soviet communiqué was NKVD Major Georgy S. Zhukov, then head of the Central and East European Section in the 2nd Department, who was the first to recall the historical graves at Gnezdovo; see Abarinov, Katynskii Labirint, p. 97; and, in an English translation, Abarinov, The Murderers of Katyn, pp. 156, 174-175. Zhukov was the liaison officer between the NKVD and General Anders in 1941-1942 and then with the commander of the Kościuszko Division, General Berling (promoted in rank by Stalin), in 1943. (See Biographical Sketches.)