On 9 April 1943 the president of the Polish Red Cross in the home country under German occupation, Mr. Waclaw Lachert,

For Wacław Lachert, see Biographical Sketches.

was informed on the telephone by Dr. Heinrich, the delegate of the German Generalgouvernement to the Polish Red Cross,

The German occupation authorities in the Generalgouvernement allowed the PRC to function as an officially recognized institution.

that he must come at once to a conference at the Brühl Palace.

The Brühl Palace was the wartime residence of the governor of Warsaw, the Nazi lawyer Ludwig Fischer (1904–1947). He was condemned to death in 1946 by the IMT for ordering mass executions of Poles and Jews; the sentence was carried out in Poland in 1947.

The president refused, on principle, to come immediately, saying he could come in an hour's time, but was told that this would be too late, so the conference contents would be communicated to him. And, indeed, Dr. Heinrich telephoned the same day at 1800 hrs. [6 p.m.] that a decision was made at the conference to send a delegation to the Smolensk region to see the graves of Polish officers murdered by the Bolshevik authorities; he mentioned that writers, representatives of the Principal Welfare Council,

Rada Główna Opiekuńcza [RGO—The Principal Welfare Council] looked after needy Poles under German occupation in World War I. The Germans allowed Adam Feliks Ronikier (1891–1952), a prewar supporter of Polish cooperation with Germany, to reactivate and head the RGO in German Poland from 1940 to 1943.

the Municipal Administration, and others were to participate in the delegation, saying that a place had been reserved for the PRC president on the plane due to depart for Smolensk at 8 a.m. the next day. The president refused to take part personally in the delegation, as well as in the name of the other members of the Presidium of the PRC Executive Board, because of the obvious propaganda character of the whole venture….

At first, the PRC Executive Board, basing itself on the experience of the nearly four-year-long German occupation and German bestiality, reacted with great suspicion to all information on Katyn coming from German sources….

On 12 April the PRC Executive Board received a report from the writer Ferdynand Goetel, about his visit to Katyn. He said that he had seen the mass graves and that all indications were that the officers had been murdered in the period March-April 1940. His account, and those of other members of this first group, disposed of the suspicion that the Germans had had a hand in the murder.

Ferdynand Goetel, a well-known writer (see Biographical Sketches), went to Katyn with the permission of Polish underground authorities and reported on his visit to them. He testified before the U.S. Congressional (Madden) Committee on the Katyn Forest Murders; see also his account, in several articles in the London émigré paper Wiadomości [News] in 1949, reprinted in Kwiatkowska-Viatteau, Katyń: Wybór Publicystyki, pp. 93–106. On the Goetel group, see Madajczyk, Dramat Katyński, pp. 36–37. The commander of the Polish Home Army, General Stefan Rowecki, radioed General Sikorski on 14 April that the Polish delegates' accounts of their visit to Katyn left no doubt that mass murder had been committed there. He also reported public outrage; see Armia Krajowa, vol. II, no. 416, pp. 491–492.

On the morning of 14 April, Dr. [Karl] Grundman, from the Warsaw District [German] Propaganda Department, came personally to the PRC office and issued an oral invitation for a five-man PRC delegation to fly to Smolensk at 1300 hrs [1 p.m.] the same day. At the same time, he indicated that on the same plane, leaving Kraköw in the morning, were the plenipotentiary of the PRC Executive for the Kraköw district, Mr. [Stanislaw] Plappert, his deputy Mr. [Adam] Szebesta, and representatives of the clergy nominated by the Prince Metropolitan.

Prince Adam Stefan Sapieha, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland; see Biographical Sketches.

The PRC Executive Board decided that it was advisable to send a Technical Commission, free of any propaganda character, to Smolensk and nominated four persons, who were to stay at the site if necessary; also Mr. Skarżyński, secretary and member of the PRC Executive Board….

During [this board] meeting, I dictated [the decision] by telephone to Dr. Grundman for communication to the Kraków [PRC] authorities, with the reservation that I would not serve German propaganda and policy goals.

[On 14 April] at 1300 hours [1 p.m.] I went to the [Warsaw] Okěcie airport with the appointed members of the Technical Commission, Messrs. L. [Ludwik] Rojkiewicz, J. [Jerzy] Wodzinowski, S. [Stefan] Kolodziejski, and Dr. [Hugon] Bartoszewski. We flew off to Smolensk at 1500 hrs. [3 p.m.] … The PRC group was joined by Father [Stanislaw] Jasiński, sent by the Prince Metropolitan of Kraköw—as it turned out, only to bless the corpses—and Dr. [Tadeusz Susz] Praglowski from Kraköw.

Canon Stanisław Jasiński was head of the Catholic charitable organization Caritas; Dr. Pragłowski was a colleague of Dr. Marian Wodziński from the Institute of Forensic Medicine, Kraków; see Madajczyk, Dramat Katyński, p. 40.

… Aside from these two, there were in the plane Mr. Zenzinger from the Kraköw [German] Propaganda Department, who was the official leader of the delegation; three Germans from the Berlin criminal police, allegedly sent to study illegible documents found on the corpses; and three suspicious-looking young Poles in the German service, of whom one was an ordinary film operator.

After arriving in Smolensk on 15 April, I was able to affirm that the care of and direction of work on the officers' graves was in the hands of the local [German Army] propaganda company (Aktivpropagandakompanie), [headed by] Lieutenant Slovenzik. This unit, led by front-line officers (the lieutenant mentioned above and his deputy, 2nd Lieutenant von Arndt), possessed the general characteristics of a military mentality while at the same time having the specific character of the military agency of Mr. Goebbels's office, with a clearly National Socialist [Nazi] attitude. This obliged us to be especially careful in dealing with them….

The next day, 16 April, we arrived at the site at 9 a.m. The Kozie Göry Wood [Russian: Koze Gory] stands a few meters from the road.

The road runs between Vitebsk and Smolensk (see Maps and Aerial Photographs, map 5).

On the clearing between the graves lay the corpses of our officers that had been exhumed thus far, and large Red Cross flags were spread out above the graves.

The flags were to protect the site from Soviet planes, which were bombing nearby Smolensk and vicinity.

There was no doubt whatever that we were dealing with a mass execution carried out by an experienced executioner's hand. All the corpses that I saw had an entry wound from a revolver bullet at the base of the skull and an exit wound on the forehead or face. The uniform character of the wounds and the direction of the shots indicate that they were made from small arms at the smallest possible distance from the officers, who were standing up. Some of the corpses had their arms tied behind their backs with strong rope. These were probably men who defended themselves. Polish uniforms, badges, decorations, regimental insignia, overcoats, trousers, and boots were well preserved despite contact with the earth and decomposition. Lower down, deep in the excavated pits, there were more layers of corpses, and one could see skulls, legs, hands, and backs sticking out of the tightly pressed earth. What was striking was the significant percentage of higher ranks (majors, It. colonels, colonels) among the corpses. I also viewed the corpses of two generals identified as General Smorawińuski and General Bohatyrewicz [Bohaterewicz].

For Generals Mieczysław Smorawiński and Bronisław Bohatyrewicz (sometimes spelled Bohaterewicz), see Biographical Sketches. It seems that the body of General Henryk Minkiewicz-Odrowăż, who was also held in Kozelsk and assumed shot at Katyn, was not identified during the spring 1943 exhumations.

Generals' insignia and stripes on the trousers confirm their rank. I think that between the older pines, small, self-planted pine trees had grown at the site since the time of the murder, which apparently indicates that the executions must have taken place in spring 1940. It is said that a professional forester affirmed the same age for the small pines from their roots. I did not see the small pines that grew over the graves, for these were already open.

It was established by counting the tree rings that these pines were three years old and had been transplanted onto the graves from a previous location.

As for the number of corpses in the common graves, I had the impression that the 10[,000]-12,000 figure given out by German officers was greatly exaggerated….

In the little hut containing the office, the documents found on the corpses are inspected and sorted. The more interesting ones are exhibited in glass cases. We acquainted ourselves with some of the documents and diaries, all of which break off in the first days of April 1940.

For details on the exhumations and the Katyn diaries, see the introduction to Part III.

After a courteous conversation with Professor Buhtz, a criminologist from Wroclaw [Breslau],

Professor Gerhardt Buhtz was in charge of the exhumations. For a photograph of Buhtz with Lieutenants Vos and Slovenzik (misspelled Sloventczyk), see FitzGibbon, Unpitied and Unknown, p. 243.

we left for Smolensk. At the last minute, I was again asked to speak into the [radio] microphone, and I refused again. To the request that I might give at least a private account of my impressions, I replied that I was leaving deeply shaken by what I had seen, and that on this occasion I must express my full respect for the honest and methodical work of the [German] army at the graves….

[Skarżyński left three members of the PRC delegation at Katyn. On the morning of 17 April, on his return to Warsaw, he reported to the PRC Executive Board. At the same meeting, on the basis of his report, the PRC Executive Board decided to declare that it was ready to begin work at Katyń and awaited written permission of the German authorities—given orally by a representative of the Generalgouvernement at a meeting in Kraköw on 22 April. After the PRC board meeting on 17 April, Skarżyński had to give a report on his trip that same day to Heinrich and Grundman, but refused their demand that he grant press interviews or write a letter to be published in the press. An extract of the protocol of the PRC board meeting was sent to Heinrich, who had angrily demanded an official report.]

Around noon the same day [17 April], in the office of the director of one of the Warsaw banks, I made an oral report on my trip to the commissioner of civilian warfare, attached to the underground office of the delegate of the Polish government.

The head of civilian—as opposed to military—resistance at this time was Stefan Korboński (see Biographical Sketches). The Home Army commander in chief, General Stefan Rowecki, sent this report to Polish authorities in London on 22 April 1943; see Armia Krajowa, vol. II, no. 425.

[The PRC Executive Board sent a summary report to the IRC in Geneva, which was acknowledged by the IRC president, Max Hubert, on 22 April 1943.]

For the original French text of the PRC letter of 20 April 1943 to the IRC, Geneva, see Baliszewski and Kunert, Prawdziwa Historia, vol. 2, p. 1025; for the Polish translation, see p. 1026. For the IRC communiqueé of 23 April 1943 on the Polish and German requests for an investigation and its replies, see DPSR, vol. I, no. 311 (in French). The Soviet government did not give its consent, and the Polish government withdrew its request on 4 May 1943, so the IRC investigation did not take place.