Object structure
Title:

Konfabulacje Wacława Pycha w sprawie zbrodni katyńskiej (1952 rok)

Subtitle:

Polska 1944/45-1989 : studia i materiały 10 (2011)

Creator:

Wolsza, Tadeusz (1956– )

Contributor:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Publisher:

Instytut Historii PAN

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Date issued/created:

2011

Description:

p. 7-21 ; Annex included ; Eng. summary

Type of object:

Journal/Article

Subject and Keywords:

Katyn massacre (Katyn, Russia ; 1940) ; investigation - Poland - 1944- ; Katyn massacre (Katyn, Russia ; 1940) - foreign public opinion, American ; Select Committee to Investigate and Study the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre (1951-1952)

Abstract:

At the beginning of the 1950s, in relation to the Ray J. Madden Committee established to conduct an investigation concerning the Katyn Massacre, the Ministry of Public Security launched a nation-wide campaign to find and prepare several Polish witnesses who would call into question the German information from 1943 about the Soviet responsibility for the massacre and beyond all doubt bear testimony to the innocence of the NKVD in the matter. The plan of the Ministry anticipated that to that purpose the persons would be used who in 1943 went to survey the place of the massacre as the members of German delegations. The Ministry, however, was unable to force all of them to agree to take an active part in the dealings, since some of them defected to the West. Some got mislaid. The plan’s originators did not exclude the cooperation of new witnesses who would be able to contribute to the matter. Such were the circumstances in which Wacław Pych emerged, a former soldier of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, an alleged witness to the Katyn massacre. It was him who said that the massacre of Polish officers was perpetrated by the Germans in the autumn of 1941, and it was done in his presence. His unreliable account he presented to the editors of “Sztandar Ludu”, a Lublin organ of the Polish United Workers’ Party, and the information about it he passed on to the propaganda broadcast of the Polish Radio, “Fala 49” and, of course, to the Ministry of Public Security.Considering that Wacław Pych during the war was a NKVD collaborator, and after the war he was for various reasons kept under surveillance of the security services, his revelations were treated with great reserve. Wacław Pych confabulations about the Katyn massacre were never publicised by the Ministry and was kept untouched in its documentation. It seems that even the Ministry’s officials arrived at the conclusion that Wacław Pych fabricated the whole story.

Relation:

Polska 1944/45-1989 : studia i materiały

Volume:

10

Start page:

7

End page:

21

Resource type:

Text

Detailed Resource Type:

Article : original article

Format:

application/pdf

Resource Identifier:

2450-8357

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. B.155/10 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. B.156/10 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

pol

Language of abstract:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of History PAS

Access:

Open

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