On April 4, 2025, at 15:00, the War Museum will host a public discussion dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the executions of Polish prisoners of war carried out by the NKVD of the USSR on the top secret order of the party and state leadership of the USSR.
In early April 1940, the order to “unload the camps” was put into action. This was the term used by the communist authorities to describe the systematic execution of Polish prisoners of war who had been captured in September 1939 after the Soviet annexation of western territories that once belonged to Poland, specifically parts of Ukraine and Belarus. These prisoners were held in various camps across Ukraine and Russia, as well as in prisons located in the newly occupied regions of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. These tragic events are known in history as the Katyn Massacre, named after the area where the first mass graves were discovered.
In Ukraine, Polish prisoners of war were shot and buried in several places, including the Bykivnia Forest and a former monastery in Starobilsk.
Who were the innocent victims of the totalitarian regime of the USSR? How were the NKVD crime scenes found? How and when were the dead exhumed, and how is their memory honored at the memorial, museum, and artistic levels?
We will talk about these and many other issues with Valeriy Philimonikhin, the Scientific Secretary of the Bykivnia Graves National Historical and Memorial Reserve, Researcher Andriy Amons, and Roman Wysocki, a Professor at the Institute of Contemporary History at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.
Moderator: Roman Kabachiy, Senior Researcher at the War Museum.
