April is the month when many of the killings at Katyn Forest took place during World War II. Poles all over the world try to remember this every year, and I've been thinking about Katyn recently. I've been thinking about Katyn and my father.
When I was a child, he told me a lot of stories about what happened in the war, about things that happened to my mother's family and his family and to Poland. One of the stories that he came back to repeatedly was about what happened in the Katyn Forest near the Russian town of Smolensk in 1940.
He told me about how the Soviets took 15,000-20,000 Polish Army officers and killed them. Nobody knows the number for certain.
My father used to say, "It's hard to count bones."
These soldiers were mainly reservists; that means they weren't professional soldiers, just civilian soldiers. In their daily lives, they were doctors and lawyers, teachers and priests. My father used to say that they were the future of Poland. He said that the Soviets didn't want Poland to have a future, so they took these doctors and lawyers, scientists and librarians and tied them up and blindfolded them and shot them in the back of the head. They were buried in mass graves.
One of the things he also told me was that people knew about this, countries likes the US and England knew about this, and nobody did anything about it. The Soviets, of course, denied it, and so did other countries. They didn't want to bring it up. I guess they figured what was the point of talking about massacres and genocide.
.
My father never wanted me to forget about Katyn.
Years ago, I wrote a poem about it for my book Lightning and Ashes, and I want to share the poem with you on this 69th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre.
KATYN
There are no Great Walls there,
No towers leaning or not leaning
Declaring some king's success
Or mocking another's failure,
No gleaming cathedral where you can
Pray for forgiveness or watch
The cycle of shadows play
Through the coolness of the day,
Through the coolness of the day,
And soon not even the names
Of those who died will be remembered
(Names like Skrzypinski, Chmura,
Or Anthony Milczarek).
Their harsh voices and tearing courage
Are already lost in the wind,
.
But their true monuments
Will always be there, in the dust
And the gray ashes and the mounds
Settling over the bodies over which
No prayers were ever whispered,
No tears shed by a grieving mother
Or a trembling sister.
__________________
Film maker Andrzej Wajda's Oscar-nominated film KATYN has recently been released to DVD.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
scanner
Alan Nothnagle
bluesurly
Caracalla's Amanuensis
dragonlady
Patie
Salon.com
Comments
I want to know these people, as much or as little as I can.
Thank you for being here and sharing everything.
Initially it seemed benign. It said, we have, studying in the USSR, so (I forgot the numbers listed) many Officers. so many majors, so many colonels. It looked like an attendance sheet for a school or something. Until you got to the last line, where it said I recommend we shoot them all. On the top of the first page was Stalin's "Za" (approved) in blue pencil.
It was an absolutely breath taking exhibit and the line to see it was long, long, long.
This is what she wrote:
What I recall so clearly is the audience, as the credits rolled, sitting in profound silence, until the crying started. A few people were standing, as if to leave, but they just stood. It was a small theater, and after the credits, the projectionist left off the lights to give the weeping audience time to dry our eyes, switch the cell phones back on, and walk back out into the city.
April 1 is also the anniversary of my dear grandmother's death. We celebrate by preparing kreplas and boiled cabbage to remember her. Now I have a new memory to add . . .
The note about the film reminded me of the first time "The Diary of Ann Frank" was performed in Amsterdam. It was so powerful and pulled at so many emotions, people ran from the theater in the middle of the performance, crying and sobbing.
An interesting side note about the Katyn is that it is perhaps the only place in Europe that boasts old growth forest, and even where the forest was cleared long ago, the forest has now reclaimed much to the point that you can barely find the human imprint. Somehow, that seems appropriate for a place that witnessed such human-caused tragedy.