Katyn Killings: In the Record

The Kingston Press , 1989. Hardcover. Like New/Very Good . 6x1x9. Signed by Author. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union each invaded Poland in September of 1939, having divided the country into separate spheres of influence under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. While the Germans began a massacre of Jews and Poles in western occupied Poland, the Red Army arrested and imprisoned thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, and intelligentsia during their occupation of eastern Poland. Prisoners of war and civilian internees captured by the Soviets were placed in several camps in the western USSR, run by the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD, a predecessor organization to the modern FSB-camps including Kozielsk, Ostashkov, and Starobielsk.In April 1943, in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union, occupying German troops discovered eight large graves containing the remains of thousands of the Polish Army officers and intellectual leaders who had been interned at the prisoner-of-war camp at Kozielsk. Bodies of the prisoners who had been housed at Ostashkov and Starobielsk were discovered near Piatykhatky and Mednoye, respectively. Collectively, these murders are known as the Katyn Forest Massacre. John H. Lauck was a Colonel in the Marine Corps, and a recipient of the Bronze Star and four Purple Hearts. He was a rifle company commander at Iwo JIma.