Panopticon posted:

the "modifications" were by an author i didn't cite. the extract i posted at the top of page 14 doesn't say anything about feigning surprise.

no, but it does make the specific and important error of misinterpreting a speculative statement (maybe they went to manchuria) as a definitive one (they're in manchuria)...

Panopticon posted:

i also don't need to bend over backwards to invent reasonable excuses for stalin lying through his teeth.

...which leads to ridiculous claims like this. the only ones bending over backwards to invent history are those who insist on attributing nefarious intentions to stalin at every opportunity. can you really not see how much you are reading into the twice-translated record of this conversation? i don't understand this beef.

• Polish delegates being allowed access to areas of USSR with large numbers of Polish citizens, with genuine powers to assist them
  
• An office of the Delegate of the Embassy to be established in Vladivostok for the distribution of donated warm clothing to Poles
  
• Special instructions to be issued to the executive authorities to ensure the release of any remaining Polish prisoners
  
• A loan of 100 million rubles to the Polish government for the transfer and care of Polish citizens in USSR
  

Panopticon posted:

he executed the prisoners when he thought he was in an alliance with hitler. after hitler invaded he needed the poles. simple stuff.

Swampman has already posted chapter 7 m8

THE POLISH CONSPIRACY
by George Audit


AT Stalingrad the main strategy of Fascist Germany in its bid to conquer the world was brought crashing in ruins.The German plan to deprive the Red Army of its offen-sive power, and then to turn to the West in order to impose a Fascist peace on the world, was decisively routed. Stalingrad and Rostov, El Alamein and Tripoli, created fresh bright prospects of a speedy ending of the war and the complete destruction of Nazi Germany. The Casablanca Conference held out the promise that within the next nine months Britain and America would profit by the opportunity created by the Red Army's winter victories to launch an offensive in Europe “on the widest scale.”

The Second Front was still delayed, and the delay enabled the German army partly to restore its military situation in the South; yet, in spite of this, the Alliance of the democratic peoples against Fascism grew steadily stronger. Such was the situation when the German Government early in 1943 laid its new and well-planned conspiracy to snatch a victory from what appeared to be a desperate position. The conspiracy was planned on so large a scale that no kind of concealment was possible. The basic aim was to recreate throughout the world by a flood of anti-Bolshevik diplomatic activity and propaganda the conditions which had made possible Munich and all other previous Fascist successes; the main weapon was that "bolshevik bogey" which had already served Fascism so well.
This point was made very clear by Joseph Stalin in his 1943 May Day Order of the Day:-

"To judge from reports in the foreign press, one can con-clude that the Germans would like to obtain peace with Britain and the U.S.A. on the condition that the latter break with the Soviet Union; or, on the contrary, that they would like to obtain peace with the Soviet Union on the condition that it breaks with Britain and the U.S.A. Treacherous to the marrow them-selves, the German imperialists have the insolence to measure the Allies by their own yardstick, expecting one or other of the Allies to swallow the bait.”

The plot hatched by Goebbels to save Germany from total defeat aimed at nothing less than the mobilisation of all reaction-ary elements in Europe-and a11 the dark forces throughout the world that feared the results of Hitler's defeat-with the object first of delaying the Allied blow in the West and, secondly, of arranging a peace that would make the world safe for Fascism.


How was this aim to be achieved?

In the first place by a foreign diplomacy and Press and Radio campaign concentrating on three main themes: “the defence of European civilisation against Bolshevism”; the impregnability of Germany's defences in the West; the impossibility of the Allied Nations becoming sufficiently united to defeat Germany for many years to come.

In the second place, by a concentration of Nazi propaganda fire against the known weak places in the structure of the democratic alliance. The battles of 1942 and 1943 had proved that the "invincible German soldiers" were very far from invincible; the invincible German liars of Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry were called on to see if they could do better.

The main instrument in the plot was the propaganda machine which Goebbels controlled - the most dangerous ever possessed by any tyranny in the history of mankind. All its resources were set to work. The whole Press of Fascist-occupied Europe, the hundreds of broadcasting stations sending out “one o'clock news” and “nine o'clock news" to Europe's 350 million people, applied themselves day and night to this one end. At least a dozen “news” agencies, and powerful short-wave stations broadcasting a non-stop service to Africa, India, the Near East, the Far East, South America, the United States and Australia, carried the poison abroad.


Earlier incidents: Polish blackmail attempts against the Soviet Union.

In order to understand the full significance of the act by the Polish Government which caused the breach, it is necessary to re-view briefly earlier Polish attempts to extort territorial concessions from the Soviet Union. Little more than a month earlier the Polish Government in London, and its agents in Allied countries, started an agitation for the settlement of its claims to the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. These are non-Polish territories, the one a part of the Soviet Byelorussian Republic and the other a part of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic. Filched from the Soviet Union by the imperialist Pilsudski in 1920, at the period of the young Soviet Republic's weakness, they were restored to the Soviet Union by the Red Army in 1939, when the government of Rydz-Smigly and Colonel Beck had fled from Poland into hospitable Rumania, leaving their country undefended against the Nazi hordes. The Polish Government chose recently to announce, at a critical time when the Sovlet Union was still bearing almost the entire weight of the struggle on land against Nazi Germany, that 3 it considered the Polish-Soviet agreement concluded in 1941 as maintaining the territorial status quo of 1939.

Polish duplicity in relation to the Soviet Union is of long standing. When in 1920 the Soviet Government made an offer of peace to the Poles, the Poles expressed willingness to enter into negotiations; but this is what Count Skrzynski, Polisli. Foreign Minister, had to say of this in his book, “Poland and Peace”:-

"The Soviet proposals were not given any serious consideration . . . When, however, parliamentary and democratic policy did not permit them to be left without an answer, the question of the place wl).ere the negotiations might be held was raised in such an offensive spirit that the whole question was stopped at that point.”

This is what the late H. H. Asquith said in the House of Commons on August 10th, 1920, about the Polish-Russian situation at that time:-

"There was Poland six months ago, a population stricken with disease and famine, and, it is not an exaggeration to say, on the verge of national qankruptcy, and it was under these circum-stances that she started this campaign. Her avowed object was to get rid of the comparatively limited frontier, not an ungenerous frontier. . . and to go beyond it to the ancient boundaries of Poland of 1772.
As I say, it was a purely aggressive adventure. It was a wanton enterprise.”

Even at the time of the signing of the Soviet-Polish agreement, when hope was widely felt and expressed that the Polish Govern-ment had determined on a good-neighbourly policy towards the Soviet Union, there were elements in the Polish emigre Government in London which fought to prevent the signing of the agreement. The Polish War Minister, General Sosnkowski, resigned when the agreement was signed, and - such was the strength of the elements he represented-was at once offered another high position by Sikorski.

Throughout the entire period since the signing of this agreement the Polish Press has continuously published remarks which might have come straight from the pen of Dr. Goebbels. Mysl Polska, organ of the Polish National Party, a paper which scarcely troubles to disguise its anti-Soviet policy and publishes open anti-semitism of a nature that would cause any English newspaper to be suppressed, writes the following, for example:-

"The entry of the U.S.S.R. into Europe would create grounds for eternal conflict. Russia is a Eurasian not a European Empire.”


The Alter and Ehrlich anti-Soviet agitation

During February and March, 1943, Polish emigre politicians both in Britain and America conducted a widespread campaign 4 to rouse public indignation against the execution of two Polish Bundists, Alter and Ehrlich. In Britain this agitation had only a limited success.It was possible, however, for the Polish elements leading the campaign to hold a public meeting in London attended by 500 people in memory and honour of these two Polish would-be quislings who were executed for spreading propaganda among the Soviet troops in favour of a separate peace-and this, too, in December, 1941, during the most critical period of the Red Army's single-handed struggle with German Fascism. In America the agitation was worked up to greater proportions and such diverse elements as the Hearst Press, the Wall Street Journal, and certain American isolationists and leaders of the American Federation of Labour rushed to take part in it. The Polish National Council in London saw fit to issue a statement denying the treachery of Alter and Ehrlich and raising doubts as to "the fate of those thousands of Polish citizens deported to the depths of Russia concerning whom the Soviet authorities have not yet given sufficient explanation.”


Ground softened for Goebbels

It was in this way that the ground was softened for the new bid to wreck the unity of the Allied camp which the German Propaganda Ministry made on April 11th this year. On this day the German Transocean agency launched its masterpiece of anti-Soviet fabrication against the weakest spot in Allied relationship. It announced; -

“10,000 Polish officers - the entire Polish officer corps - has been discovered shot dead through the nape of the neck in the Katyn Wood near Smolensk. The German military authorities, acting on information supplied by the local population, had excavations conducted at the O.G.P.U. Recreation Home near Smolensk early this month. A mass grave was discovered, 28 m. by 16 m., in which, in twelve layers, 3.000 Polish officers in full uniform were buried face down with their hands tied. They had been shot dead in February and March, 1940. These officers could all be identified as the O.G.P.U. men left credentials on their bodies".

This broadcast did not, of course, explain why the German military authorities, during the period of nearly two years in which they had been in occupation of the Smolensk region, had never before come into possession of this highly useful and convenient “information which was in the hands of the local population". As the Moscow Radio later commented, this Goebbels atrocity story, this "hideous frame-up", came into the world with all the typical hallmarks of a hundred other exposed Gestapo fabrications:-

"With the much-to-fresh bodies of their victims buried in Soviet soil, with their carefully preserved diaries, with their false witnesses and their shady investigators, they have overshot the mark".


Later version of the Smolensk massacre fable

The need appears to have been soon felt in Berlin to tidy up and improve on this first botched-job of a story. During the succeeding days, when all Axis and Axis-controlled radio stations talked of little else the story began to be told in different forms almost from hour to hour.
On April 12th Transocean's Special Correspondent, Robert Broese wrote that he was "able to assure General Sikorski" that he was waiting in vain for the return of 900,000 Polish officers and men...he had just returned from Smolensk, "where no fewer then 10,000 officers lie buried in one grave like dead dogs".

On April 13th the heat was turned full on and the story was put out in endless repetition and with elaborations by the score. The German Home News, at 10 a.m., stated that "the murders were carried out between March and May, 1940, and went on to broadcast the following characteristic details:-

"Less than five hundred yards from the mass graves the Bolsheviks (later "the Bolshevik male and female officials") held orgies. The area had been hedged in barbed wire and was constantly guarded by O.G.P.U. men. To carry out the mass murder the Bolsheviks cleared a part of the wood of trees. Firs were planted on the graves and are now three years old (other broadcaster considered that abandoned vodka bottles provided a more convincing proof of Soviet authorship). The state of decomposition of the bodies agrees with this time check and with the statements of the local population. The wood of Katyn has at last revealed its terrible secret. Jewish bolshevism shows the world its horrible grimace. The discovery of Smolensk is a stirring warning to Europe and a roll-call for an unrelenting struggle against the most terrible enemy humanity has ever encountered."
A comparison of the answers given by the German Press and Radio at different times to various natural questions about the story will prove indisputably where it was concocted.

Who discovered the bodies, and when?

"Polish lumbermen": Minister Braun von Stumm, Spokeman of the German Foreign Office, 13.4.43.

"An old peasant": German Home Service, 16.4.43.

"A German military lieutenant": German Home Service, 14.4.43.

"Early this month": Transocean, 11.4.43.

"The autumn of 1942": Deutschlandsender, 14.4.43.
(What sense of modesty prevented Dr.Goebbels from telling the world for six whole months?)

{It was left to the Editor of the notorious paper Truth to provide the Doctor with an alibi, as follows: "Germany has used the incident with skill. She must have known of the graves in the forest for a long time, but has waited until her diplomats and propagandists regard as the crucial moment to force the present split".}

"The summer of 1942": Deutschlandsender, 14.4.43.

This last account is worth quoting: -
"Four Polish transport men, having heard of the murders from the local people, went into the forest with picks and spades. Shortly afterwards they returned, some utterly broken, and some shaking with indignation, and said they had found the place of the murders. Evacuation began at once (i.e. in the summer of last year) ...wherever one dug there were corpses...all the area between the pits has not been evacuated, but there can be no doubt that the burial place covers the whole hill where new trees have been planted".


Could the bodies be identified?

"Members of the Polish delegation (i.e. Polish quislings brought by the Germans from Warsaw) recognised the faces of many of the high Polish officers whom they knew". - German Home Service, 14.4.43.

"A great stench arises from this mass of partly decomposed and partly mummified humanity...no features could be discerned... even old experienced officers held handkerchiefs before their noses". - Calais in English for England, 14.4.43.

"Several hundred more names": Weichsel Radio, 18.4.43.

"It has been possible to identify 95 per cent of the bodies". - 21.4.43.


How many graves were there?

"A mass grave...in which 3,000 Polish officers in full uniform were buried": Transocean, 11.4.43.

"A mass grave...in which no fewer than 10,000 officers lie buried": Transocean, 12.4.43.

"Six similar graves have been discovered": Donau Radio, 12.4.43.

"Two great mass graves have so far been uncovered": Calais in English for England, 22.4.43.
Finally, a sort of mass grave hysteria seems to have seized on the German liars, and graves began to be discovered from one end of Europe to the other. Mass-graves indeed there are, in every country in Europe where the German Fascists have set their heel, and it has been well known to the whole world for some time who makes these mass graves for the peoples of Europe. Oslo Radio reported on April 21st that "Germans from the Baltic States" had witnessed the opening of a mass grave at Riga, and were able to testify that "the bodies were all members of the upper and middle class, and their fate is a warning of what will happen to those classes in Western Europe if the Bolshevik plague should ever gain the upper hand".

The same source reported the discovery of another grave outside Odessa. Here, too, the same forger's recipe could be recognised; here, too, local inhabitants were suddenly inspired to inform the Rumanian military authorities that "there were O.G.P.U. graves close by", and the Rumanian authorities ordered digging to begin at once. The graves were four years old, it was announced, and contained from 4,000 to 5,000 corpses. (It will readily be recalled that it was at Odessa that one of the worst pogroms of all time was carried out: 50,000 Jews, the entire Jewish population of the town, were put to death by the Gestapo after the Red Army withdrew from the town late in 1941).


Other discrepancies

German propaganda was unable to stick to one story even about precisely how the execution was carried out. In the original version, all the victims were shot neatly and symmetrically through the nape of the neck. But such was the Nazi zeal for inventing convincing detail that before the week had passed at least three different methods were widely stated to have been used, as the following quotations will show: -

"Iinhabitants in the neighbourhood... have stated that for some ten days the rattle of machine-guns and cries of terrified victims could be heard".

"Officers of the Polish General Staff were executed in a particularly cruel manner. They were shackled and then buried alive". "The corpses of the Polish officers showed the evidence of numerous bayonet stabs. These stabs were made with the typical Bolshevik four-edged military bayonet".

The two following statements were broadcast at the same hour on April 23rd: - (l)" Owing to the soil the corpses were mummified. The documents found on the bodies were almost intact because they had been impregnated with the grease of the bodies". (2)"The Polish Red Cross is expected soon to start identifying the bodies. This will be very difficult owing to the advanced stage of decomposition of the victims".


German Foreign Office angles for Polish Government support

During the whole period of the most intense concentration of German propaganda on the Smolensk massacre fable, Minister Braun von Stumm, spokesman of the German Foreign Office, was daily revealing to the Press Conference in Berlin the real purpose behind the story. On April 13th he "reminded correspondents of the Polish calculations that one and a half million Polish refugees and about 10.000 officers had fallen into Soviet hands. Despite pressing Polish inquiries, Moscow had refused to reply. Information on the fate of the 10.000 Polish officers was now being provided by the Germans instead". He added that the murdered Polish officers did not come from the Eastern Polish territories officially claimed by the Soviets, but came mostly from the Cracow and Warsaw districts. "This fact (!) - on the next day the German Home Service reported "so far only 76 cases have been investigated" - was clear proof that the Soviets regard even these territories as of political, in other words annexationist, interest".


Polish Government demands "investigation"

On April 16th, four days after the Nazi propagandists had let their story loose, it was already perfectly clear to all the world what kind of a story this was. The signature of the stage-managers of the Reichstag Fire Trial, of the Polish atrocities against Germans in Western Poland, of the "bolshevik massacres" at Lvov, and hundred more forgeries long ago exposed and derided by the free world, was clearly written over whole insidious tale. A Soviet statement issued on the previous day had summed up what was the general public reaction to the story throughout the world: -

"Beyond doubt Goebbels' slanderers are now trying by lies and calumnies to cover up the bloody crimes of the Hitlerite gangsters".

It seems likely, therefore, that the story would be allowed to run for a week or two, and replaced as soon as some fresher invention was ready to take its place in German propaganda. This, indeed, would certainly have been its fate, and it would have achieved nothing more than the further discrediting of its inventors, had not the Polish Government suddenly decided to accept Goebbels' story at its face value, and to use it for its own hostile campaign against the Soviet. On April 16th the Polish official newspaper in London, Dziennik Polski, wrote: -

"The fate of the Polish officers who were in the Kozielsk and Starobyelsk camps is unknown, and is the subject of the greatest concern to the Polish people".

Later in the same day the Polish Ministry of National Defence announced that the Polish Government "is asking the International Red Cross to send an investigation committee to Poland to investigate the graves". The communique explained, after a long series of allegations about "disappearance" of certain Polish officers in the Soviet Union, that the "detailed information given by the German necessitates the approach to the Red Cross with a request for an investigation".
Fifty minutes later the Berlin radio came on the air with the news that Hitler also had appealed to the International Red Cross to investigate the graves. And on the following morning Donau Radio stated that "Berlin welcomes the appeal of the Polish emigree Government to the Geneva Red Cross". Many other broadcasts emphasised the "deep satisfaction caused in Germany by the Polish Government's request". As if to place their provocative intentions in no doubt, the Polish National Council followed this up on the next day with a resolution declaring that "it did not believe" the Soviet statement on the reasons for the execution of Erlich and Alter given by the Soviet Information Bureau seven weeks before. The Polish Cabinet, after a meeting held on the same day, stated in an official communique: -

"There is no Pole who would not be deeply shocked by the news of the discovery near Smolensk in a common grave of massacred bodies of the Polish officers missing in the U.S.S.R. and the mass execution of which they have become victims..."


Pravda warning

In a leading article published on April 19th, the following was Pravda's comment on this insulting Polish appeal: -

"Slander spreads quickly... The Polish ministerial circles should have known that this is not the first time that the Hitlerite liars have resorted to this form of pressure on public opinion."
After recalling the full and circumstancial disproof which the Soviet Information Bureau had been able to publish in 1941 concerning the so-called victims of Bolshevik terror at Lvov, Pravda went on:-

"A similar foul piece of Hitlerite provocation has now once again been fabricated. As how now become perfectly clear, the Germans captured former prisoners of war who in 1941 were engaged on building construction in the area west of Smolensk, and who together with many Soviet citizens living in the Smolensk region, fell into the hands of the German Fascist hangmen in the summer of 1941, after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from the Smolensk area"... The more details they present, even including visiting cards which they themselves put with great foresight into the pockets of the savagely tortured officers, the more clear it becomes that the Hitlerite hangmen are describing their own experience".

"The appeal of the Polish Ministry", Pravda went on, "cannot be regarded as anything but direct and open support of the Hitlerite provocateurs in the fabrication of their foul inventions. The Polish people will turn their backs on them as persons who encourage Hitler, the accursed enemy of Poland".


A success for Goebbels

During the week following April 17th Axis propaganda was whipped up to new hights of fury and mendacity in an attempt to make the very most of this gift from the Polish Government. In Poland the Polish partisans and patriots were fighting the German hordes, wrecking trains daily, ambushing convoys, sabotaging the Nazi factories, fighting in alliance with the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Jugoslavs and all other Eastern European peoples a deadly battle with the Fascist enslavers. But in London the emigre Polish Government chose just this moment, on the eve of the decisive battles of the war, to volunteer for the anti-bolshevik legion. Many of Polish fighter for freedom inside Poland, hearing on the German radio and in the B.B.C.'s Polish service the full story and attempted justification of the Polish Government's treacherous act, must have determined in his heart that the Polish Junkers and near-Fascists should never be allowed to return to Poland when the struggle against Hitler had been won.

The official British attitude was that all that had happened was a "dispute" between two allied Governments, and this neutral policy was strictly adhered to in all British news broadcasts to Europe, with the exception of the Polish broadcasts which are controlled by the Polish Government. On April 16th the British Foreign Office had already refused to make any comment, on the ground that the matter was the concern only of the two allied Governments. The Times, speaking after the breach, wrote on April 28th: -

"The general abstention from comment during the past ten days has not been sufficient to prevent an open breach, and may even have hastened it by allowing the hidden sore to fester... the action of the Polish Government ten days ago beyond doubt played, in fact though not in intention (!the Polish Government could not have been ignorant of the assistance it was in fact rendering to Germany) directly into German hands and followed precisely the course which German propaganda was designed to dictate".

Speaking in the House of Commons a few days later, the Foreign Secretary summed up the situation with the words: "Least said, soonest mended". Never has there been such a negation of diplomatic action, as this bland assumption that fundamental differences can be dissolved by ignoring them.
When on May 7, M.Vyshinski, Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, published to the world a detailed statement of espionage activities by Polish diplomats in the U.S.S.R., ostensibly engaged in charitable work among their compatriots, and in addition exposed the duplicity with which the Polish High Command had evaded its military responsibilities on the Soviet front, the Diplomatic Correspondent of The Times described it as regrettable that "a subordinate" should have undone the good impression created by M.Stalin's May Day Order of the Day. Comment of other Diplomatic Correspondents was so similar in character as to suggest that this also was a line suggested from on high.

Certainly Nazi hopes went much further than immediate object of enlisting the support of the Polish Junkers in a joint anti-Soviet campaign. Their object was nothing less than to drive a wedge into the Allied coalition, to gain precious time in which to prepare for the spring battles in the East and the West, and to prepare the ground for a "peace offensive" on a world scale.

It was no coincidence that it was on April 16th, the very day that the Polish National Council sent its request to the International Red Cross, that the most definite peace offer yet made by Fascism was put out on its behalf by the Spanish Foreign Minister, Jordana. Speaking in the presence of the Argentine and Chilean Ambassadors, he stated that it was now quite clear that none of the belligerents could win the war, that the "Western and Central Powers" were exhausting themselves, and that every one of them, including the United States, would fall a "prey to Bolshevism" if the struggle were allowed to continue much longer. He concluded by expressing the willingness of the Spanish Government to mediate between belligerents. The timing of this peace proposal to coincide with the Smolensk massacre agitation and the treachery of the Polish Government in London leaves no room for doubt that this was the climax of the sustained Axis "anti-bolshevik campaign", and that the Polish Government in London played a vital part in the attempt made by German Fascism and its supporters throughout the world to split the Allied camp.

It is interesting to note that on April 21st the official Spanish news agency instructed all Spanish newspapers to publish suitable comment on the Smolensk story, "with special reference to the International Red Cross and the Polish Government in London.”


The Soviet Union exposes the conspiracy

Such was the state of affairs which obliged the Soviet Govern-ment to break off relations with the Polish Government on April 25th. M. Molotov'snote explained that:-

"The Soviet Government considers the recent behaviour of the Polish Government with regard to the U.S.S.R. as entirely abnormal and violating all regulations and standards of relation between two Allied States. The slanderous campaign hostile to the Soviet Union launched by the German Fascists in connection with the murder of the Polish officers which they themselves committed in the Smolensk area on territory occupied by German troops, was at once taken up by the Polish Government and is being fanned in every way by the Polish official press.

“Far from offering a rebuff to the vile Fascist slander of the U .S.S.R. the Polish Government did not even find it necessary to address to the Soviet Government any inquiry or request for an explanation on this subject.. . .

"For the 'investigation' both the Polish Government and the Hitlerite Government invited the International Red Cross, which is compelled, in conditions of a terroristic regime, with its gallows and mass extermination of the peaceful population, to take part in this investigation farce staged by Hitler.. . .

"The fact that the hostile campaign against the Soviet Union commenced simultaneously in the German and Polish press, and was conducted along the same lines, leaves no doubt as to the existence of contact and accord between the enemy of the Allies – Hitler – and the Polish Government “While the people of the Soviet Union, bleeding profusely in a hard struggle against Hitlerite Germany, are straining every effort for the defeat of the common enemy of the Russian and Polish peoples, and of all freedom-loving democratic countries, the Polish Government, to please Hitler's tyranny, has dealt a treacherous blow at the Soviet Union.”

The Note went on to state that the Soviet Government was aware that the real purpose of this Polish collaboration with Hitler was to "wrest from it territorial concessions at the expense of the interests of the Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Bylorussia and Soviet Lithuania.”

“All these circumstances,” the Note concluded, “compel the Soviet Government to recognise that the present Government of Poland having slid on to the path of accord with Hitler's Government, has actually discontinued allied relations with the U.S.S.R., and has adopted a hostile attitude towards the Soviet Union.

“On the strength of the above, the Soviet Government has decided to sever relations with the Polish Government.”


Polish Government reply

The great majority of the British and American Press did not hesitate to condemn the action of the Polish Government. "On two simple counts", said the London Evening Standard, "we believe the Polish Government must be held responsible for the breach. First, they had no right to suppose that a German allegation might contain the truth. Second, they had no right to call for an investigation on territory occupied by the enemy". The Times reminded the Poles that they themselves had been victims of similar allegation from the same source: -

"Surprise as well as regret will be felt that those who have had so much cause to understand the perfidy and ingenuity of the Goebbels propaganda machine should have themselves fallen into the trap laid by it. Poles will hardly have forgotten a volume widely circulated in the first winter of the war which described with every appearance of circumstantial avidence, including that of photography, alleged Polish atrocities against the peaceful German inhabitants of Poland; and this gruesome and fantastic fabrication, neither the first nor the last of its kind, might have deterred them from treating at the face value accusations of a similiar character when directed against others... At no moment of the war, and at no moment of history, have the closest confidence and co-operiation between Britain and Russia been more essential than now".

The viewpoint of the trade unionists of Britain was vigorously expressed at the Scottich Trades Union Congress by Mr.James Campbell, a member of the General Council, who said: -
"I say to the Poles in this country that, if they are going to use their sanctuary here to attack Russia, they will lose the sympathy of the organised working class of Britain, and our answer will be, "You have outstayed your welcome".

Yet the British Press partly disguised the seriousness of the matter by fairly consistently reffering to it as a "dispute between two Governments". The only official comment available in London, even two days after the breach, was that "the Governments of Britain and the United States are endeavouring to alleviate a regrettable situation", and the Washington State Department announced on the same day "without reference to the merits of the matter, and without knowing as yet the full facts, we learn of this development with regret".


The real Poland

The claims of the Sikorski Government to speak for the real Poland were demolished in an article in Izvestia written by Wanda Wassilevska famous Polish writer, Deputy to the Supreme Soviet, and President of the Union of Polish Patriots in the Soviet Union:-

"Whom does this emigre government represent? The Polish people? By no means. The Polish people neither elected, appointed, nor conferred powers on this government. The present Polish Government took over the functions of the remnants of the Rydz-Smigly Government which fled ­from Poland the government of Poland's September defeat. . . .

“We have seen plainly through these people from the very outset. We have known that they differ only outwardly from those who brought disaster on Poland in 1939, that they are bound to these people by thousands of ties, ideological, personal, and traditional. . . .

“The Polish Government has made bargaining for frontiers its main task. But it bargains not for Polish lands occupied by the Germans, but for the land of Soviet Byelorussia, the Soviet Ukraine, and Soviet Lithuania, lands populated by our brother with whom the Polish people want to live in peace. . . . It was for these reasons that we Poles in the U.S.S.R. demanded that we be given an opportunity to take part in the war, arms in hand. When General Anders took his army away to the Middle East we demanded that Polish troops be formed on the territory of the U.S.S.R., which would not stay for months in their tents, but would go to the front to smite the enemy shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army. The friendship of the Polish and Soviet peoples, cemented with blood in the joint struggle, is unshakable.”


Stalin's pledge to Poland

When the Soviet-Polish agreement was signed, Stalin made a solemn statement to Sikorski that the Soviet Government wants to see a strong and independent Poland. The Soviet Government knows, as indeed the whole world must recognise to be the truth, that Poland will owe her liberation when it does come to the efforts of the Red Army, and of the patriots who are at present struggling against the Nazi yoke. Certain it is that if the ultimate aims shared by the German Nazis and the Polish Junker landlords were ever to be realised neither Poland nor any other of the Hitler-enslaved peoples would escape destruction. “A sharp jolt has been given,” as the Manchester Guardian declared on April 29th, “to all of us who complacently thought that the necessity of winning the war would defeat any tendency to dangerous disunity.” The conspiracy to save Fascism has suffered a reverse through the vigilant action of the Soviet Government in exposing some of its hidden friends. But the danger remains, and the people of Britain must in their own interests exercise a vigilance as sharp as that of our Russian allies. They must make it clear that they stand solidly with the Soviet Union against the Nazi-Polish plotters. They should demand that the British Government take up the firmest possible stand against this and any other attempts to drive wedges into the Alliance to destroy Fascism.

Until the decisive joint Anglo-American-Russian offensive is launched against Hitler Europe, until the Second Front is opened, it is certain that fresh plots will be hatched. Where it is a question of behaviour by any elements in the Allied camp which threatens the unity of the forces in this camp, it is impossible for anti-Fascists to take up a neutral attitude. The British people should demand that those exceptional press facilities granted to the Poles in London, and so wantonly abused by them, should be withdrawn. The emigre Government must withdraw the charges it has made, directly and by implication, against the Government of the U.S.S.R., whose heroic struggle provides the only guarantee of the emergence of Poland as a free nation in a free world.
---
Printed and Published by HARRISON & SONS, LTD., Hayes, Middlesex, for the Russia Today Society, 150, Southampton Row, W.C.1
MAY, 1943

bolding and italics in original
source: http://digital.kenyon.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=rarebooks

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Mr. President, I beg the Tribunal to allow me to call as witness Marko Antonov Markov, a Bulgarian citizen, professor at the University of Sofia.



THE PRESIDENT: Are you the interpreter?

LUDOMIR VALEV (Interpreter): Yes, Sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you give us your full name?

VALEV: Ludomir Valev.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: I swear before God and the Law-that I will interpret truthfully and to the best of my skill-the evidence to be given by the witness.



flit; PRESIDENT: Will you give us your full name, please?

DR. MARKO ANTONOV MARKOV (Witness): Dr. Marko Antonov Markov.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: I swear- as a witness in this case-that I will speak only the truth-being

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aware of my responsibility before God and the Law-and that I will withhold and add nothing.



THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.

MR. DODD: Mr. President, this witness is examined, I would like to call to the attention of the Tribunal the fact that Dr. Stahmer asked the preceding witness a question which I understood went: How did it happen that the interpreters had the questions and the answers to your questions if you didn't have them before you? Now that question implied that Dr. Stahmer had some information that the interpreters did have the answers to the questions, and I sent a note up to the interpreters, and I have the answer from the lieutenant in charge that no one there had any answers or questions, and I think it should be made clear on the record.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I think so, too.

DR. STAHMER: I was advised of this fact outside the courtroom. If it is not a fact, I wish to withdraw my statement. I was informed outside the courtroom from a trustworthy source. I do not recall the name of the person who told me, I shall have to ascertain it.

THE PRESIDENT: Such statements ought not be made by counsel until they have verified them.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: May I begin the examination of this witness, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: The examination, yes.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Witness, I beg you to tell us briefly, without taking up the time of the Tribunal with too many details, under what conditions you were included in the so-called International Medical Commission set up by the Germans in the month of April 1943 for the examination of the graves of Polish officers in the Katyn woods.

I beg you, when answering me, to pause between the question I put to you and your own answer.

MARKOV: This occurred at the end of April 1943. While working in the Medico-Legal Institute, where I am still working, I was called to the telephone by Dr. Guerow.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness must stop before the interpreter begins. Otherwise, the voices come over the microphone together. So the interpreter must wait until the witness has finished his answer before he repeats it.

Now, the witness has said-at least this is what I heard-that in April 1943 he was called on the telephone.

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MARKOV: I was called to the telephone by Dr. Guerow, the secretary of Dr. Filoff who was then Prime Minister of Bulgaria. I was told that I was to take part) as representative of the Bulgarian Government, in the work of an international medical commission which had to examine the corpses of Polish officers discovered in the Katyn wood.

Not wishing to go, I answered that I had to replace the director of my Institute who was away in the country. Dr. Guerow told me that according to an instruction of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had sent the telegram, it was precisely in order to replace him that I would have to go there. Guerow told me to come to the Ministry. There I asked him if I could refuse to comply with this order. He answered that we were in a state of war and that the Government could send anybody wherever and whenever they deemed it necessary.

Guerow took me to the first secretary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Schuchmanov. Schuchmanov repeated this order and told me that we were to examine the corpses of thousands of Polish officers. I answered that to examine thousands of corpses would take several months, but Schuchmanov said that the Germans had already exhumed a great number of these corpses and that I would have to go, together with other members of the commission, in order to see what had already been done and in order to sign, as Bulgarian representative, the report of the proceedings which had already been drafted. After that, I was taken to the German Legation, to Counsellor Mormann, who arranged all the technical details of the trip. This was on Saturday; and on Monday morning, 26 April, I flew to Berlin. There I was met by an official of the Bulgarian Legation and I was lodged at the Hotel Adlon.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Please answer the next question: Who took part in this so-called International Commission, and when did they leave for Katyn?

MARKOV: On the next day, 27 April, we stayed in Berlin and the other members of the commission arrived there too.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Who were they?

MARKOV: They were the following, besides myself: Dr. Birkle, chief doctor of the Ministry of Justice and first assistant of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminology at Bucharest; Dr. Miloslavich, professor of forensic medicine and criminology at Zagreb University, who was representative for Croatia; Professor Palmieri, who was professor for forensic medicine and criminology at Naples; Dr. Orsos, professor of forensic medicine and criminology at Budapest; Dr. Subik, professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Bratislava and chief of the State Department for Health for

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Slovakia; Dr. Hajek, professor for forensic medicine and criminology at Prague, who represented the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Professor Naville, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Geneva, representative for Switzerland; Dr. Speleers, professor for ophthalmology at Ghent University, who represented Belgium; Dr. De Burlett, professor of anatomy at the University of Groningen, representing Holland; Dr. Tramsen, vice chancellor of the Institute for forensic medicine at Copenhagen University, representing Denmark; Dr. Saxen, who was professor for pathological anatomy at Helsinki University, Finland.

During the investigations of the commission, a Dr. Costeduat was missing; he declared that he could attend only as a personal representative of President Laval. Professor Piga from Madrid also arrived, an elderly gentleman who did not take any part in the work of the commission. It was stated later that he was ill as a result of the long journey.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Were all these persons flown to Katyn?

MARKOV: All these persons arrived at Katyn with the exception of Professor Piga.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Who besides the members of the commission left for Katyn with you?

MARKOV: On the 28th we took off from Tempelhof Airdrome, Berlin, for Katyn. We took off in two airplanes which carried about 15 to 20 persons each.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Maybe you can tell us briefly who was there?

MARKOV: Together with us was Director Dietz, who met us and accompanied us. He represented the Ministry of Public Health. There were also press representatives, and two representatives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I beg you to stop with these details and to tell me when the commission arrived in Katyn?

MARKOV: The commission arrived in Smolensk on 28 April, in the evening.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: How many work days did the commission stay in Smolensk? I stress work days.

MARKOV: We stayed in Smolensk 2 days only, 29 and 30 April 1943, and on 1 May, in the morning, we left Smolensk.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: How many times did the members of the commission personally visit the mass graves in the Katyn wood?

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MARKOV: We were twice in the Katyn wood, that is, in the forenoon of 29 and 30 April.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I mean, how many hours did you spend each time at the mass graves?

MARKOV: I consider not more than 3 or 4 hours each time.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Were the members of the commission present at least once during the opening of one of the graves?

MARKOV: No new graves were opened in our presence. We were shown only several graves which had already been opened before we arrived.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Therefore, you were shown already opened graves, near which the corpses were already laid out, is that right?

MARKOV: Quite right. Near these 'opened graves were exhumed corpses already laid out there.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Were the necessary conditions for an objective and comprehensive scientific examination of the corpses given to the members of the commission?

MARKOV: The only part of our activity which could be characterized as a scientific, medico-legal examination were the autopsies carried out by certain members of the commission who were themselves medico-legal experts; but there were only seven or eight of us who could lay claim to that qualification, and as far as I recall only eight corpses were opened. Each of us operated on one corpse, except Professor Hajek, who dissected two corpses. Our further activity during these 2 days consisted of a hasty inspection under the guidance of Germans. It was like a tourists' walk during which we saw the open graves; and we were shown a peasant's house, a few kilometers distant from the Katyn wood, where in showcases papers and objects of various sorts were kept. We were told that these papers and objects had been found in the clothes of the corpses which had been exhumed.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Were you actually present when these papers were taken from the corpses or were they shown to you when they were already under glass in display cabinets?

MARKOV: The documents which we saw in the glass cases had already been removed from the bodies before we arrived.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Were you allowed to investigate these documents, to examine these documents, for instance, to see whether the papers were impregnated with any acids which had developed by the decay of the corpses, or to carry out any other kind of scientific examination?

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MARKOV: We did not carry out any scientific examination of these papers. As I have already told you, these papers were exhibited in glass cases and we did not even touch them.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: But I would like you nevertheless to answer me briefly with "yes" or "no," a question which I have already put to you. Were the members of the commission given facilities for an objective examination?

MARKOV: In my opinion these working conditions can in no way be qualified as adequate for a complete and objective scientific examination. The only thing which bore the character of the scientific nature was the autopsy which I carried out.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: But did I rightly understand you, that from the 11,000 corpses which were discovered only 8 were dissected by members of the commission.

MARKOV: Quite right.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Please answer the next question. In what condition were these corpses? I would like you to describe the state in which they were and also the state of the inner organs, the tissues, et cetera.

MARKOV: As to the condition of the corpses in the Katyn graves, I can only judge according to the state of the corpse which I myself dissected. The condition of this corpse was, as far as I could ascertain, the same as that of all the other corpses. The skin was still well preserved, was in part leathery, of a brown-red color and on some parts there were blue markings from the clothes. The nails and hair, mostly, had already fallen out. In the head of the corpse I dissected there was a small hole, a bullet wound in the back of the head. Only pulpy substance remained of the brain. The muscles were still so well preserved that one could even see the fibers of the sinews of heart muscles and valves. The inner organs were also mainly in a good state of preservation. But of course they were dried up, displaced, and of a dark color. The stomach showed traces of some sort of contents. A part of the fat had turned into wax. We were impressed by the fact that even when pulled with brute force, no limbs had detached themselves.

I dictated a report, on the spot, on the result of my investigation. A similar report was dictated by the other members of the commission who examined corpses. This report was published by the Germans, under Number 827, in the book which they published.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I would like you to answer the following question. Did the medico-legal investigations testify to the fact that the corpses had been in the graves already for 3 years?

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MARKOV: As to that question I could judge only from the corpse on which I myself had held a post mortem. The condition of this corpse, as I have already stated, was typical of the average condition of the Katyn corpses. These corpses were far removed from the stage of disintegration of the soft parts, since the fat was only beginning to turn into wax. In my opinion these corpses were buried for a shorter period of time than 3 years. I considered that the corpse which I dissected had been buried for not more than 1 year or 18 months.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Therefore, applying the criteria of the facts which you ascertained to your experiences in Bulgaria- that is, in a country of a more southern climate than Smolensk and where decay, therefore, is more rapid-one must come to the conclusion that the corpses that were exhumed in the Katyn forest had been lying under the earth for not more than a year and a half? Did I understand you correctly?

MARKOV: Yes, quite right. I had the impression that they had been buried for not more than a year and a half.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn now.



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MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Witness, when did you, together with the other members of the commission, perform the autopsies of these eight corpses? What date was it exactly?

MARKOV: That was on 30 April, early in the day.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: And, on the basis of your personal observations, you decided that the corpses were in the ground 1 year or 18 months at the most?

MARKOV: That is correct.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Before putting the next question to you, I should like you to give me a brief answer to the following question: Is it correct that in the practice of Bulgarian medical jurisprudence the protocol about the autopsy contains two parts, a description and the deductions?

MARKOV: Yes. In our practice, as well as in the practice of other countries, so far as I know, it is done in the following way: First of all, we give a description and then the deduction.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Was a deduction contained in the record you made regarding the autopsy?

MARKOV: My record of the autopsy contained only a description without any conclusion.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Why?

MARKOV: Because from the papers which were given to us there I understood that they wanted us to say that the corpses had been in the ground for 3 years. This could be deduced from the papers which were shown to us in the little peasant hut about which I have already spoken.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: By the way, were these papers shown to you before the autopsy or afterward?

MARKOV: Yes, the papers were given us 1 day before the autopsy.

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MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: So you were. . .

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Smirnov, you are interrupting the interpreter all the time. Before the interpreter has finished the answer, you have put another question. It is very difficult for us to hear the interpreter.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Thank you for your indication, Mr. President.

MARKOV: Inasmuch as the objective deduction regarding the autopsy I performed was in contradiction with this version, I did not make any deductions.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Consequently you did not make any deduction because the objective data of the autopsy testified to the fact that the corpses had been in the ground, not 3 years, but only 18 months?

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Smirnov, you must remember that it is a double translation, and unless you pause more than you are pausing, your voice comes in upon the interpreter's and we cannot hear the interpreter.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Very well, Mr. President.

MARKOV: Yes, that is quite correct.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Was there unanimity among the members of the commission regarding the time the corpses had been in the graves?

MARKOV: Most of the members of the delegation who performed the autopsies the Katyn wood made their deductions without answering the essential question regarding the time the corpses had been buried. Some of them, as for instance, Professor Hajek, spoke about immaterial things; as for instance, that one of the killed had had pleurisy. Some of the others, as for instance, Professor Birkle from Bucharest, cut off some hair from a corpse in order to determine the age of the corpse. In my opinion that was quite immaterial. Professor Palmieri, on the basis of the autopsy that he performed, said that the corpse had been in the ground over a year but he did not determine exactly how long.

The only one who gave a definite statement in regard to the time the corpses had been buried was Professor Miloslavich from Zagreb, and he said it was 3 years. However, when the German book regarding Katyn was published, I read the result of his impartial statement regarding the corpse on which he had performed the autopsy. I had the impression that the corpse on which he had performed the autopsy did not differ in its stage of decomposition from the other corpses. This led me to think that his statement that the corpses had

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been in the ground for 3 years did not coincide with the facts of his description.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I would like to ask you to reply to the following question. Were there many skulls found by the members of the commission with signs of so-called pseudocallus?

By the way, inasmuch as this term is not known in the usual books on medical jurisprudence and in general criminalistic terminology, I should like you to give us an exact explanation of what Professor Orsos, of Budapest, means by the term pseudocallus.

THE PRESIDENT: Would you repeat that question?

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Were there many skulls with signs of so-called pseudocallus which were submitted to the members of the commission? Inasmuch as this term is not known in the usual books on medical jurisprudence, I should like you to give us a detailed explanation of what Professor Orsos means by the term pseudo callus.

THE PRESIDENT: What are you saying the skulls had? You asked if there were many skulls with something or other.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I see this term for the first time, myself, Mr. President. It is pseudocallus. It seems to be a Latin' term of some sort of corn which is formed on the outer surface of

the cerebral substance.

THE PRESIDENT: Can you spell the word in Latin?

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Yes, Mr. President.



THE PRESIDENT: What you have written here is p-s-e-r-d-o. Do you mean p-s-e-u-d-o, which means false?

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Yes, that is right, pseudo.

THE PRESIDENT: Now then, put your question again, and try to put it shortly.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Yes.

Were there many skulls with signs of so-called pseudocallus shown to the members of the commission? Will you please give an exact explanation of this term of Professor Orsos'.

MARKOV: Professor Orsos spoke to us regarding pseudocallus at a general conference of the delegates. That took place on 30 April, in the afternoon, in the building where the field laboratory of Dr. Butz in Smolensk was located.

Professor Orsos described the term pseudocallus as meaning some sediment of indissoluble salt, of calcium, and other salts on the inside of the cranium. Professor Orsos stated that, according to his

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observations in Hungary, this happened if the corpses have been in the ground for at least 3 years. When Professor Orsos stated this at the scientific conference, none of the delegates said anything either for or against it. I deduced from that that this term pseudocallus was as unknown to the other delegates as it was to me.

At the same conference Professor Orsos showed us such a pseudocallus on one of the skulls.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I should like you to answer the following question: What number did the corpse have from which this skull with signs of pseudocallus was taken?

MARKOV: The corpse from which the skull was taken and which was noted in the book bore the Number 526. From this I deduced that this corpse was exhumed before our arrival at Katyn, inasmuch as all the other corpses on which we performed autopsies on 30 April had numbers which ran above 800. It was explained to us that as soon as a corpse was exhumed it immediately received a consecutive number.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Ten me this, please. Did you notice any pseudocallus on the skulls of the corpses on which you and your colleagues performed autopsies?

MARKOV: On the skull of the corpse on which I performed an autopsy, there was some sort of pulpy substance in place of the brain, but I never noticed any sign of pseudocallus. The other dele

gates-after the explanation of Professor Orsos-likewise did not state that they had found any pseudocallus in the other skulls. Even Butz and his co-workers, who had examined the corpses before our arrival, did not mention any sign of pseudocallus.

Later on, in a book which was published by the Germans and which contained the report of Butz, I noticed that Butz referred to pseudocallus in order to give more weight to his statement that the corpses had been in the ground for 3 years.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: That is to say, that of the 11,000 corpses only one skull was submitted to you which had pseudocallus?

MARKOV: That is quite correct.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I should like you to describe to the Tribunal in detail the state of the clothing which you found on the corpses.

MARKOV: In general the clothing was well preserved, but of course it was damp due to the decomposition of the corpses. When we pulled off the clothing to undress the corpses, or when we tried to take off the shoes, the clothing did not tear nor did the shoes fall apart at the seams. I even had the impression that this clothing could have been used again, after having been cleaned.

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There were some papers found in the pockets of the clothing of the corpse on which I performed the autopsy, and these papers were also impregnated with the dampness of the corpse. Some of the Germans who were present when I was performing the autopsy asked me to describe those papers and their contents; but I refused to do it, thinking that this was not the duty of a doctor. In fact I had already noticed the previous day that with the help of the dates contained in those papers, they were trying to make us think that the corpses had remained in the ground for 3 years.

Therefore, I wanted to base my deductions only on the actual condition of the corpses. Some of the other delegates who performed autopsies also found some papers in the clothing of the corpses. The papers which had been found in the clothing of the corpse on which I performed the autopsy were put into a cover which bore the same number as the corpse, Number 827. Later on, in the book which was published by the Germans, I perceived that some of the delegates described the contents of the papers which were found on the corpses.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I should like to ask you to reply to the following question. On what impartial medico-judicial data did the commission base the deduction that the corpses had remained in the earth not less than 3 years?

THE PRESIDENT: Will you put the question again? I did not understand the question.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I asked on what impartial medico-judicial data were the deductions of the protocol of the International Medical Commission based, which stated that the corpses had remained in the ground not less than 3 years?

THE PRESIDENT: Has he said that that was the deduction he made-not less than 3 years?

THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): He has not said that.

THE PRESIDENT: He has not said that at all. He never said that he made the deduction that the corpses remained in the ground not less than 3 years.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: He did not make this deduction; but Professor Markov, together with the other members of the commission, signed a report of the International Commission.

THE PRESIDENT: I know; but that is why I ask you to repeat your question. The question that was translated to us was: On what grounds did you make your deduction that the corpses had remained in the ground not less than 3 years-which is the opposite of what he said.

Now will you put the question again?

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MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV. Very well.

I am not asking you about your personal minutes, Witness, but about the general record of the entire commission. I am asking you on what impartial medico-judicial data were the deductions of the entire commission based, that the corpses had remained in the earth not less than 3 years. On the record of the deductions your signature figures among those of the other members of the commission.

THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute. Now, then, Colonel Smirnov, will you put the question again.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Yes, Mr. President.

I was asking you on what impartial medicojudicial data were the deductions of the commission based- not the individual report of Dr. Markov, in which there are no deductions-but the deductions of the entire commission, that the corpses had remained not less than 3 years in the ground?

MARKOV: The collective protocol of the commission which was signed by all the delegates was very scant regarding the real medicojudicial data. Concerning the condition of the corpses, only one sentence in the report was stated, namely that the corpses were in various stages of decomposition, but there was no description of the real extent of decomposition.

Thus, in my opinion, this deduction was based on the papers found on the corpses and on testimony of the witnesses, but not on the actual medicojudicial data. As far as medical jurisprudence is concerned, they tried to support this deduction by the statement of Professor Orsos regarding the finding of pseudocallus in the skull of corpse Number 526.

But, according to my conviction, since this skull was the only one with signs of pseudocallus, it was wrong to arrive at a definite conclusion regarding the stage of decomposition of thousands of corpses which were contained in the Katyn graves. Besides, the observation of Professor Orsos regarding pseudocallus was made in Hungary; that is to say, under quite different soil and climatic conditions, and withal in individual graves and not in mass graves, as was the case in Katyn.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: You spoke about the testimony of witnesses. Did the members of the commission have the opportunity personally to interrogate those witnesses, especially the Russian witnesses?

MARKOV: We did not have the opportunity of having any contact with the indigenous population. On the contrary, immediately upon our arrival at the hotel in Smolensk, Butz told us that we were in a military zone, and that we did not have the right to

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walk around in the city without being accompanied by a member of the German Army, or to speak with the inhabitants of the place, or to make photographs. In reality, during the time we were there, we did not have any contact with the local inhabitants.

On the first day of our arrival in the Katyn wood, that is to say, on 29 April, in the morning, several Russian civilians were brought under German escort to the graves. Immediately upon our arrival at Smolensk some of the depositions of the local witnesses were submitted to us. The depositions were typed. When these witnesses were brought to the Katyn wood, we were told that these witnesses were the ones who gave the testimonies which had been submitted to us. There was no regular interrogation of the witnesses which could have been recorded, or were recorded. Professor Orsos started the conversation with the witnesses and told us that he could speak Russian because he had been a prisoner of war in Russia during the first World War. He began to speak with a man, an elderly man whose name, so far as I can remember, was Kiselov. Then he spoke to a second witness, whose last name so far as I can remember was Andrejev. All the conversation lasted a few minutes only. As our Bulgarian language is rather similar to the Russian, I tried also to speak to some of the witnesses...

THE PRESIDENT: Don't you think that should be left to cross-examination? Can't these details be left to cross-examination?

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Yes, Mr. President.

I would ask you, Witness, to interrupt the reply to this question and to answer the following one: At the time you signed this general report of the commission, was it quite clear to you that the murders were perpetrated in Katyn not earlier than the last quarter of 1941, and that 1940, in any case, was excluded?

MARKOV: Yes, this was absolutely clear to me and that is why I did not make any deductions in the minutes which I made on my findings in the Katyn wood.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Why did you sign then this general report, which was incorrect in your opinion?

MARKOV: In order to make it quite clear under what conditions I signed this report, I should like to say a few words on how it was made up and how it was signed.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Excuse me, I would like to put a question to you which defines more accurately this matter. Was this report actually signed on 30 April 1941 in the town of Smolensk or was it signed on another date and at another place?

MARKOV: It was not signed in Smolensk on 30 April but was signed on 1 May at noon, at the airport which was called Bela.

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MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Will you please tell the Tribunal under what conditions it was signed.

MARKOV: The compilation of this record was to be done at the same conference which I already mentioned and which took place in the laboratory of Butz in the afternoon of 30 April. Present at this conference were all the delegates and all the Germans who had arrived with us from Berlin: Butz and his assistants, General Staff Physician Holm, the chief physician of the Smolensk sector, and also other German Army officials who were unknown to me. Butz stated that the Germans were only present as hosts, but actually the conference was presided over by General Staff Physician Holm and the work was performed under the direction of Butz. The secretary of the conference was the personal lady secretary of Butz who took down the report. However, I never saw these minutes. Butz and Orsos came with a prepared draft to this conference, a sort of protocol; but I never learned who ordered them to draw up such a protocol. This protocol was read by Butz and then a question was raised regarding the state and the age of the young pines which were in the clearings of the Katyn wood. Butz was of the opinion that in these clearings there were graves too.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Excuse me for interrupting you. Did you have any evidence that any graves were actually found in these clearings?

MARKOV: No. During the time we were there, no new graves were opened. As some of the delegates said they were not competent to express their opinion regarding the age of these trees, General Holm gave an order to bring a German who was an expert on forestry. He showed us the cut of the trunk of a small tree and from the number of circles in this trunk, he deduced the trees were 5 years old.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Excuse me; I interrupt you again. You, yourself-can you state here that this tree was actually cut down from the grave and not from any other place in the clearing?

MARKOV: I can say only that in the Katyn wood there were some clearings with small trees and that, while driving back to Smolensk, we took a little tree with us in the bus, but I do not know whether there were any graves where these trees were standing. As I have already stated, no graves were laid open in our presence.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: I would request you to continue your reply, but very briefly and not to detain the attention, of the Tribunal with unnecessary details.

MARKOV: Some editorial notes were made in connection with this protocol, but I do not remember what they were. Then Orsos

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and Butz were entrusted with the final drafting of the record. The signing of the record was intended to take place on the same night at a banquet which was organized in a German Army hospital. At this banquet Butz arrived with the minutes and he started reading them, but the actual signing did not take place for reasons which are still not clear to me. It was stated that this record would have to be rewritten, so the banquet lasted until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. Then Professor Palmieri told me that the Germans were not pleased with the contents of the protocol and that they were carrying on telephone conversations with Berlin and that perhaps there would not even be a protocol at all.

Indeed, having spent the night in Smolensk without having signed the record, we took off from Smolensk on the morning of 1 May. I personally had the impression that no protocol at all would be issued and I was very pleased about that. On the way to Smolensk, as well as on our way back, some of the delegates asked to stop in Warsaw in order to see the city, but we were told that it was impossible because of military reasons.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: This has nothing to do with the subject. Please keep to the facts.

MARKOV: Around noon we arrived at the airport which was called Bela. The airport was apparently a military airfield because of the temporary military barracks I saw there. We had dinner there and immediately after dinner, notwithstanding the fact that we were not told that the signing of the minutes would take place on the way to Berlin, we were submitted copies of the protocol for signature. During the signing a number of military persons were present, as there were no other people except military personnel on this airfield. I was rather struck by the fact that on the one hand the records were already completed in Smolensk but were not submitted to us for signing there, and on the other hand that they did not wait till we arrived in Berlin a few hours later. They were submitted to us for signing at this isolated military airfield. This was the reason why I signed the report, in spite of the conviction I had acquired during the autopsy which I had performed at Smolensk.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: That is to say, the date and the locality which are shown in the protocol are incorrect?

MARKOV: Yes, that is so.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: And you signed it because you felt yourself compelled to?

THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Smirnov, I don't think it is proper for you to put leading questions to him. He has stated the fact. It is useless to go on stating conclusions about it.

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MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Very well, Mr. President. I have no further questions to put to the witness. !

THE PRESIDENT: Does anyone want to cross-examine him?

DR. STAHMER: Mr. President, I should like to ask a question

concerning the legal proceedings first. Each side was to call three witnesses before the Court. This witness, as I understand it, has not only testified to facts but has also made statements which can be called an expert judgment. He has not only expressed himself as an expert witness, as we say in German law, but also as an expert. If the Court is to listen to these statements made by the witness as an expert, I should like to have the opportunity for the Defense also to call in an expert.

THE PRESIDENT: No, Dr. Stahmer, the Tribunal will not hear more than three witnesses on either side. You could have called any expert you wanted or any member of the experts who made the German examination. It was your privilege to call any of them.

DR. STAHMER: Witness, how long have you been active in the field of medical jurisprudence?

MARKOV: I have been working in the field of medical jurisprudence since the beginning of 1927 in the faculty for medical jurisprudence of the University in Sofia, first as an assistant and now I am professor of medical jurisprudence. I am not a staff professor

at the university. My position can be designated by the German word "Ausserordentlicher Professor" (university lecturer).

DR. STAHMER: Before your visit to Katyn did your government tell you that you were to participate in a political action without consideration of your scientific qualification?

MARKOV: I was not told so literally, but in the press the Katyn question was discussed as a political subject.

DR. STAHMER: Did you feel free in regard to your scientific "conscience" at that time?

MARKOV: At what time?

DR. STAHMER: At the time when you went to Katyn?

MARKOV: The question is not quite clear to me; I should like you to explain it.

DR. STAHMER: Did you consider the task you had to carry out there a political one or a scientific one?

MARKOV: I understood this task from the very first moment as a political one and therefore I tried to evade it.

DR. STAHMER: Did you realize the outstanding political importance of this task?

MARKOV: Yes; from everything I read in the press.

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DR. STAHMER: In your examination yesterday you said that when you arrived at Katyn the graves had already been opened and certain corpses had been carefully laid out. Do you mean to say that these corpses were not taken from the graves at all?

MARKOV: No, I should not say that, inasmuch as it was obvious that corpses were taken out of these graves and besides I saw that some corpses were still in the graves.

DR. STAHMER: Then, in order to state this positively, you had no reason to think that the corpses inspected by the commission were not taken from these mass graves?

THE PRESIDENT: He did not know where they came from, did he'

MARKOV: Evidently from the graves which were open.

DR. STAHMER: You have already made statements to the effect that, as a result of the medicojudicial examination by this International Commission, a protocol, a record was taken down. You have furthermore stated that you signed this protocol.

Mr. President, this protocol is contained in its full text in the official data published by the German Government on this incident. I ask that this evidence, this so-called White Book, be admitted as evidence. I will submit it to the Court later.

THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now.



THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Stahmer, the Tribunal rules that you may cross-examine this witness upon the report, and the protocol will be admitted in evidence, if you offer it in evidence, under Article 19 of the Charter. That, of course, involves that we do not take judicial notice of the report under Article 21 of the Charter but that it is offered under Article 19 of the Charter and therefore it will either come through the earphones in cross-examination or such parts of the protocol as you wish to have translated.

DR. STAHMER: Witness, was the protocol or the record signed by you and the other experts compiled in the same way in which it is included in the German White Book? '

MARKOV: Yes, the record of the protocol which is included in the German White Book is the same protocol which I compiled. A long time after my return to Sofia I was sent two copies of the protocol by Director Dietz. These two copies were typewritten, and I was requested to make necessary corrections and additions if I deemed it necessary, but I left it without corrections and it was printed without any comments on my part.

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MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Just a moment Dr. Stahmer . . .

Mr. President, I believe that there is a slight confusion here. The witness is answering in regard to the individual protocol, whereas Dr. Stahmer is questioning him on the general record. Thus the witness does not answer the proper question.

DR. STAHMER: Mr. President, I would have cleared this matter up on my own account.

Do you mean your autopsy protocol?

MARKOV: I mean the protocol I compiled myself and not the general record.

DR. STAHMER: Now, what about this general protocol or record? 'hen did you receive a copy of it?

MARKOV: I received a copy of the general record in Berlin where as many copies were signed as there were delegates present.

DR. STAHMER: Just a little while ago you stated that Russian witnesses had been taken before the commission in the wood of Katyn, but that, however, there had been no opportunity afforded the experts to talk with these witnesses concerning the question at hand.

Now, in this protocol, in this record, the following remark is found, and I quote:

"The commission interrogated several indigenous Russian witnesses personally. Among other things, these witnesses confirmed that in the months of March and April 1940 large shipments of Polish officers arrived almost daily at the railroad station Gnjesdova near Katyn. These trains were emptied, the inmates were taken in lorries to the wood of Katyn and never seen again. Furthermore, official notice was taken of the proofs and statements, and the documents containing the evidence were inspected."

MARKOV: As I already stated during the questioning, two witnesses were interrogated on the spot by Orsos. They actually said that they saw how Polish officers were brought to the station of Gnjesdova and that later they did not see them again.

Am; PRESIDENT: Dr. Stahmer, the Tribunal thinks the witness ought to be given an opportunity of seeing the report when you put passages in it to him.

DR. STAHMER: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Haven't you got another copy of it?

DR. STAHMER: I am sorry, Mr. President, I have no second copy; no.

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THE PRESIDENT: Can the witness read German?

MARKOV: No, but anyhow I can understand the contents of the record.

THE PRESIDENT: You mean you can read it?

MARKOV: Yes, I can also read it.

THE PRESIDENT: Can the witness read German, do you mean?

MARKOV: Yes, I can read German.

DR. STAHMER: Mr. President, may I make a suggestion?

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Stahmer, if you have only got one copy, I think you had better have it back. You can't have the book passing to and fro like that.

DR. STAHMER: I should like to make the suggestion that the cross-examination be interrupted and the other witness be called, and I will have this material typed in the meantime. That would be a solution. But there are only a few sentences...

THE PRESIDENT: You can read it. Take the book back.

DR. STAHMER: Mr. President, I propose to read only a few short sentences.

Yesterday you testified, Witness, that the experts restricted or limited themselves to making an autopsy on one corpse only. In this report the following is set down-I quote:

"The members of the commission personally performed an autopsy on nine corpses and numerous selected cases were submitted for post-mortem examination."

Is that right?

MARKOV: That is right. Those of the members of the commission who were medical experts, with the exception of Professor Naville, performed each an autopsy on a corpse. Hajek made two autopsies.

DR. STAHMER: In this instance we are not interested in the autopsy, but in the post-mortem examination.

MARKOV: The corpses were examined but only superficially during an inspection which we carried out very hastily on the first day. No individual autopsy was carried out, but the corpses were merely looked at as they lay side by side.

DR. STAHMER: I should like to ask you now what is meant in medical science by the concept "post-mortem examination."

MARKOV: We differentiate between an exterior inspection, when the corpse has to be undressed and minutely examined externally, and an internal inspection, when the inner organs of the

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corpse are examined. This was not done with the hundreds of bodies at Katyn, as it was not physically possible. We were there only one forenoon. Therefore, I consider that there was no actual medicojudicial expert examination of these corpses in the real sense of the word.

DR. STAHMER: A little while ago you talked about the trees that were growing there on these graves, and you said that an expert explained the age of the trees by the rings counted on a trunk. In the protocol and the report the following is set down. I quote: ,

"According to the opinion of the members of the commission and the testimony of forest ranger Von Herff, who was called in as an expert on forestry, they were small pine trees of at least 5 years of age, badly developed because they had been standing in the shade of large trees and had been transplanted to this spot about 3 years ago."

Now, I would like to ask you, is it correct that you undertook a local inspection and that you convinced yourself on the spot whether the statements made by the forestry expert were actually correct?

MARKOV: Our personal impression and my personal conviction in this question only refer to the fact that in the wood of Katyn there were clearings where small trees were growing and that the afore-mentioned expert showed us a cross section of a tree with its circles. But I do not consider myself competent and cannot give an opinion as to whether the deductions which are set forth in the record are correct or not. Precisely for that reason it was judged necessary to call in a forestry expert, for we doctors were not competent to decide this question. Therefore, these conclusions are merely the conclusions of a competent German expert.

DR. STAHMER: But after having had a first-hand view, did you doubt the truth of these statements?

MARKOV: After the German expert had expressed his opinion at the conference of the delegates, neither I nor the other delegates expressed any opinion as to whether his conclusions were correct or not. These conclusions are set down in the record in the form in which the expert expressed himself.

DR. STAHMER: According to your autopsy report the corpse of the Polish officer which you dissected was clothed and you described the clothing in detail. Was this winter or summer clothing that you found?

MARKOV: It was winter clothing including an overcoat and a woolen shawl around the neck.

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DR. STAHMER: In the protocol it says further and I quote:

"Furthermore, Polish cigarettes and matchboxes were found with the dead; in some cases tobacco containers and cigarette holders, and 'Kosielsk' was inscribed thereon."

The question is, did you see these objects?

MARKOV: We actually saw these tobacco boxes with the name "Kosielsk" engraved thereon. They were exhibited to us in the glass case which was shown to us in the peasant hut not far from the Katyn wood. I remember them because Butz drew our attention to them.

DR. STAHMER: In your autopsy report, Witness, there is the following remark, and I quote:

"In the clothing documents were found and they were put in the folder Number 827."

Now, I should like to ask you: How did you discover these documents? Did you personally take them out of the pockets?

MARKOV: These papers were in the pockets of the overcoat and of the jacket. As far as I can remember they were taken out by a German who was undressing the corpse in my presence.

DR. STAHMER: At that time were the documents already in the envelope?

MARKOV: They were not yet in the envelope, but after they had been taken out of the pockets they were put into an envelope which bore the number of the corpse. We were told that this was the usual method of procedure.

DR. STAHMER: What was the nature of the documents?

MARKOV: I did not examine them at all, as I have already said, and I refused to do so, but according to the size I believe that they were certificates of identity. I could distinguish individual letters, but I do not know whether one could read the inscription, for I did not attempt to do so.

DR. STAHMER: In the protocol the following statement is made, and I quote:

"The documents found with the corpses (diaries, letters, and newspapers) were dated from the fall of 1939 until March and April 1940. The latest date which could be ascertained was the date of a Russian newspaper of 22 April 1940."

Now, I should like to ask you if this statement is correct and whether it is in accordance with the findings that you made?

MARKOV: Such letters and newspapers were indeed in the glass cases and were shown to us. Some such papers were found by members of the commission who were dissecting the bodies, and if I

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remember rightly, they described the contents of these documents, but I did not do so.

DR. STAHMER: In your examination just a little while ago you stated that only a few scientific details were contained in this protocol and that this was probably done intentionally. I should like to quote from this record as follows:

"Various degrees and types of decomposition were caused by the position of the bodies to one another in the grave. Aside from some mummification on the surface and around the edges of the mass of corpses, some damp maceration was found among the center corpses. The sticking together of the adjacent corpses and the soldering together of corpses through cadaverous acids and fluids which had thickened, and particularly the deformations that obtained from the pressure among the corpses, show that the corpses were buried there right from the beginning.

"Among the corpses, insects or remains of insects which might date back to the time of burial are entirely lacking, and from this it may be gathered that the shooting and the burial took place at a season which was cold and free from insects."

Now, I should like to ask you if these statements are correct and if they are in line with your findings.

MARKOV: I stated that lithe was said on the condition of the corpses, and indeed as can be judged by the quotation which I had in mind, only a general phraseology is used concerning the various degrees of decomposition of the corpses, but no concrete or detailed description of the condition of the corpses is made.

As to the insects and their larvae, the assertion of the general report that none were discovered is in flagrant contradiction to the conclusions of Professor Palmieri, which are recorded in his personal minutes concerning the corpse which he himself dissected. In this protocol, which is published in the same German White Book, it is said that there were traces of remains of insects and their larvae in the mouths of the corpses.

DR. STAHMER: Just a little while ago you spoke of the scientific examination of skulls undertaken by Professor Orsos. The record also refers to this matter, and I quote:

"A large number of skulls were examined with respect to the changes they had undergone, which, according to the background and experience of Professor Orsos, would be of great value in fixing the date of death. In this connection, we are concerned with stratified encrustations on the surface of the mush found in the skull as a residue of the brain. These symptoms are not to be found among corpses which have

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been in their graves for less than 3 years. Such a condition, among other things, was found in a very decided form in the skull of corpse Number 526, which was found near the surface of a large mass grave."

I should like to ask you now if it is correct that, according to the report of Professor Orsos, such a condition was discovered not only as is said here on the skull of one corpse, but among other corpses also.

MARKOV: I can answer this question quite categorically. We were shown only one skull, the one precisely mentioned in the record under the Number 526. I do not know that other skulls were examined, as the record seems to imply. I am of the opinion that Professor Orsos had no possibility of examining many corpses in the Katyn wood, for he came with us and left with us. That means he stayed in the Katyn wood just as long as I and all the other members of the commission did.

DR. STAHMER: Finally, I should like to quote the conclusion of the summarizing expert opinion, in which it is stated:

"From statements made by witnesses, from the letters and correspondence, diaries, newspapers, and so forth, found on the corpses, it may be seen that the shootings took place in the months of March and April 1940. The following are in complete agreement with the findings made with regard to the mass graves and the individual corpses of the Polish officers, as described in the report."

Is this statement actually correct?

THE PRESIDENT: I did not quite understand the statement. As I heard you read it, it was something like this: From the statements of witnesses, letters, and so forth. . .

DR. STAHMER: ". . . in complete agreement with the findings made with regard to the mass graves and the individual corpses of the Polish officers and described in the report." That is the end of the quotation.

THE PRESIDENT: It doesn't say that the following persons are in complete agreement, but that the following facts are in complete agreement. Is that right?

DR. STAHMER: No. My question is "Is this statement approved by you? Do you agree with it?"

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I know, but you read out certain words, which were these: "The following are in complete agreement." What I want to know is whether that means that the following persons are in complete agreement, or whether the following facts are in complete agreement.

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DR. STAHMER: Special facts had been set down, and this is a summarizing expert opinion signed by all the members of the commission. Therefore, we have here a scientific explanation of the real facts.

THE PRESIDENT: Would you just listen to what I read out from what I took down? "From the statements of witnesses, letters, and other documents, it may be seen that the shooting took place in the months of March and April 1940. The following are in complete agreement." What I am asking you is this-



Just a moment, Dr. Stahmer, listen to what I say. What I am asking you is: Does the statement mean that the following persons are in complete agreement, or that the following facts are in complete agreement?

DR. STAHMER: No, no. The following people testify that this fact, the fact that the shootings took place in the months of March and April 1940, agrees with the results of their investigations of the mass graves and of individual corpses. That is what is meant and that is the conclusion. What has been found here is in agreement with that which has been set down and determined scientifically. That is the meaning.

THE PRESIDENT: Go on.

DR. STAHMER: Is this final deduction in accord with your scientific conviction?

MARKOV: I have already indicated that this statement regarding the condition of the corpses is based on the date resulting from testimony by the witnesses and from the available documents, but it is in contradiction to the observations I made on the corpse which I dissected. That means I did not consider that the results of the autopsies corroborated the presumable date of death to be taken from the testimony or the documents. If I had been convinced that the condition of the corpses did indeed correspond to the date of decease mentioned by the Germans, I would have given such a statement in my individual protocol.

When I saw the signed protocol I became suspicious as to the last sentence of the record-the sentence which precedes the signatures. I always had doubts whether this sentence was contained in that draft of the protocol which we saw at the conference in Smolensk.

As far as I could understand, the draft of the protocol which had been elaborated in Smolensk only stated that we actually were shown papers and that we heard witnesses; and this was supposed to prove that the killings were carried out in March or April of 1940.

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I was of the opinion that the fact that the conclusion was not based on medical opinion and not supported absolutely by medical reports and examination, was the reason why the signing of the protocol was postponed and why the record was not signed in Smolensk.

DR. STAHMER: Witness, at the beginning of my examination you stated that you were fully aware of the political significance of your task. Why, then, did you desist from protesting against this report which was not in accord with your scientific conviction?

MARKOV: I have already said that I signed the protocol as I was convinced that the circumstances at this isolated military airfield offered no other possibility, and therefore I could not make any objections.

DR. STAHMER: Why did you not take steps later on?

MARKOV: My conduct after the signing of the protocol corresponds fully to what I am stating here, I repeat. I was not convinced of the truth of the German version. I was invited many times to Berlin by Director Dietz. I was also invited to Sofia by the German Embassy. And in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Foreign Office also invited me to make a public statement over the radio and to the press; and I was requested to say what conclusions we had come to during our investigation. However, I did not do so, and I always refused to do so. Because of the political situation in which we found ourselves at that moment, I could not make a public statement declaring the German version was wrong.

Concerning that matter there were quite sharp -words exchanged between me and the German Embassy in Sofia. And when, a few months later, another Bulgarian representative was asked to be sent as a member of a similar commission for the investigation of the corpses in Vinnitza in the Ukraine, the German Ambassador Beckerly stated quite openly to the Bulgarian Foreign Office that the Germans did not wish me to be sent to Vinnitza.

That indicated that the Germans very well understood my behavior and my opinion on that matter. Concerning this question, Minister Plenipotentiary Saratov, of our Foreign Office, still has shorthand records about conversations which, if the Honored Tribunal considers it necessary, can be sent here from Bulgaria.

Therefore, all my refusals, after I had signed the protocol, to carry on any activity for the purpose of propaganda, fully correspond to what I said here, namely that the conclusions laid down in the collective protocol do not answer my personal conviction. And I will repeat that if I had been convinced that the corpses were buried for 3 years, I would have testified this after having dissected a corpse. But I have left my personal protocol incomplete

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and this is a quite unusual thing in the case of medico-judicial examination.

DR. STAHMER: The protocol was not signed by you alone, but on the contrary it carries the signatures of 11 representatives of science, whose names you gave yesterday, some of them of world renown. Among these men we find a scientist of a neutral country, Professor Naville.

Did you take the opportunity to get in touch with one of these experts in the meantime with a view of reaching a rectification of the report?

MARKOV: I cannot say on what considerations the other delegates signed the protocol. But they also signed it under the same circumstances as I did. However, when I read the individual protocols, I notice that they also refrained from stating the precise date of the killing of the man whose corpse they had dissected. There was one exception only, as I have already said. That was Professor Niloslavich, who was the only one who asserted that the corpse which he had dissected was that of a man buried for at least 3 years. After the signing of the protocol, I did not have any contact with any of the persons who had signed the collective protocol.

DR. STAHMER: Witness, you gave two versions, one in the protocol which we have just discussed, and another here before the Court. Which version is the correct one?

MARKOV: I do not understand, which two versions you are speaking about. Will you please explain it?

DR. STAHMER: In the first version, in the protocol, it is set forth that according to the conclusion which had been made, the shooting must have taken place 3 years ago. Today you testified that the findings were not correct, and between the shooting and the time of your investigations there could only be a space of perhaps 18 months.

MARKOV: I stated that the conclusions of the collective protocol do not correspond with my personal conviction.

DR. STAHMER: "Did not correspond" or "do not correspond with your conviction"?

MARKOV: It did not and it does not correspond with my opinion then and now.

DR. STAHMER: I have no further questions.

MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Mr. President, I have no further questions to put to this witness.

THE PRESIDENT: Witness, were any of the bodies which were examined by the members of this delegation exhumed from the ground in your presence?

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MARKOV: The corpses which we dissected were selected among the top layers of the graves which had been already exhumed. They were taken out of the graves and given to us for dissection.

THE PRESIDENT: Was there anything to indicate, in your opinion, that the corpses had not been buried in those graves?

MARKOV: As far as traces are concerned, and as far as the layers of corpses were preserved, they were stuck to each other; so that if they had been transferred, I do not believe that this could have been done recently. This could not have been done immediately before our arrival.

THE PRESIDENT: You mean that you think the corpses had been buried in those graves?

MARKOV: I cannot say whether they were put into those graves immediately after death had come, as I have no data to confirm this, but they did not look as if they had just been put there.

THE PRESIDENT: Is it possible, in your opinion as an expert, to fix the date of March or April or such a short period as that, 3 years before the examination which you have made?

MARKOV: I believe that if one relies exclusively on medical data, that is to say, on the state and condition of the corpses, it is impossible, when it is a question of years, to determine the date with such precision and say accurately whether they were killed in March or in April. Therefore, apparently the months of March and April were not based on the medical data, for that would be impossible, but on the testimony of the witnesses and on the documents which were shown us.

THE PRESIDENT: When you got back to Sofia, you said that the protocol was sent to you for your observations and for your corrections and that you made none. Why was that?

MARKOV: We are concerned with the individual protocol which I compiled. I did not supplement it by making any conclusion, I did not add any conclusion because it was sent to me by the Germans and because in general at that time the political situation in our country was such that I could not declare publicly that the German version was not a true one.

THE PRESIDENT: Do you mean that your personal protocol alone was sent to you at Sofia?

MARKOV: Yes, only my personal protocol was sent to Sofia. As to the collective protocol, I brought that back myself to Sofia and handed it over to our Foreign Minister.

THE PRESIDENT: Is your personal protocol, in the words that you drew it up, incorporated in the whole protocol and signed by all the delegates?

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MARKOV: In my personal protocol there is only a description of the corpse and of the clothing of the corpse which I dissected.

THE PRESIDENT: That is not the question I asked.

MARKOV: In the general protocol a rough description only is made, concerning the clothing and the degree of decomposition.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, do you mean that your personal protocol . . .

MARKOV: I consider that the personal protocols are more accurate regarding the condition of the corpses, because they were compiled during the dissection and were dictated on the spot to the stenographers.

THE PRESIDENT: Just listen to the question, please. Is your personal protocol, in the words in which you drew it up, incorporated in the collective protocol in the same words?

MARKOV: My own protocol is not included in the general record, but it is included in the White Book which the Germans published together with the general record.

THE PRESIDENT: It is there, then, in the report, is it? It is in the White Book?

MARKOV: Yes, quite right. It is included in this book.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness can retire. Yes, Colonel Smirnov, do you have another witness?

Day 168, Monday, 1 July 1946: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-01-46.asp
Day 169, Tuesday, 2 July 1946: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-02-46.asp

2 other witnesses were also interviewed (a max was set at 3), BAZILEVSKY, "the first deputy mayor of Smolensk during the period of the German occupation" (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-01-46.asp) and PROSOROVSKI, the chair of the "Medico-Judicial Commission of experts" of the "Special Commission for investigation and ascertaining of the circumstances of the shootings by the German Fascist aggressors of Polish officers" (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-02-46.asp). Both are also worth reading if interested in Katyn. The testemony of the 3 Nazi witnesses is also there for reading.