The Only Thing You Can Do Is Refuse To Forget
Guest post by Kathleen M. O'Brien
When I was about 12 years old, my father pulled an old magazine out of a closet and showed it to me. He explained that an article in there described something awful, but it was true and was something I should know about. This was my introduction to an atrocity. Discussing it with my father created a personal connection for me to the thousands of men who had been murdered and then had their massacre blanketed in lies and silence. I found myself following in others’ footsteps: remembering the victims and telling their story.
Memorial plaque for Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet, Jr. and Capt. Donald B. Stewart, U.S. Army officers, English-speaking witnesses to Katyn, erected in 2015 at the site of the former Oflag 64 prison camp at Szubin, Poland. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
In April 1943, Germany announced that their forces had found mass graves in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, east of what is now Belarus (see map at the end of this post). The thousands of men buried in these mass graves had been systematically executed: shot in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood, and buried. These men were Polish military officers who had been captured during the invasion of Poland in 1939. At the time of the invasion, Germany and the Soviet Union were allies, dividing control of Poland between their countries. Prisoners born in western Poland were transferred to the Germans and those born in eastern Poland were transferred to the Soviets.
When the mass graves were discovered at Katyn, Germany and the Soviet Union were no longer allies. The Germans blamed the Soviets for the Katyn massacre and the Soviets blamed the Germans. Both maintained that stance until soon after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, at which point the Soviet Union admitted that the NKVD, the Soviet secret police at that time, had massacred these prisoners on Stalin's orders.
At the time these officers were taken prisoner, Poland's conscription system required every nonexempt university graduate to become a military reserve officer. By capturing the officers, Germany and the Soviet Union imprisoned a significant portion of Poland’s educated class.
Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army after the Soviet invasion of Poland. September 1939. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
By executing these officers, the Soviet Union reduced potential resistance to Soviet rule. Knowledge of the massacre was suppressed in Soviet-bloc countries until the Soviet Union admitted responsibility in 1990. Even then, Katyn was a topic that only slowly became safe to talk about in public settings.
The article in the magazine that my father handed to me included photos of Allied officers who were prisoners of war held by the Germans (Van Vliet 1962). These POWs had been taken by the German army to view the mass graves found at Katyn as part of an effort to convince the world that the Germans were not responsible for the massacre. While at Katyn, the Allied officers were shown the opened mass graves filled with bodies, letters and photos taken from the bodies that had been exhumed, and autopsy information showing the ruthless precision with which the officers were executed and buried.
My uncle, Captain Donald B. Stewart, U.S. Army, was one of these POWs and appeared in some of the German photos along with his senior officer, Colonel John H. Van Vliet. Before traveling to Katyn, both men had been convinced that Katyn was all German propaganda. While there, they both noted specific details that ultimately convinced them that the victims had been murdered by the Soviets. They were given documents and photos about Katyn to take back with them to their POW camps. When Uncle Don was marched out of Oflag 64 by the Germans on January 21, 1945, he retained the photos and documents that he'd been given about Katyn by sewing them in the lining of his greatcoat.
Captain Donald B. Stewart and British doctor Captain Stanley Gilder reviewing exhumed documents at Katyn. May 1943. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
After they were liberated and returned to the United States, both Uncle Don and Colonel Van Vliet reported to the War Department about what they had seen at Katyn. They also appeared before Congress in 1951 and 1952 during investigations about Katyn. Not widely known until recently, however, was that both men were "code writers", sending intelligence back to the United States through letters that appeared to be written to family members. Using this method, they reported in July 1943 and April 1944 that they believed the Soviets had committed the massacre at Katyn.
After liberation, they were instructed not to discuss this matter "without specific approval in writing from the War Department." Records declassified in the last couple of decades show how forces within the U.S. government resisted putting the blame for the Katyn massacre on the Soviets (New York Daily News 2019). Handling the issue of Katyn during World War II was a conundrum for the United States. They were allied with both the Polish government, then located in London, and the Soviet Union, and winning the war required allies. They also were working with limited information until the liberated officers returned and German war records were captured.
Lt. Col. Donald B. Stewart shows Congressman Ray Madden where the graves were in the Katyn forest. 10 November 1951. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
What is more difficult to understand is why the U.S. government continued to ignore Soviet responsibility for Katyn after the war ended. The first written report that Van Vliet made on his return in 1945 was destroyed. Information about Katyn was included in the Nuremberg trials when the Soviets charged Germany with the massacre. The defense presented evidence of Soviet responsibility, and Katyn was not mentioned in the verdict, but nothing was done to address Soviet complicity. Even the Congressional hearings in 1951 and 1952, which investigated what the U.S. knew about Katyn and when, didn’t lead to any public denunciation of Soviet actions. But the men who had witnessed those mass graves did not forget.
After being prevented from discussing Katyn for many years, both Uncle Don and Colonel Van Vliet took opportunities to speak about it, including the magazine article that Colonel Van Vliet wrote in 1962. In 1980, a graduate student from California, Roy L. Towers, conducted video interviews with Colonel Van Vliet and Uncle Don as part of a documentary created for his master’s thesis (Towers 1984). These are the only known video interviews about the Katyn massacre by Colonel Van Vliet and Uncle Don.[1] In these interviews, thirty-seven years after seeing Katyn, both men give vividly detailed descriptions of their experience. At one point, Uncle Don says:
[B]ut when I stood on the edge of the grave there at Katyn, and I looked down on that mass of bodies, it was just too much to comprehend. These weren't battle casualties. I could understand that. I could accept it. It was just almost impossible to look at those corpses, look at those officers, and really believe that I was seeing what I was seeing. And yet, there it was. There was no way out. They were massacred. And then, it followed, the inevitable conclusion I came to from the condition of their boots and shoes, they were shot by the Russians.
Over the years, my father's many conversations with Uncle Don about the war led him to be very committed to remembering Katyn. After Uncle Don passed away in 1983, on the rare occasion that Katyn was mentioned in a newspaper, Dad cut out the article and saved it. My older brother and I also contributed to Dad's collection. At that point in time, neither the Soviets nor the Germans had accepted responsibility for the massacre. The only thing that could be done by any of us, here on the other side of the world, for those officers massacred and buried in mass graves, was to refuse to forget them.
In recent decades, the Katyn Massacre has become a more open topic. It is discussed in articles and on websites and has become safer to talk about in former-Soviet-bloc countries. International court cases have been filed.
An official cemetery has been built at the site of the massacre, and the Muzeum Katyńskie in Warsaw was opened in 1993. When Polish President Lech Kaczyński was killed in a plane crash in Smolensk in 2010, the passengers in that aircraft had been going to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.
Polish War Cemetery at Katyn: circular alley listing thousands of names of the known victims at Katyn. Image from Wikimedia Commons
My family continues to remember Katyn. I've answered emails from a grandson of a victim. My cousin David A. Stewart (one of Uncle Don's sons) has worked extensively with the Muzeum Katyńskie to get information to them, including my father’s collection of newspaper articles. In conjunction with the museum, David is writing a series of books on the Katyn Massacre, the first volume of which has been published (Stewart 2023).
Documents found on the Polish officers buried at Katyn were dated no later than May 1940. So, next month is the 85th anniversary of their murder, and to this day, there are family members who still feel their loss: now-grown children who lost their fathers and grandchildren who have heard stories of grandfathers who vanished. Those men were husbands and sons and fathers, and they deserve to be remembered.
[1] Roy Towers’ documentary was published on YouTube by the Muzeum Katyńskie on April 13, 2025, recognizing the 82nd anniversary of the finding of the mass graves at Katyn.
Map of the Katyn Massacre (1940). Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Works Cited
New York Daily News. 10 Jan 2019. “Katyn massacre: US hushed up Stalin’s slaughter of Polish officers, released memos show.”
Stewart, David A. 2023. Katyn Forest Massacre 1940. A Selection of Declassified U.S. Government Documents, Volume 1. Warsaw, Poland: Muzeum Katyńskie.
Towers, Roy L, Jr. 1984. The Case of the Missing Officers: The Katyn Forest Massacre. Hayward, CA: California State University.
Van Vliet, Colonel John H. Jr. December 1962. “The Massacre at Katyn.” The New Golden Argosy for Men. 355 (6): 19-21.