Gazeta Wyborcza | 10Aug2009 | Polish Radio
http://polskieradio.pl/thenews/international/artykul113688_katyn_victims_in_kharkov_were_limed.html
Katyn victims in Kharkov were
‘limed’
Secret NKVD documents reveal that thousands of Katyn massacre victims
executed in Kharkov were later covered with lime to conceal traces of
mass murder.
A letter, branded ‘top secret,’ has recently been found by the
Ukrainian Security Service in post-Soviet archives. It reads: “In a
forest about 100 metres from Kharkov-Bilgorod road, within a 50-metre
radius, are many spots of collapsed earth. The holes are rectangular,
3x6 metres. One of the holes has been dug out and human bones and
skulls can be seen. Some of the bones are scattered on the ground.
There are also the remains of foreign-made military boots.”
The letter was written by General Vitaliy Nikitchenko to KGB head Yuri
Andropov and to Petro Shelest, leader of the Communist Party of
Ukraine, on 7 June 1969.
General Nikitchenko, head of the Committee of State Security of the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic, further reports that the grave has been dug
out by three pupils of fifth and sixth grade from Pyatikhatki. They
robbed a gold ring engraved with the initials AK and the date 29 June
1924, gold tooth crowns and military buttons with the image of the
Polish eagle.
“It has been established that here in 1940 the NKVD from Kharkov region
buried several thousands executed officers and generals of bourgeois
Poland, whose remnants have been accidentally discovered by children,”
writes Nikitchenko.
Pyatikhatki, along with Katyn and Miednoye, is the burial place of over
3,700 Polish war prisoners executed by the NKVD in 1940 as ordered by
Stalin and other Soviet leaders.
In order to conceal the discovery and truth about the mass murder,
Nikitchenko proposed announcing that it was Germans who executed
deserters from their own army and the allied armies. The General
suggested that people be warned that victims who were buried here died
of cholera, typhus, syphilis and other infectious diseases. Andropov
decided that that kind of disinformation campaign will not be enough,
and, in a letter to General Petro Feshchenko from the Kharkov branch of
the NKVD, ordered the site destroyed. The burial place in Pyatikhatki
was to be surrounded by barbed-wire fence and guarded by 21 men. The
remnants of Polish officers were to be destroyed by being covered with
lime and the graves were to be filled in. Andropov gave his
subordinates four years and 10,000 rubles (220 euro) to do that.
(mg/mmj)
Source: Gazeta Wyborcza
===================
[W.Z. The burial place referred to above is on the east side of the
main road heading north from Kharkiv. In addition to the 3,700 Polish
victims, it contains some 6,300 Ukrainian victims presumably from the
Yezhovschyna era of 1937-38. Names of known victims are engraved in a
huge rusted iron wall. As of about 28Mar2006, wreaths had been placed
in the Polish section, presumably, by Polish authorities.]
[S.L. A memorial to the Katyn victims buried near Kharkiv at
Starobilsky/Starobielsk was held in 1998.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/troy/1791/kharkov.html
Names of Katyn victims from Ukraine are included in the following
digital Katyn museum:
http://www.electronicmuseum.ca/Poland-WW2/katyn_memorial_wall/kmw.html
Does Ukraine have its own "Katyn Museum"?
Any digital Holodomor Museums?]