"Contested Killers, Contested Memories: Katyń"

This thesis project examines the collective memory of Katyń from the midst of the Second World War to the late twentieth century. Katyń serves as the collective name for the series of mass executions of over 20,000 Polish soldiers, army officers, policemen, and various members of the Polish intelligentsia by the NKVD that took place throughout remote sites in the Soviet Union during the early months of the Second World War. From the discovery of the mass graves in the Katyń Forest by German forces in 1943, Katyń has been shrouded in contentions, secrecy, and processes of attempts to unveil the historical truth of the perpetrators of the mass executions. For nearly five decades, many scholars of Katyń argue that the “truth” of the mass executions remained hidden. While this claim is not entirely incorrect as the Soviet and Polish states’ sponsored versions of the truth of the crime’s perpetrators appeared “hidden,” this school of thought is disingenuous and problematic in its approach in examining contemporaries’ understanding and perceptions of Katyń throughout the latter portion of the twentieth century. This thesis project argues that to better understand what Katyń was and has been, we must examine the representations of Katyń from the discovery of the mass graves by German forces in the Katyń Forest in 1943 to the release of Katyń documents by the Soviet Union in 1990. This thesis project examines selected representations of Katyń made by the German and Soviet governments during the Second World War, Polish émigrés living within the United States and Great Britain during the post-war period, and Poles living within the Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa (PRL) and present-day Poland. Katyń has represented a myriad of meanings in the collective memories of states and societies throughout time. The understanding, representations, “truth,” and narratives surrounding Katyń have undoubtedly been influenced by the politics of memory at every stage of the Katyń story.