Katyn

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Village
Katyn
Катынь
Federal district Central Russia
Oblast Smolensk
Rajon Smolensk
Height of the center 170  m
Time zone UTC + 3
Telephone code (+7) 481
Post Code 214522
License Plate 67
OKATO 66 244 836 001
Geographical location
Coordinates 54 ° 46 ′  N , 31 ° 41 ′  E Coordinates: 54 ° 46 ′ 15 "  N , 31 ° 41 ′ 15"  E
Katyn (European Russia)
Red pog.svg
Location in the western part of Russia
Katyn (Smolensk Oblast)
Red pog.svg
Location in Smolensk Oblast

Template: Infobox location in Russia / maintenance / dates

Katyn ( Russian Катынь , Polish Katyń [ ˈkatɨɲ ]) is a village in Smolensk Oblast in Russia with about 1700 inhabitants. It is the administrative seat of a rural community association ( Katynskoje selskoje posselenije ) with 28 villages and a total of 4546 inhabitants (as of 2015). The name of the place was due to the 1940 war prisoners at about 4,400 Poles by the Soviet NKVD perpetrated the Katyn massacre known worldwide. This was part of a series of mass murders of up to 25,000 Poles, the scenes of which were also Smolensk, Kalinin and Kharkov . The place name Katyn is representative of the series of murders in Poland.

location

The village is 20 km west of the oblast and Rajonzentrums Smolensk near the northern Dnepr -Ufer in the area of the confluence of the creek Katynka. The greater part of the village lies west of the Katynka on the P-120 (formerly: A 141) highway, which leads from Oryol via Smolensk and Rudnja to the Belarusian border. The smaller district is about three kilometers east of it at the railway station of the same name on the route from Moscow to Minsk , which is also used by the East-West Express from Moscow to Paris .

A forest in which the Katyn memorial is located extends across the eastern part of the municipality .

history

The area of ​​the Katyn municipality has been settled since the Middle Ages, when the Varangians traded across the Dnieper with the Kievan Rus and Byzantines . Historians derive the place name from the Old Russian word кать (kat - "holding place") or from катунъ (katun - "storage place"). It is believed that bartering was carried out at the mouth of the Katynka.

From 1147 to 1404 the region belonged to the Principality of Smolensk until it was conquered by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . In 1514 the Lithuanians lost it to the Grand Duchy of Moscow . In 1618 the Poles advancing eastward joined the Smolensk region to their kingdom until it finally became Russian in 1654.

In 1897, the Polish lawyer Aleksander Lednicki , who was a Russian citizen and had represented the Constitutional Democratic Party in the Duma in Saint Petersburg since 1906 , bought several houses, fields and part of the forest in the village of Katyn in the east of the municipality, including the “ Goat Mountains ”(Kosji Gory). He had a sanatorium built on his property at the edge of the forest. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the “ October Revolution ” of 1917, Lednicki was expropriated.

From 1918 onwards, people who had been executed by the Soviet secret police Cheka as opponents of the new regime in the prisons of Smolensk were secretly buried on the goat mountains in the forest of Katyn. In 1925 the secret police, now renamed OGPU , took over Lednicki's previous property. In the immediate vicinity of the goat mountains, dachas were built for the Smolensk leadership of the secret police, which was called the NKVD since 1934 . A mansion at the edge of the forest on the high bank of the Dnieper, called "Dnieper-Schlösschen", was converted into a training and recreation home for the NKVD. These sections of the forest were fenced in and closely guarded. The sanatorium between the forest and the further west village of Katyn was extended by several buildings, it was reserved exclusively for members of the OGPU and NKVD.

Shooting of Polish prisoners of war in 1940

Main article: Katyn Massacre

In April and May 1940 a total of around 4,400 Polish prisoners of war, mostly reserve officers from the country's leadership, were shot and buried by an NKVD firing squad in the immediate vicinity of the goat mountains. The executions were headed by the commander of the NKVD “inner prison” in Smolensk, Lieutenant of State Security Ivan Stelmach .

After Smolensk was captured by the Wehrmacht in September 1941, the headquarters of the 537 intelligence regiment belonging to Army Group Center set up in the "Dnieper Castle". After information from the population, German soldiers found a mass grave in the forest in February 1943 with corpses in Polish officers' uniforms, and the Wehrmacht leadership ordered an exhumation. The head of the exhumation work, Professor Gerhard Buhtz , and a group of experts from the Polish Red Cross led by the Krakow forensic doctor Marian Wodziński were housed in the village of Katyn in the spring of 1943. In the village there was also a temporary hospital and an officers' mess of the Todt Organization .

After the Red Army had recaptured the region in September 1943, the NKVD arrested a part of the inhabitants of Katyn, allegedly with the German occupiers collaborated had. Several of them were shot, and the firing squad was again led by Ivan Stelmach. The other inhabitants were resettled in the depths of the Soviet Union, especially to Siberia , so that the entire population of the village was exchanged. The resettlements took place on the basis of a decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 2, 1948. The new settlers had to work in kolkhozes, which, however, received very little funds from the authorities in the post-war years, so that they suffered great material hardship.

The secret police were instructed not to allow foreigners into the village without a permit. Some of the resettled residents of Katyn were later prepared by the KGB as possible witnesses who were supposed to confirm the German perpetrators in the Katyn massacre.

The dachas in the Katyn forest and the NKVD training center over the Dnieper were expanded after the Second World War. Leading officials from Moscow also came there to relax, including Lasar Kaganowitsch and Kliment Voroshilov , both of whom had signed the order in 1940 to murder the Polish officers buried just a few hundred meters away, and Nikolai Schwernik . Even Mikhail Gorbachev stayed repeatedly at Katyn.

It was not until autumn 1989 that relatives of the Polish victims were given official access to the Katyn forest for the first time. In 2000 the Katyn memorial, financed jointly by the governments in Moscow and Warsaw, was inaugurated for the Poles and Soviet citizens murdered there. Since then, commemorative events have been held there every year in the second week of April.

The "Dnieper Castle" was demolished in 2002.

economy

Like the rest of the region, the Katyn municipality is characterized by agriculture. It is the seat of several agricultural businesses and food processing companies. The focus is on cattle breeding and milk and cattle feed production.

The “Borok” sanatorium, which was once founded by Lednicki and expanded by the NKVD and specializes in diseases of the lungs and respiratory tract, is located immediately west of the “Ziegenberge” forest section. It is subordinate to the Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation , but also accepts paying private patients.

See also

Web links

Commons : Katyn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Naselenie Smolenskoj oblasti 2015 , statdata.ru
  2. ↑ Beate Kosmala: Katyn. In: Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, Hermann Weiss: Encyclopedia of National Socialism. 1998, ISBN 3-608-91805-1 , p. 882.
  3. ↑ Postanovlenie Pravitel'stva RF ot 17 nojabrja 2010 № 928 “О perečne avtomobil'nych dorog obščego pol'zovanija federal'nogo značenija”. In: Garant.ru (portal for legal information).
  4. ↑ Poezd 023Č Moskva - Pariž. In: Tutu.ru , April 4, 2016 (route map of train 023Č).
  5. ↑ Kompleks pamjatnikov v okresnosti sela Katyn '. In: Zapoved.net (portal of the “Zapovednaja Rossija” tourist board ).
  6. ↑ Jerzy Ochmański: Historia Litwy. Breslau, 1990, pp. 84, 120.
  7. ↑ Konrad Bobiatyński: Od Smoleńska do Vilnius. Wojna Rzeczpospolitej z Moskwą 1654–1655. Zabrze 2004, p. 36.
  8. ↑ AL Mickevič: K voprosu ob iznačal'noj prinadležnosti katynskogo lesa. In: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala. Volume 11, 2011, pp. 9-10, 12.
  9. ^ Andrzej Przewoźnik , Jolanta Adamska: Katyń. Zbrodnia prawda pamięć. Warsaw 2010, p. 146.
  10. ↑ AL Mickevič: K voprosu ob iznačal'noj prinadležnosti katynskogo lesa. In: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala. Volume 11, 2011, p. 14.
  11. ↑ NI Gurskaja, ES Koneva: Iz istorii Katynskogo Lesa. In: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala. Volume 10, 2010, p. 57.
  12. ↑ AL Mickevič: K voprosu ob iznačal'noj prinadležnosti katynskogo lesa. In: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala. Volume 11, 2011, p. 11.
  13. ↑ Nikita Pietrow : Poczet Katow katyńskich. Warsaw 2015, p. 348.
  14. ↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators , 2015, p. 161.
  15. ↑ Kazimierz Skarżyński : Report Polskiego Czerwonego Krzyża. Warsaw 1989, pp. 30, 47.
  16. ^ Andrzej Przewoźnik, Jolanta Adamska: Katyń. Zbrodnia prawda pamięć. Warsaw 2010, p. 250.
  17. ↑ NN Il'kevič: Svidetel'stva o besčinstvach. In: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala. Volume 7, 2007, p. 115.
  18. ↑ Jacek Trznadel: Rosyjscy świadkowie Katynia (1943-1946-1991). In: Zeszyty Katyńskie. Volume 2, 1992, pp. 113-114.
  19. ↑ "Sel'skaja Rossija: Prošloe i nastojaščee". XIV Vserossijskaja naučno-Praktičeskaja konferencija v Moskve. In: Vestnik.archivista.ru , May 8, 2015.
  20. ↑ NI Gurskaja, ES Koneva: Iz istorii Katynskogo Lesa. In: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala. Volume 10, 2010, p. 62.
  21. ↑ Oleg Zakirov: Obcy element. Dramatyczne losy oficera KGB w walce o wyjaśnienie zbrodni katyńskiej. Poznań 2010, pp. 203-204.
  22. ↑ Oleg Zakirov: Obcy element. Dramatyczne losy oficera KGB w walce o wyjaśnienie zbrodni katyńskiej. Poznań 2010, p. 242.
  23. ↑ Oleg Zakirov: Obcy element. Dramatyczne losy oficera KGB w walce o wyjaśnienie zbrodni katyńskiej. Poznań 2010, p. 210.
  24. ^ Wojciech Materski: Murder Katyński. Siedemdziesiąt lat drogi do prawdy. Warsaw 2010, p. 72.
  25. ↑ Tribute to victims of Katyn massacre. The Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Warsaw, April 13, 2013.
  26. ↑ AL Mickevič: K voprosu ob iznačal'noj prinadležnosti katynskogo lesa. In: Vestnik Katynskogo memoriala. Volume 11, 2011, p. 13.
  27. ↑ Predprijatija ŽKCh Smolenskogo rajona ( Memento of the original from April 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. arhiv.smol-ray.ru (Official website of Smolensk Raion ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / arhiv.smol-ray.ru
  28. ↑ Smolenskaja oblast ' Delovoj biznes spravočnik, 2012.
  29. ↑ ZAO “Agrofirma-Katyn '” sel'chospredprijatie dlja našej oblasti neskol'ko neobyčnoe SmolNews.ru , August 4, 2011.
  30. ↑ Sanatorij “Borok” MVD Rossii tour-info.ru