Viktor Ilyich Prosorovsky

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Viktor Ilyich Prosorowski ( Russian Виктор Ильич Прозоровский * 1901 in Moscow , † 1986 ) was a Soviet coroner , the opinion on German war crimes in World War II created and as a witness at the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War the German occupiers of complicity in the massacre of Katyn accused.

Life

Prosorowski studied medicine at Lomonosov University . In 1930 he joined the communist party. He specialized in toxicology , especially alcohol poisoning . From 1937 to 1939 he headed the Moscow City Forensic Medicine Department. In 1940 he was appointed head of the Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Medicine (NISM) at the People's Commissariat for Health of the USSR .

During the Second World War, Prosorowski led exhumations of mass graves in areas recaptured by the Red Army on behalf of the Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the German Occupiers . In 1943, his working group prepared reports for the war crimes trials against members of the Wehrmacht in Kharkov and Krasnodar .

He was one of a decree of the January 12, 1944 the Supreme Soviet appointed the USSR commission of experts , which, led by the chief surgeon of the Red Army Nikolai Burdenko alleged evidence of the German perpetrators in the murder of around 4,400 Polish officers and cadets in the forest of Katyn present and thus should conceal the actual perpetrators of the Soviet secret police NKVD . Prosorowski led a group of 75 medical personnel.

He showed a group of Western correspondents tissue samples to prove that the Poles were murdered during the German occupation. Participants in his presentation included Jerome Davis (“ Toronto Star ”), Richard Lauterbach (“ Time ”), William H. Lawrence (“ New York Times ”), Homer Smith ( Associated Negro Press ), Edmund Stevens (“ The Christian Science Monitor ") And Alexander Werth ( BBC and" London Sunday Times "). The group also met with Kathleen Harriman , the daughter of the US ambassador in Moscow W. Averell Harriman , and the diplomat John Melby , of the Moscow branch of the Office of War Information initiated (OWI). With the exception of Lawrence and Smith, those named presented Prosorowski's statements as convincing in their reports on the trip to Katyn.

In the spring of 1945 Prosorowski led the investigation of mass graves on the grounds of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp liberated by the Red Army . On July 2, 1946, he testified as a witness for the Soviet prosecution at the main war criminals trial in Nuremberg. His remarks focused on the German ammunition found in the mass graves and shots in the neck as a “typical German method of shooting”. The Foreign Office in London classified him as "undoubtedly very efficient witnesses" ( undoubtedly, a most effective witness ), such as from the historian Rohan D'Olier Butler written memorandum about the attitude of the British government to Causa Katyn ( Butler Memorandum ) emerges .

In 1952, Prosorowski belonged to a working group led by the State Department of the USSR, which prepared a propaganda campaign against the Madden Commission , the special committee of the US Congress to investigate the Katyn massacre. In the following years he published studies on the examination of gunshot wounds and wrote articles on forensic medicine in the light of Marxism-Leninism .

An opinion published in 1993 on the Burdenko Commission , which was prepared on behalf of the Chief Military Prosecutor of the Russian Federation , came to the conclusion that the commission, including Prosorowski's working group, had forged evidence in order to accuse the German occupiers of the Katyn massacre.

literature

  • Andrzej Przewoźnik / Jolanta Adamska: Katyń. Zbrodnia prawda pamięć. Warsaw 2010, pp. 361-370.
  • M. Ju. Sorokina, Operacija “Umelye ruki”, ili čto uvidel akademik Burdenko w Orle, in: In memoriam. Sbornik pamjati Vladimira Alloja. St. Petersburg / Paris 2005, pp. 361–389.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical information, unless otherwise stated, according to M. Ju. Sorokina, Operacija “Umelye ruki”, ili čto uvidel akademik Burdenko w Orle , in: In memoriam. Sbornik pamjati Vladimira Alloja. St. Petersburg / Paris 2005, p. 370.
  2. ↑ Bol'šaja medicinskaja enciklopedija - Prozorovskij, Viktor Il'ič
  3. ↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 268.
  4. ↑ Natalia S. Lebiediewa, Komisja Specjalna i jej przewodniczący Burdenko, in: Zeszyty Katyńskie , 23 (2008), p. 71.
  5. ↑ Jerome Davis: Behind Soviet Power , West Haven, Conn. 1949, p. 99.
  6. ↑ Homer Smith: Black Man in Red Russia. A memoir. New York 1964, p. 162.
  7. ↑ WH Lawrence: Soviet Blames Foe in Killing of Poles in: New York Times , January 27, 1944 p. 3
  8. ↑ Korespondencje for Katynia. Historia wojenna wyborcza.pl , June 20, 2016.
  9. ↑ Bol'šaja medicinskaja enciklopedija - Prozorovskij, Viktor Il'i č
  10. ↑ Claudia Weber: War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, pp. 349-350.
  11. ^ The Butler Memorandum pp. 32-33.
  12. ↑ Andrzej Przewoźnik / Jolanta Adamska: Katyń. Zbrodnia prawda pamięć. Warsaw 2010, p. 395.
  13. ↑ Kwalifikacja prawna zbrodni katyńskiej. Orzeczenie Komisji Ekspertów (fragmenty), in: Zeszty Katynskie , 20 (2005), p. 181.
personal data
SURNAME Prosorovsky, Viktor Ilyich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Прозоровский, Виктор Ильич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet Russian coroner
DATE OF BIRTH 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 1986
Place of death Moscow , Soviet Union