[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 67 (Thursday, May 25, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Page S4489]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 118--COMMEMORATING THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF 
THE EXECUTION OF POLISH CAPTIVES BY SOVIET AUTHORITIES IN APRIL AND MAY 
                                  1940

  Mr. HELMS (for himself, Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Roth, and Mr. Biden) 
submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to 
the committee on Foreign Relations:

                            S. Con. Res. 118

       Whereas 60 years ago, between April 3 and the end of May 
     1940, more than 22,000 Polish military officers, police 
     officers, judges, other government officials, and civilians 
     were executed by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD;
       Whereas Joseph Stalin and other leaders of the Soviet 
     Union, following meeting of the Soviet Politburo on March 5, 
     1940, signed the decision to execute these Polish captives;
       Whereas 14,537 of these Polish victims have been documented 
     at 3 sites, 4,406 in Katyn (now in Belarus), 6,311 in 
     Miednoye (now in Russia), and 3,820 in Kharkiv (now in 
     Ukraine);
       Whereas the fate of approximately 7,000 other victims 
     remains unknown and their graves together with the graves of 
     other victims of communism, are scattered around the 
     territory of the former Soviet Union and are now impossible 
     to locate precisely;
       Whereas on April 13, 1943, the German army announced the 
     discovery of the massive graves in the Katyn Forest, when 
     that area was under Nazi occupation;
       Whereas on April 15, 1943, the Soviet Information Bureau 
     disavowed the executions and attempted to cover up the Soviet 
     Union's responsibility for these executions by declaring that 
     these Polish captives had been engaged in construction work 
     west of Smolensk and had fallen into the hands of the 
     Germans, who executed them;
       Whereas on April 28-30, 1943, an international commission 
     of 12 medical experts visited Katyn at the invitation of the 
     German government and later reported unanimously that the 
     Polish officers had been shot three years earlier when the 
     Smolensk area was under Soviet administration;
       Whereas until 1990 the Government of the Soviet Union 
     denied any responsibility for the massacres and claimed to 
     possess no information about the fate of the missing Polish 
     victims;
       Whereas on April 13, 1990, Soviet President Mikhail 
     Gorbachev acknowledged the Soviet responsibility for the 
     Katyn executions;
       Whereas this admission confirmed the 1951-52 extensive 
     investigation by the United States House of Representatives 
     Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the 
     Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest 
     Massacre and its Final Report (pursuant to House Resolution 
     H.R. 390 and H.R. 539, 82d Congress);
       Whereas that committee's final report of December 22, 1952, 
     unanimously concluded that ``beyond any question of 
     reasonable doubt, that the Soviet NKVD (People's Commissariat 
     of Internal Affairs) committed the mass murders of the Polish 
     officers and intellectual leaders in the Katyn Forest near 
     Smolensk'' and that the Soviet Union ``is directly 
     responsible for the Katyn massacre''; and
       Whereas that report also concluded that ``approximately 
     15,000 Polish prisoners were interned in three Soviet camps: 
     Kozielsk, Starobielsk, and Ostashkov in the winter of 1939-
     40'' and, ``with the exception of 400 prisoners, these men 
     have not been heard from, seen, or found since the spring of 
     1940'': Now, therefore, be it
         Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives 
     concurring), That Congress hereby--
       (1) remembers and honors those Polish officers, government 
     officials, and civilians who were murdered in April and May 
     1940 by the NKVD;
       (2) recognizes all those scholars, researchers, and writers 
     from Poland, Russia, the United States and, elsewhere and, 
     particularly, those who worked under Soviet and communist 
     domination and who had the courage to tell the truth about 
     the crimes committed at Katyn, Miednoye, and Kharkiv; and
       (3) urges all people to remember and honor these and other 
     victims of communism so that such crimes will never be 
     repeated.

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