DIARY OF A MASSACRE

The personal and sometimes harrowing diaries written by Polish officers during the months before they were murdered in the Katyn Massacre have been published in English for the first time. The moving entries show how the victims were unaware of the grisly fate that awaited them, and reveal their everyday lives in the Soviet camps, their thoughts, plans and dreams.

The Katyn Massacre was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia that was carried out by the Soviet Union’s secret police, the NKVD, in April and May 1940. This was following the Soviet Union’s surprise attack on Poland on 17 September 1939 – after which Germany and Soviet Russia had carved up the country between them.

Poland’s conscription system required every non-exempt university graduate to become a military reserve officer, so following the invasion the NKVD was able to round up a large number of the Polish educated class as prisoners of war. Over 200,000 people were taken into Soviet captivity as POWs; most privates were released after a relatively short time, with some being sent to labour camps, but officers were held