Katyn Forest Massacre: Photos of the sites

This section contains an explanation of the photos used in the rest of this site, and includes some others of the Ymok grave site and the NKVD building in Tver.

I took these photos myself, and I assert the moral right to be recognised as the photographer and the owner of these images in any form. If you wish to use these photos for non-commercial purposes I consent to such use as long as the source of the photo/s is clearly acknowledged in the same publication as the photo/s you wish to reproduce.

However, before we start down the page. These two photos are starting to spread around the web labelled as photos of "Katyn graves". I think they are probably Polish cemeteries near Warsaw. I have emailed the sites where I have seen them, but as yet had no reply. Can you identify them for me please?

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This photo, used at the top of the opening page, is of the road sign by the Katyn Forest grave site, on the road from Smolensk to Vitebsk. In Russian it says; "Memorial to the Polish officers who `perished` in Katyn".

Used at the top of my shorter article, "Separate memories, separate sorrows", this photo is of the memorial at the entrance to the Katyn site. Situated to the right of the path off the main road, it purports to commemorate the deaths at Nazi hands of Soviet personnel. My article explains why I disagree with this concept.

This photo of the Polish cross through the woods in winter, used at the opening of the longer article "Lost souls", is of the 1990's memorial site in Katyn Forest. It is not at the site of the original graves.

This photo, used at the top of the contacts page, is of the Russian Orthodox cross and memorial to Soviet/Russian dead situated at the entrance to the Katyn Forest site, across the path from the "memorial to the Russian POW's". Poles wanting to go to the Polish memorial site must pass between these two Soviet inspired sites.

There are many Russian dead, slaughtered in the region and buried by the various Soviet organs of suppression from the early 1920's until at least the late 1930's, who were buried in Katyn Forest. I just happen to think that further down the road towards Smolensk, perhaps by the gate to the NKVD dacha, which still sits by the Dnieper River at the Katyn site, would be a better place for the Soviet [and any new Russian] memorials to be sited. After all it was down that side road that so many went to their deaths or burials, including the Poles who were buried at the site in 1940.

This is a photo of the NKVD headquarters in Tver [Kallinin as is was then], north of Moscow, where the Polish officers buried near Ymok were slaughtered. There is a fairly full account in the London newspaper, "The Observer", 6 October 1991, by an eyewitness of this particular slaughter who was still alive in 1991.

This is a plaque stating that the building shown above was the NKVD building in the 1930/40's, and the second plaque states that this is where the Polish personnel were shot.

This is a photo of the burial site for the Polish personnel from the 1940 slaughter at Tver. Situated near the small village of Ymok, it is referred to locally as Mednoye Forest/Woods. The fence which you see in the photo does not extend to cover the sites of Polish dead which I saw marked out by tapes and excavations. Many of the Polish dead can reasonably be presumed to be still buried outside the fence of the memorial site.