76-04-B1
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Katyn Forest
TranscriptNot all memories are pleasant but we shouldn't put the unpleasant ones out of our mind, at least not all of them. I'll be right back. In a tiny cemetery in Gunnersbury England on September 18th, 7000 people from all over the world gathered for the unveiling of a monument. It's a 21-foot pyramid bearing the inscription "Katyn 1940" and a carved Polish eagle with a crown of barbed wire. Katyn is a name we should all remember. It's the name of a forest in Poland but the monument does not memorialize a place. It is dedicated to 14,500 Polish officers who served in the defense of Poland when the Nazis were invading from the west and the Russians from the east. The officers disappeared when the invading forces met and divided Poland. A few years later, a mass grave was found at the Katyn forest. It contained the bodies of 4500 of those Polish officers who had been executed and buried there. What of the other ten thousand? It's believed they were put on barges that were towed out into icy arctic waters and sunk, drowning all on board. For a time this massacre was thought to be just another Nazi atrocity, but with the Nuremberg Trials the truth has come out. The 14,500 officers had been captured by the Russians and murdered in 1940, the date now inscribed on the memorial. As a matter of fact the Germans had found the grave in 1943 in what had been Russian occupied territory following the partition of Poland. The 4500 had dug the grave and then, standing on the pit's edge had been machine gunned. The selection of Gunnersberry Cemetery is an interesting sidelight on relations between the free world and the Soviet Union. Maybe we need to be reminded there is still a Polish government in exile in London. In 1971, the movement to honor the murdered officers was started and because London is the home of that exiled polish government it was decided London should be the site of the memorial. Tthe British government was subjected to bitter and constant pressure from Moscow to prevent the raising of such a monument. Year after year, the British government blocked every location selected by the memorial commission. Finally in some way, the tiny obscure Gunnersberry Cemetery was found and ended up as the only possible location for the memorial. Lord Oswald, vice-chairman of the commission spoke at the dedication, but let it be known there was no official representative of the British government nor of the Church of England present. He declared, "intrinsic also and essential is the date 1940 ingraved upon the face, because that relates in stone another element of the truth which only the guilty, the ignorant and the ignoble still crave to deny." A member of parliament and former conservative cabinet minister Julian Amory made known that he had invited representatives of other countries in letters to 42 embassies. Only seven sent representatives to the little cemetery for the memorial ceremony and only one of the seven was a major power. There was Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Liberia, South Africa, Uruguay, and you'll be proud I'm sure to know the United States of America. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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