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Title details for Surviving Katyn by Jane Rogoyska - Wait list

Surviving Katyn

Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth

by Jane Rogoyska
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WINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE

'A gripping reconstruction... utterly compelling reading.' Adam Zamoyski

'This is a grim story, thoroughly researched and brilliantly told.' Geoffrey Alderman, Times Higher Education

The Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war is a crime to which there are no witnesses.

Committed in utmost secrecy in April–May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake – the few survivors of the massacre and the Polish wartime forensic investigators – whose quest for the truth in the face of an inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ruthless enemy came at great personal cost.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 6, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781786078933

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781786078933
      • File size: 5707 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from April 15, 2021
      The Katyń Massacre was the opening salvo to a war defined by unimaginable horrors. Here, its story is told clearly and passionately with allegiance only to the truth. In the study of history, one of the hallmarks of the "great powers" is that the rules do not apply to them. Powerful empires--Roman, Ottoman, Soviet, etc.--create their own realities that may or may not coincide with one's lived experience. After Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, the Soviets decided it was in their best interest to annex a piece of the eastern half of that country. Consequently, it created a reality in which the extant Polish government was dissolved. According to their Orwellian logic, if there was no legitimate government to reckon with, they had free reign. Among their first acts was the capture of more than 22,000 Poles. These men would later be described as the elite of Polish society, including military officers but also aristocrats, artists, and indeed a "complete cross section" of Polish life. Elite or no, the prisoners were bombarded with torrents of authoritarian disinformation and propaganda. During April and May 1940, they were executed. When the Nazis discovered the bodies of those who had been trucked away and "liquidated," they saw it as a propaganda coup. Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's secret police chief, offhandedly called the massacre a "mistake" and tried to pin the blame on the Germans. In a riveting narrative, Rogoyska brings the victims out of the shadows, telling their stories as well as those of the people desperately searching for them. Throughout, the author's humanity is on full display. These are not just statistics or another item in the ledger of World War II atrocities, but flesh-and-blood individuals who were cut down for no reason and whose memory was lost in the fog of military, great-power history. Rogoyska is to be commended for resurrecting this heartbreaking tale. A work of significant moral clarity and elegant precision.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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