Holocaust Irrationality Katyn Also Irrational Swianiewicz

In the Shadow of Katyn: Stalin’s Terror, by Stanislaw Swianiewicz. 2002

The Irrationality of the Katyn Genocidal Crime. Not Only the Jews’ Holocaust Was “Irrational”. Katyn-area Locals: “FORGIVE US, POLES!”

This book, originally published in Polish (1976), and made available to Poland (1990), was eventually translated into Russian and now English. Swianiewicz, a long-lived (1899-1997) Pole of Scottish descent, and dabbler in freemasonry (p. 199), was a Polish POW at Kozielsk. He was among the 3% of Kozielsk inmates not murdered at Katyn (p. 66), possibly because he was of use as a Sovietologist. (p. xv; see also p. 122).

The author provides some unique ideas about the events leading up to and including the 1939 war. While in Soviet captivity, he met with semi-prominent people who would later become better known in the Communist world. This book is more about Russian thinking, and the workings of the Soviet system, before and during WWII, than it is about Katyn.

RUSSIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AN AGGRESSIVE, DESPOTIC POWER

Swianiewicz suggests that Russian aggression long predated the satisfaction of Communist ideology. He comments: “The motto to absorb and destroy is imbued into the Russian thought. Pushkin wrote that all Slavic streams must dissolve into the Russian Sea…The first historical occurrence, known to me, of those cruel, destructive tendencies was in the 15th century by Ivan III. The rich Republic of Novgorod, a member of the Hanseatic League, was destroyed, and the surviving population deported to the Volga region.” (p. 136).

THE UNFOLDING KATYN CRIME

The document that contains Stalin’s chilling orders to murder the Polish officers and intellectuals is printed out in full. It is complete with a side-by-side English-language translation. (pp. 80-83).

After some of the Polish POWs and deportees were released by Stalin in the wake of the Nazi-attack-induced “amnesty”, Swianiewicz described his suspicions at Soviet evasiveness regarding the missing officers. He realized that, had the officers perished during an accident (say, mass drowning while crossing a lake), there would be no need for the authorities to cover it up. (p. 222). He finally realized the truth, while in Palestine, as a result of the fateful spring 1943 German broadcast. He commented: “Various circumstances of the liquidation of the Kozelsk (Kozielsk) camp which I could not understand then—extreme precautions in formulating the transports, the brutal behavior of the guards, the precise orders from the central authorities in Moscow on who was going to be in each transport, and then, in 1941, the refusal to give General Sikorski any data as to the direction of those transports—became all too clear now.” (p. 222).

NOT ONLY THE JEWS’ HOLOCAUST WAS, IN SOME WAY, IRRATIONAL

Holocaust-uniqueness proponents have argued that the genocides of non-Jews all had rational motives, while that of the Jews had none. This argument is dubious at multiple levels. Still less does it justify the preeminence of the Holocaust over the genocides of all other peoples.

Interestingly, Swianiewicz sees the Katyn massacre as an irrational act also. He writes: “The productive potential of the Polish officers’ camps was very large, thanks to the great number of specialists: engineers, technicians, agronomists, doctors and veterinarians. In Kozelsk (Kozielsk) alone, there were about three hundred doctors. All the time, during my stay in the camps, I thought that this potential was somewhere and in some way exploited by the Soviets. However, the NKVD preferred to destroy this potential, instead of using it in some economical, rational way. Those who were ruling Stalinist Russia considered other factors more important than economic effectiveness…” (p. 132).

DECADES-LATER ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH

The book jumps 30 years forward, into the 1970’s. Important works on Katyn are mentioned. Just before Swianiewicz was about to testify before a British panel in 1975 on Katyn, he was “mysteriously” attacked by goons and savagely beaten. (p. xv).

“FORGIVE US, POLES!”

The book ends with the reproduction of a pamphlet distributed in September 2000 during the consecration of the cemetery at Mednoye. (p. 259). It says: “Forgive us, Poles!” Would that all the peoples that have wronged Poland (yes, including the Jews) had that attitude!