The Katyn Museum: The Martyrology Branch of the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw

This article presents an outline of the history of the Katyn massacre perpetrated by the Soviet Union on almost 22,000 Polish citizens in 1940, the attempts to search for the truth about the crime, and the process of the deconstruction of the Katyn lie from 1943; it will then move to a description of the history of its commemoration (including by independent organisations such as the Independent Historical Committee for the Investigation of the Katyn Crime [Niezależny Komitet Historyczny Badania Zbrodni Katyńskiej] and the Polish Katyn Foundation), and the documentation of the massacre at the Katyn Museum, the Martyrology Branch of the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw. Due to the complexity of this issue, the article has been divided chronologically into several chapters, starting with the signing of the German-Soviet Pact (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) in 1939; the circumstances of World War II leading to the Katyn massacre; how Katyn qualifies as a war crime; and the progression of the story up until modern times. Apart from the history of the crime itself, the authors also describe the discovery of the evidence and the process of creating the Katyn Museum in Warsaw, as well as its permanent exhibition and the most important collections. The article discusses the issues of historic military architecture which was incorporated into the Katyn Museum, creating a unique exhibition containing thousands of artefacts (Katyn relics) recovered from the death pits in Katyn (Russia), Kharkiv-Pyatikhatky (Ukraine), Kyiv-Bykivnya (Ukraine) and Tver-Mednoye (Russia).