Katyn, a movie about the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in WWII, is coming out in European cinemas this summer, it seems. Hopefully it comes to Canada too.
The Soviet Union was certainly evil and one its worst moments was Katyn, the massacre of 12,000 Polish officers, policemen and intellectuals in April 1940. The Nazis discovered the bodies in 1943 but for some reason no one believed them when they said they hadn’t done it this time. Our Russians maintained this lie and the West went along with it, as we went along with Stalin’s vicious colonisation of our ally. The massacre, and the subsequent battle for the truth, is the subject of an overwhelming new Polish film, Katyn.
Sometimes people ask me what the link to abortion is in particular posts. I always highlight there need not be one. (We started this thing with the notion that we would blog about whatever struck our fancy.)
So. Blogging about this strikes my fancy for reasons of my interests in history and my family history too. However, it also pertains to a theme that comes up often enough on this blog: that we live in a world where certain truths are ignored, and people go to great lengths to look away.
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Rebecca adds: “However, it also pertains to a theme that comes up often enough on this blog: that we live in a world where certain truths are ignored, and people go to great lengths to look away.” … and also that we are all too willing to believe a lie, and to avoid examining it closely, when it confirms our assumptions and worldview. An alliance with the USSR to stop Germany was in my opinion necessary; had the Germans been able to dedicate all their resources to Jew-killing and conquering western Europe, they might well have succeeded, and the military accomplishments, personal and collective, of the Soviets on the eastern front are not nearly as well known as they ought to be. The fact that the USSR was a necessary ally at that point, though, does not excuse us from criticizing their tremendous shortcomings at the time, and still less from turning a blind eye to the horrors committed by the Soviets and their fellow travellers then and now.
by 
Unfortunately, the Soviet destruction of Poland is an oft-verlooked aspect of WWII in history discussions. My grandfather fought in the Polish army while his wife, baby and toddler (my father) were sent to the gulag in Siberia when the Soviet troops cleared out their village. My father was the only one to survive. Turning a blind eye to history does not erase that history, just as turning a blind eye to the present evils around us (abortion, euthanasia) does nothing to erase those realities.