Poland's Katyn victims to be remembered in Estonia

TALLINN (BNS) - The Polish embassy in Estonia organized a ceremony in Tallinn on April 13 in the memory of Polish officers murdered by Soviets near Smolensk 60 years ago.

The ceremony in Tallinn's Siselinna Cemetery featured wreaths laid at a memorial to Katyn victims by representatives of the Polish Foreign Ministry, the Estonian parliament and defense forces, the General Johann Laidoner Society, Estonia's Polish community, the Estonian-Polish Society and the Polish Embassy in Tallinn.

In April and May 1940, the Soviet NKVD security police shot in the woods at Katyn, near Smolensk, nearly 4,400 Polish officers held by the Soviets as prisoners of war. At the same time, mass killings of imprisoned Polish officers occurred near Kharkiv and Tver. In 1940, the Soviet Union murdered a total of 22,000 officers of the Polish armed forces and police, second secretary of the Polish Embassy Ewa Dziedzic said. Dziedzic said it was only in 1990 that the Soviet government first admitted NKVD's responsibility for the mass killing of Polish military, policemen and public servants.