Lent. PP Paweł RYBARCZYK, brother of Mikołaj and Cecylia, born June 24, 1894 in Gulcz. In 1928 he served at Post. Michałowo-Białystok. In September 1939 in the Second Commission. city of Poznań.

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Post. PP Paweł RYBARCZYK s. Mikołaja i Cecylii, ur. 24 VI 1894 w m. Gulcz. W 1928 służbę pełnił na Post. Michałowo-Białystok. We wrześniu 1939 w II Komis. m. Poznania.

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BACKGROUND

They are comrades, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins and friends who's lives were taken by a war crime.

This Prisoner of War (POW) physical remains were placed in a mass unmarked grave and is known only to God.

On September 1, 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland from the north, west and south and seventeen days later the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east, partitioning Poland in two - the result of a secret pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop) signed on August 23, 1939 between Germany and Russia. Their objective was to eliminate the Polish state, beginning with its leaders, military and intelligentsia.

In March of 1940, upon the recommendations of the NKVD Chief, Lavrenti Beria, Stalin decreed the execution of thousands of Poles.

Polish prisoners were organized into "selections" or groups and were executed at various locations including at Katyn. One of the locations was at the NKVD headquarters in Kalinin, Russia (Tver). NKVD spared the lives of 395 Polish prisoners, although no mention has been made of their names other than that of Stanislaw Swianiewicz and Jozef Czapski, both of whom were transported first to camp Yukhnov and then to Gryazovets.

Included amongst those buried during the 1940 Katyn Massacre there are 2,000 Polish police, 300 Polish border guards, 200 Polish prison guards, military police and officers, 200 Polish civilians including priests, rabbis and protestant ministers, lawyers, businessmen, landowners, professors, public officials and members of the courts.

1. Polish prisoners from Kozelsk camp were transported to Smolensk and executed in Katyn Forest. No fewer than than 4,410 prisoners were murdered.

2. Polish prisoners from Starobelsk camp were transported to Kharkov and were taken to the basement of an NKVD prison where they were executed by shots below the back of the head. Their bodies were buried in mass graves on the grounds of the NKVD sanatorium (region 6 of forest-park zone) approximately 1.5 kilometers from the village of Pyatikhatka (near Kharkov). No fewer than 3,739 prisoners were executed there.

3. Polish prisoners from Ostashov camp were taken to the NKVD prison in Kalinin, where they were killed by a shot at the back of the head. No fewer than 6,314 prisoners were murdered.

After each execution, the NKVD agents or guards would then drag the bodies of the Polish soldiers from the room and hose down the floor of all the blood. This scene was repeated continuously throughout the night until just before dawn the next day. The corpses were taken through the back door of the execution room and loaded onto covered flat-bed trucks. Twice each night these trucks drove to Mednoye where the bodies were dumped into large trenches that had been prepared in advance. Blokhin made arrangements for a bulldozer to be sent to the site with two drivers who dug up at least 24 trenches measuring a total of eight to ten meters.

Thousands more Polish prisoners were executed in Katyn forest. They had been told that they were being repatriated to Poland. The first group boarded a train, but strangely it was not travelling east but rather westward. Trains arrived at Gniezdowo station about 18 kilometers from Smolensk, others reached Smolensk, just outside of Katyn forest. From there the Polish prisoners were herded into black vans, with the windows blurred, and driven to a clearing in the woods. When they stepped out of the van, NKVD agents forced them to kneel at the edge of a huge pit. Their hands were tied behind their backs with rope or wire, and a choke knot tied around their necks and hands to prevent them from struggling. They were surrounded by dozens of NKVD agents, who systematically shot each Polish man at the back of the head, and dumping their bodies into the open pit. These massacres went on continuously throughout several weeks. By mid-May over 4,500 Polish officers had been executed and buried in eight large mass graves, the largest one containing 12 layers of corpses.

From 1941 to 1944, the Luftwaffe flew 17 sorties in the Smolensk area, some of which included the Katyn Forest. There, recorded on film, were "snapshots" of the area taken before, during, and after the German occupation. In one series of photographs taken in April 1944, discovered by Poirer and reexamined by Maliszewski, the German cameras caught the Soviets removing bodies from mass graves and bulldozing the ground to cover up evidence of the crime. Maliszewski later found more burial sites using US intelligence satellite imagery and up-to-date maps based on satellite imagery that were provided through the good offices of Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Carter, who was sympathetic to the 'Studies In Intelligence' project.

The government of Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in April 1943.[5] Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. After the Vistula–Oder offensive where the mass graves fell into Soviet control, the Soviet Union claimed the Nazis had killed the victims, and it continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the killings by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up by the Soviet government.

An investigation conducted by the office of the prosecutors general of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004) confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres, but refused to classify this action as a war crime or as an act of mass murder.

21,857 Polish internees and prisoners were executed after 3 April 1940: 14,552 prisoners of war (most or all of them from the three camps) and 7,305 prisoners in western parts of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs. Of them 4,421 were from Kozelsk, 3,820 from Starobelsk, 6,311 from Ostashkov, and 7,305 from Byelorussian and Ukrainian prisons.

Those who died at Katyn included soldiers (an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 85 privates, 3,420 non-commissioned officers, and seven chaplains), 200 pilots, government representatives and royalty (a prince, 43 officials), and civilians (three landowners, 131 refugees, 20 university professors, 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists). In all, the NKVD executed almost half the Polish officer corps. Altogether, during the massacre, the NKVD executed 14 Polish generals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

https://polishgreatness.blogspot.com/2012/04/katyn-massacre-soviet-nkvd-killing.html?m=1

Victims by name: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Victims_of_Katyn_massacre_by_name