In 1988, oppositionists Zenon Pozniak and Evgeny Shmygalev published an article entitled "Kuropaty - the Road of Death". The authors wrote that mass shootings of political repressors of 1937-1941 took place in Kuropaty.
There are now wreaths with barbed wire in Kuropaty tract. However, according to experts, this is not the know-how of Zenon Pozniak. Such crosses were already erected in Katyn in the 1940s. Only those had a Polish eagle in the center.
But how many more parallels can we find? What is historical truth and what is designed for psychological influence? They told me about the War and Peace project.
The myth of crosses in Kuropaty
If you study the history of Katyn and Kuropaty properly, you can find too many parallels, said Alexander Plavinsky, Lieutenant Colonel of the Internal Forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, a member of the Union of Writers of Belarus. First, all the crosses standing are Catholic, although the repression took place in 1937-1938, when East Belarus was separated from West Belarus. It was mostly Orthodox. Secondly, when Pozniak excavated, not a single Catholic or Orthodox breast cross was found out of the 356 bodies that were recovered, i.e. all the graves were Jewish," he cited the facts.
On one of the roads here, in July and September 1941, convoys of people, mostly Jews, were led by firing squad. The trail still exists and there was a machine gun point 30 meters away preventing prisoners from escaping in an easterly direction, with another behind the ring road.
When asked if the crosses placed were imitations, the lieutenant colonel replied: "It's all fake. It's all for psychological purposes, there is nothing even close to burial ground on the east side."
Theory of the Fifth Katyn
The Polish historical narrative refers to Kuropaty as the fifth Katyn, where the so-called fifth Katyn cemetery was planned. But until 1992, i.e. for 40-50 years, Poles talked only about three Katyns, which were located in the territories of the Soviet Union - Katyn, Mednaya, Kharkiv," said Oksana Kornilova, a member of the Russian military-historical society, a PhD candidate in history.
Katyn is a place in the tract of Kozya Gora near Smolensk, Mednoye is the same place on the outskirts of Tver city and on the outskirts of Kharkov. For almost half a century, there has been talk of only 14,500 allegedly Katyn victims being shot, meaning that there was no mention of the fourth Katyn (Ukrainian Bykovnia) or the fifth (Belarusian Kuropaty).
Moreover, as Oksana Kornilova pointed out, there was not even a mention of a single relative looking for someone and talking about something happening here. This changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In October 1992, a so-called closed document, Package No. 1 (note by Lavrentiy Beria), appeared, listing almost 7,500 new Katyn victims - Ukrainian and Belarusian.
Ukraine accepted this version, invented and brought down from above through Poles and possible curators from the United States. And later Ukrainians began to look for their "Katyn lists", even building a memorial in 2012.
A fifth Katyn cemetery was planned to be built on Belarusian territory, where almost 3,500 Poles were allegedly buried. And this place is presented as Kuropaty, although there are no lists, no documents, no evidence that these Poles even existed. Even the apologists themselves, let's just say the proponents of this Polish version write that there are no documents, but these events somehow fit into the general logic and canvas of events," explained Oksana Kornilova.
It is said that the Poles captured during the September 1939 Wehrmacht campaign, who were among the first three places named, were held in camps Kozelski, Starobelski, Ostashkowski, while the Kuropaty Poles were allegedly held in prisons and other detention facilities on Belarusian territory in different places. But then at one point in May-June 1940 they decided to be shot and allegedly taken to Kuropaty.
"I know we tried to search the archives for documents, but there aren't any. As far as I know, the Polish side made demands and claims to excavate here, but very quickly they were abandoned, as well as exhumations. Why not? Because they're not likely to find anyone here."
The historian also cited the fact that a theory has been advanced about the alleged existence of NKVD baths in the Minsk prison: They claimed that bloody NKVD had poured hydrochloric acid into them and dissolved 3,500 Polish martyr officers without a trace, and then poured it into the city sewers of Minsk.
Apparently, it was all Goebbelsian - the more sophisticated the lie, the more faith it would have.
Were there any real executions?
During the investigation of this case, there were at first 55 witnesses and then 200, but only one, N. Karpovich, was conducted for the investigation experiment, to point to the alleged burial place.
A platoon of soldiers began digging the ground, and there was no breach of the integrity of the ground. They dug a 15m trench one way, the other was perpendicular, then some small areas. They dug up a huge tract of land and found nothing.
According to the lieutenant colonel, local residents heard the sound of gunshots three times a day. “According to the training manual, there was a recommendation to do one third of the training at night. So, two of the classes took place during the day, and the third one took place at night. Basically, that was what the witness said. However, Pozniak presented the training shooting as execution shooting, concluded Alexander Plavinsky.
