Surviving Katyn: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth

Description: The Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war is a crime to which there are no witnesses
WINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE

Committed in utmost secrecy in April-May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake - the few survivors of the massacre and the Polish wartime forensic investigators - whose quest for the truth in the face of an inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ruthless enemy came at great personal cost.

'A gripping reconstruction... utterly compelling reading.' Adam Zamoyski

'Vividly recreates the last months of the officers - artists, scientists, engineers and poets as well as career military men - who were initially held at three special camps run by the NKVD.' The Sunday Times

'Riveting.' Serhii Plokhy

Brief description: Jane Rogoyska is the acclaimed author of Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa. She has a particular interest in the turbulent period from the 1930s to the Cold War in Europe. Her research into the Katyn Massacre led to her first novel, Kozlowski (long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize) and Still Here: A Polish Odyssey which she wrote and presented for BBC Radio 4.

Review Quotes: 'One Second World War crime to escape judgment at the Nuremberg Trials was the massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in western Russia at the early stage of the war. The judges failed because, on their panel, they had the representatives of the perpetrator: the Soviet Union.

Jane Rogoyska offers a riveting story of the crime, the cover-up and the search for the truth, which is far from over even today. In bringing the story of Katyn up to date, Rogoyska helps us understand not only the crimes of the past but also the political manipulations of the present.'-- "Serhii Plokhy, the author of Chernobyl and Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: An Untold Story"