Poland launches contest for school students to “promote truth” about Soviet massacre

Poland has launched a contest for school students to commemorate the Katyn massacre – in which over 20,000 Poles were killed by the Soviet secret police – through art, songs and short stories.

“Memory of…[this] premeditated genocide…is a duty from which no one can ever release us,” said Elżbieta Witek, the speaker of parliament, launching the event.

“Hence the need to hold the Katyn competition, which is a way to promote the truth about the crime, but also to pay tribute to the murdered,” she added.

This year sees the third instalment of the contest, entitled “The Polish heart broke: Katyn 1940”. It is organised by the ministries of culture, defence, the interior and education, as well as President Andrzej Duda, public broadcasters TVP and Polskie Radio, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), and the Sejm.

Entry is open to secondary-school students aged 15 to 21 in three categories: art, literature (essays, short stories, interviews or plays) and song lyrics. University students aged up to 26 can also submit lesson plans relating to Katyn. Winners receive a laptop, with tablets and e-book readers for second and third place.

The first edition of the contest, in 2020, saw 700 submissions, while last year that rose to almost 4,000.

“The huge interest in the subject of Katyn – the history of the crime and the silence – encouraged us to continue this event,” said Witek. “I am sure the submitted works will provide us with new, moving testimonies of the courage in proclaiming the truth and patriotism of the young generation of Poles.”

In 1940, around 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia, who had been taken prisoner following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, were murdered in mass extrajudicial executions. The plan had been proposed by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the secret police, and approved by Joseph Stalin.

When the mass graves were discovered in 1943 by Nazi Germany, the Soviets rejected demands for an international investigation and blamed the Germans for the crime. That remained their official position until 1990, when Moscow finally acknowledged responsibility for the massacres.

However, revisionism about Katyn – like other Soviet crimes – has remained strong in Russia, and has often received endorsement from the authorities. In 2020, a plaque commemorating the site of thousands of the Katyn killings was removed, after local prosecutors argued that it “does not reflect the truth”.

The winning entries in last year’s Katyn contest included song lyrics by Kamila Jedynak, a high-school student from Częstochowa, that read:

When I was saying goodbye, you said “I’ll return” –

Holding my picture to your chest.

“Honour, Fatherland – an important matter”

And let me not cry anymore (…)

In the literature category, the winning entry, from Ilona Woś in Leżajsk, included the fragment:

(…) Various thoughts and feelings were rattling in our heads; no one knew where we were going, but we all sensed that we had only bought a one-way ticket…to an early end (…)

The top entries in the art category are shown below, including a faded image of the word “Katyn” with a caption beneath saying: “They wanted to erase it from memory.”

Main image credit: Ministerstwo Edukacji i Nauki (under CC BY 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.