Poland during World War II

Hoover oral histories and newly declassified documents revive interest in Katyn Massacre

On March 5, 1940, the Soviet Communist Party Politburo ordered the execution of thousands of Polish military officers, government officials, and prominent civilians who had been arrested and imprisoned after the Nazi-Soviet attack on Poland in September 1939. The mass shootings of some twenty-two thousand people, some of them carried out in the spring of 1940 in the Katyn forest near the Russian city of Smolensk, are remembered as the Katyn Forest Massacre.

Wojtek, the Bear of Monte Cassino

The Hoover Institution Archives has acquired the wartime memoirs of Stanislaw Kroczak, an officer with the Twenty-Second Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps. In his memoirs Kroczak recalls his childhood in a village south of the city of Lwow (now Lviv), his fight against invading German and Soviet forces in September 1939, and his subsequent imprisonment and hard labor in the north of Russia. One charming part of the memoir concerns one of the best-known and celebrated animal mascots of the war, Wojtek the bear.

Touring Exhibition “Katyn: Politics, Massacre, Morality” Open to the Public at the Hoover Institution through January 29, 2011

The Hoover Institution Library and Archives announce the opening of touring exhibit “Katyn: Politics, Massacre, Morality.” The exhibition, produced by Poland’s Council for the Protection of the Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, has been on display throughout Europe and the United States for the past six months.

Longtime Ties with Poland Refreshed as Copies of World War II Documents are Repatriated

Hoover Archives and the Katyn “Smoking Gun”

Since the Russian Archival Service posted, on direct orders from President Dmitry Medvedev, proof that Joseph Stalin and his Politburo had ordered the Katyn massacre of Polish officers and officials on March 5, 1940, the Russian Archival Service’s website has received a steady stream of curious visitors.