Poland Erects Monument to Slain Officers

The government has discreetly erected a 12-foot marble cross in memory of 4,000 army officers who died in a World War II massacre officially blamed on the Nazis but blamed by many Poles on Soviet troops, dissident sources said today.

The monument was erected in the Warsaw Powazki Cemetery and the unveiling ceremony took place in almost complete secrecy, apparently to avoid drawing crowds and attention to the event, the sources said.

Poles had gathered for years near the area where the monument was erected. The site had become a symbolic tomb for the Polish officers who were taken prisoner by Soviet troops in World War II and, according to witnesses, shot to death by Soviets in 1943 in the Katyn Forest in the Soviet Union.

A mass grave containing the bodies of the Polish officers was found years later. The Soviets and the Germans blamed each other for the executions.

The Polish government has blamed the Nazis for the massacre. In keeping with the official line, the inscription at the foot of the 12-foot-high marble cross reads: “To Polish soldiers, victims of the Hitlerite fascists who are buried in Katyn.”

One Pole who visited the cemetery, however, scoffed at the inscription blaming the massacre on the Germans.

“The monument met the demands of millions of Poles,” he said, “but not the inscription under it.”

In another development today, seven Polish dissidents began a hunger strike in Glogowiec, about 75 miles west of Warsaw, to protest the imprisonment of three officials of the outlawed Solidarity union as well as the government’s recent statements criticizing the Roman Catholic Church.

The statement released by the strikers called on Poles to start similar protests in other churches across the country.

“Our fast is a protest against the campaign of hatred led by the Polish authorities against the church and some clergymen,” said the statement distributed among Western news media.