Jaruzelski Pays Tribute to Slain Poles at Katyn

Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski went to the Katyn Forest on Saturday and paid tribute to the thousands of Polish army officers killed and buried there by the Soviet Union’s secret police during World War II.

His visit came one day after the Soviet government reversed nearly 50 years of official denial and admitted committing the massacre. The Soviet Union had long blamed Nazi Germany.

“The truth was said about Katyn, and the truth is healing the wounds,” Jaruzelski said in Russian, his voice soft and wavering with emotion.

“Now it will be easier for us to understand each other,” he told Soviet reporters. The Katyn massacre has long been a strain on relations between the Soviet Union and Poland.

Jaruzelski was accompanied by an honor guard of the Polish army at the memorial site in the forest near the western town of Smolensk as he honored the more than 4,000 officers killed in 1940 by Stalin’s secret police, the Polish PAP news agency reported.

A “roll call of the dead” was intoned--a ceremony in which the names of victims were read, PAP said.

In footage broadcast on Soviet TV’s evening newscast “Vremya,” Jaruzelski, wearing a green army overcoat, green scarf and military cap, stood ramrod straight as two soldiers carried a large wreath of red and white carnations and laid it in front of a memorial to the dead.

The monument reads in Russian: “To the Polish officers fallen in Katyn.”

Polish radio reported Saturday night that the wording on the monument was changed three days ago, removing the words that blamed Nazi Germany.

PAP added that Jaruzelski wrote in the visitor’s book:

“They fought for an independent Poland. They died innocently, far removed from their families and homeland. They were faithful to Poland and to military honor until they breathed their last. In tribute and in lasting memory to Polish officers, victims of the cruel Stalinist crime.”

Jaruzelski also went to the town of Lenino in the nearby republic of Byelorussia and laid wreaths on the graves of Soviet and Polish soldiers at a memorial there, the Soviet news agency Tass reported.

The Soviet Union on Friday admitted that the NKVD, Stalin’s feared secret police, was responsible for the murders 49 years ago of the Polish officers who had been captured at the start of World War II.