The Origin of the Katyn Cemeteries

What is the purpose of a project dedicated to cemeteries? We visit memorial sites on anniversaries, out of a need of the heart or in accordance with tradition. Yet sometimes this is not enough. Since 1989, when the burial sites of the Katyn massacre victims were revealed, Rodziny Katyńskie (Katyn Families, families of the Katyn massacre victims) strived to build cemeteries. In the 1990s, at the request of the Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa (Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites), Polish teams of specialists undertook an immense task, locating the death pits and graves, which allowed them to designate future cemeteries. After developing the conceptual guidelines, an architectural project was selected in a competition. The final outcome is a result of families’ determination, whose expectations were represented by Federacja Rodzin Katyńskich (Federation of Katyn Families).

In 2000, when Polish War Cemeteries in Katyn and Mednoye, as well as the Cemetery of the Victims of Totalitarianism in Kharkiv, were established, a funeral finally took place – a moment the widows and children had been waiting for 60 years. The fourth cemetery, established in Bykivnia in 2012, ended decades of mourning for other families. Diplomatic talks gave some hope for the fifth cemetery in Kurapaty, near Minsk in Belarus.

Our loved ones were laid to rest in consecrated ground and were to rest in peace. Official ceremonies were held at Katyn cemeteries in Russia and Ukraine, with families and history enthusiasts attending. Unfortunately, the history has awakened once again, and in March 2022 a Russian missile struck the cemetery in Kharkiv. In the year marking the 85^th anniversary of the Katyn massacre Russian authorities desecrated the cemeteries in Mednoye (May 2025) and in Katyn (November 2025). The lie concerning the Katyn massacre is returning to the Russian Federation, and our cemeteries became the inconvenient witnesses to the truth.

The KATYN CEMETERIES project serves the aim of preserving the memory of these places:

TIMELINE – dates and selected documents, which describe the long process of establishing cemeteries, as well as their functioning during peacetime and the current threats posed by the war.
RECOLLECTIONS – moving testimonies from the members of the Katyn Families about their trips and commemoration ceremonies, as well as descriptions of changes in public consciousness and in the ways of preserving the memory.
GUIDES to the Katyn cemeteries, which became practically inaccessible since 2022 and are constantly threatened by Russian aggression in Ukraine and Russian propaganda concerning historical memory.
ARTEFACTS, MEMENTOS, ARCHIVES – examples of documents obtained from private collections and stored in specialized archives.

Text prepared by Izabella Sariusz-Skąpska
Translated by Ilias Stanekzai