Katyn is the name of both a village and a forest near Smolensk, Russia. A village is a human settlement commonly found in rural areas. ... A dense growth of softwoods (a forest) in the Sierra Nevada Range of Northern California A forest is an area with a high density of trees (or, historically, a wooded area set aside for hunting). ... A view of Smolensk in 1912 Smolensk (Russian: ) is a city in western Russia, located on the Dnieper River at 54. ...

Katyn Forest in the Soviet Union became known as a massacre site when, in April 1943, the Nazis announced the discovery of mass graves of 24,000+ Polish officer POWs who had been executed there in April and May 1940. Most were captured following the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland in September 1939. Altogether, about 27,000 Polish citizens, many of them priests and intellectuals, were executed by the Soviet NKVD in what later became known as the Katyn massacre. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow maintained that the Poles had been murdered by Nazis and strictly forbade all mention of the massacre. Look up April in Wiktionary, the free dictionary April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) is a common year starting on Friday. ... In military organizations, an officer is a member of the service who holds a position of responsibility. ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ... Look up April in Wiktionary, the free dictionary April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... This article is about the month of May. ... 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Black Ravens by Boris Vladimirski, a depiction of the cars used by NKVD agents. ... The Katyń massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest Massacre, was the mass execution of Polish citizens (mostly military officers POWs) by the Soviet Union during World War II. // Background Initially the expression referred to the massacre of the Polish military officers confined at the Kozielsk Prisoner of War (POW...

A number of earlier mass graves of victims of the Soviet system have also been found there, as Katyn Forest had long been used as an execution site for Soviet citizens.

See also

• Katyn Massacre
• List of Polish Martyrdom sites