Overview

Katyń. The name of this town was banned during the communist era in Poland. It appeared as an entry in only one edition of the PWN encyclopedia from 1958, where the Germans were blamed for the crimes. When, in 1989, one of the periodicals placed this word on the cover of its April issue in the context of National Remembrance Month, the publication provoked deep and loud outrage from Wiesław Górnicki, a publicist and official advisor to General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The name Katyń had been ruthlessly and consistently erased from the national memory.