Katyn families want remains brought back to Poland
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
27.01.2012 14:54
Relatives of Polish officers murdered at Katyn in 1940 by the Soviet secret police (NKVD) have asked the Polish foreign ministry to request Russian authorites return their remains from Russia.
Witomiła Wolk-Jezierska, Wanda Rodowicz, Krystyna Krzyszkowiak, Stanislaw Drabczyński and several others want their relatives' remains returned from where they are buried at Katyn and Miednoje, in present-day Russia.
The daily Rzeczpospolita reports that they sent a letter to foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski to this effect at the end of December.
“I want finally to bury my father, lieutenant Wincent Wolk, in Poland. The state has an obligation to its own citizens and should help me,” Wolk-Jezierska told the daily.
She says it is known exactly where her father is buried, at so-called Mogile IV in Katyn, a fact that was established when the German first exhumed the mass graves in 1943.
The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) started its investigation in to the Katyn crimes in 2004. Prosecutor Malgorzata Kuzniar-Plota, undertaking the research for the IPN, says any decision on an exhumation will need to be taken by the Russian prosecutor.
"This is a sovereign decision of the Russian side,” she said, adding that an exhumation could only go ahead if the Russian side reopens the case, which was conducted between 1990 and 2004. (jh/nh)