Chicago Sun-Times Wed, 13 May 2009 08:25 AM PDT
In April of 1940, on orders from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, more than 4,000 Polish army officers were killed by the Soviet secret police and buried in a Katyn Forest mass grave. Their slaughter became known as the Katyn Forest Massacre. That same month, thousands of other Poles — officers and civilians — were exterminated in surrounding areas. The death toll reached nearly 22,000.