‘Striking... Brought to life by the small, meticulous details, this immersive account of the Polish soldiers captured by the Soviets and how they were eventually led to their deaths is harrowing... Rogoyska’s empathy... permeates her book, ensuring that once read this story will not be easily forgotten.’
'If you don't understand Katyn you don't understand the Second World War, you don't understand Europe, you don't understand crime and you don't understand lies. And you can't understand Katyn without reading this brilliant book. It is, I'm afraid, as simple as that.'
Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein
‘[Rogoyska] vividly recreates the last months of the officers – artists, scientists, engineers and poets as well as career military men – who were initially held at three special camps run by the NKVD.’
‘A gripping reconstruction of one of the most gruesome and haunting crimes of the Second World War... makes for utterly compelling reading, and lays bare its toxic legacy.’
‘A history book that makes the blood run cold.’
'One Second World War crime to escape judgment at the Nuremberg Trials was the massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in western Russia at the early stage of the war. The judges failed because, on their panel, they had the representatives of the perpetrator: the Soviet Union.
the author of Chernobyl and Forgotten Bastards of Serhii Plokhy
‘Within a well researched, politically challenging , and emotionally disturbing text, the author unravels and provides substantive evidence for Soviet responsibility for the heinous war crime.’
‘Surviving Katyn is a pivotal contribution. Readers seeking to understand the plight of Poles during the Second World War, or come to terms with the duplicity and cruelty of Stalin and his NKVD, or submerge themselves in a rich and humane story of hope, suffering, and deceit, will find much of value in Surviving Katyn . With the empathy of a novelist and the precision of a historian, Rogoyska unfolds the story of Katyn.’
‘A well-researched and beautifully written narrative of the appalling fate of the Polish officers captured by the Soviets in 1939 and massacred in 1940. Through the testimony of the few survivors and the investigators, Rogoyska brings to life the suffering of the Poles which continued for decades after the war as Soviet culpability for the crime was denied across the world.’
‘Rogoyska’s study of men under extreme pressure draws out the nuances of these dilemmas, presenting us with ordinary people confronting their own doubts and fears.’
Times Literary Supplement
'If you don't understand Katyn you don't understand the second world war, you don't understand Europe, you don't understand crime and you don't understand lies. And you can't understand Katyn without reading this brilliant book. It is, I'm afraid, as simple as that.'
The Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein
One Second World War crime to escape judgment at the Nuremberg Trials was the massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in western Russia at the early stage of the war. The judges failed because, on their panel, they had the representatives of the perpetrator: the Soviet Union.
the author of Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Fr Serhii Plokhy
★ 2021-03-26
In the study of history, one of the hallmarks of the “great powers” is that the rules do not apply to them. Powerful empires—Roman, Ottoman, Soviet, etc.—create their own realities that may or may not coincide with one’s lived experience. After Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland, the Soviets decided it was in their best interest to annex a piece of the eastern half of that country. Consequently, it created a reality in which the extant Polish government was dissolved. According to their Orwellian logic, if there was no legitimate government to reckon with, they had free reign. Among their first acts was the capture of more than 22,000 Poles. These men would later be described as the elite of Polish society, including military officers but also aristocrats, artists, and indeed a “complete cross section” of Polish life. Elite or no, the prisoners were bombarded with torrents of authoritarian disinformation and propaganda. During April and May 1940, they were executed. When the Nazis discovered the bodies of those who had been trucked away and “liquidated,” they saw it as a propaganda coup. Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, offhandedly called the massacre a “mistake” and tried to pin the blame on the Germans. In a riveting narrative, Rogoyska brings the victims out of the shadows, telling their stories as well as those of the people desperately searching for them. Throughout, the author’s humanity is on full display. These are not just statistics or another item in the ledger of World War II atrocities, but flesh-and-blood individuals who were cut down for no reason and whose memory was lost in the fog of military, great-power history. Rogoyska is to be commended for resurrecting this heartbreaking tale.
A work of significant moral clarity and elegant precision.
