Stručni rad
REACTIONS TO THE KATYN MASSACRE IN THE CROATIAN PRESS BETWEEN APRIL AND JUNE OF 1943
Mario Jareb
; Hrvatski institut za povijest, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
The author deals with articles published in the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) from April to June, 1943, regarding the Katyn massacre. In April, 1943 German military authorities discovered the remains of approximately 12,000 Polish army officers and NCO's, killed by the secret Soviet police (NKVD) in spring 1940, and buried in mass graves in Katyn, a small town in Western Russia.
Immediately after the of discovery of the mass graves, German media announced their existence. They also brought a Commission of Experts from different European countries to Katyn to investigate the case and to present their results to the European public, hoping that these results would help them in their war effort against the Soviets and Allies. As a member of the Commission of Experts, Dr. Eduard Miloslavić of the Zagreb Faculty of Medicine visited Katyn and took part in the investigation. After his return to Zagreb he informed the Croatian public at his impressions and the results of the investigation.
He published several articles about Katyn, in which he wrote as an expert in the field of pathology, avoiding a propagandistic approach in expressing his opinion.
Owing to the fact that Soviet communist authorities were responsible for the crime in Katyn, the ISC press started to use the Katyn case in propaganda directed against its wartime and political enemies. It is possible to find several elements of propaganda in these articles. Primarily, they were against communism as an ideology and against the USSR as a communist state, which was trying to conquer Poland. Poland became synonymous with the small European nation whose fate, in the case of a Soviet and Allied victory, would be identical to the fate of the Katyn victims.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
214409
URI
Datum izdavanja:
5.5.1998.
Posjeta: 1.143 *