The Katyń Memorial is quite possibly the most graphic memorial in all of downtown. It’s dedicated to the victims of the Katyń Massacre of 1940. The bronze statue depicts a bound and gagged soldier impaled in the back by a bayoneted rifle. The inscription reads:
“On the seventeenth of September 1939 the Polish Army, engaged in fierce combat against the Germans, was attacked from the rear by the Soviet Army. In conspiracy with Hitler (The Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact) Stalin seized forty-seven percent of Polish land and annexed it to Soviet Russia. Two million Polish citizens including children, women, and senior citizens perished en route to Siberia and at torturous work in Soviet labor camps. From 1944 to 1956, thousands of Polish patriots — soldiers of the underground armies of the A.K., NOW, NSZ, and WIN — were heinously murdered by the Soviet Secret Police (the NKVD). This monument is dedicated to the millions of Polish citizens and heroes who offered their lives in the fight against communism for our and your freedom. Let them have honor and glory for all time.”
