LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION memorializing Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to
proclaim April 23, 2011, as a Day of Remembrance for the Polish Martyrs
of the Katyn Forest

WHEREAS, In remembrance of the epoch of the disastrous Second World War,
which wreaked untold death and destruction across the continent of
Europe and throughout the world, among those who suffered most were the
people and land of Poland; and
WHEREAS, This Legislative Body is justly moved to call for the remem-
brance of over 4,000 Polish officers, teachers, professionals and intel-
lectuals, "The Flower of Poland," who were massacred in the Spring of
1940, by their World War II Soviet captors; and
WHEREAS, In 1943, German soldiers discovered a mass grave in the Katyn
Forest near Smolensk in western Russia; and
WHEREAS, Most of the victims in the Katyn Forest were Polish army
reservists -- lawyers, doctors, scientists and businessmen -- who were
called up to active service following the Nazi invasion of Poland in
1939; however, instead of fighting the Germans, approximately 15,000
Polish officers found themselves prisoners of the Red Army, which had
occupied eastern Poland under the terms of a secret Moscow-Berlin trea-
ty; and
WHEREAS, In addition to the 4,253 Polish officers and soldiers whose
bodies were discovered in 1943, a number in excess of 10,000 Polish
officers and leading intellectuals from the prisoner-of-war camps at
Kozielsk, Starobielsk, and Ostashkov, U.S.S.R., remain missing until
this very day, and are presumed to have been similarly executed in the
Spring of 1940; and
WHEREAS, These soldiers, so ruthlessly executed in Katyn Forest,
represented the future leadership of Poland, and their deaths were seen
as a blatant attempt to sap the life from a great sovereign nation, to
extinguish its leadership, morale and youth, through the most devastat-
ing, cowardly means -- a genocide of its intelligentsia -- designed to
break the spirit of an entire people and to dominate them forever; and
WHEREAS, It was not until 1990 that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
admitted Soviet involvement in the Katyn Forest Massacre; two years
later, the Russian government handed over to Polish President Lech Wale-
sa previously secret documents showing that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
had directly ordered the killing of the Polish army officers; and
WHEREAS, In 1995, Lech Walesa and relatives of the Katyn Forest
victims attended a memorial service at the site of the massacre; Russian
President Boris Yeltsin was invited to take part in the ceremonies, but
declined; and
WHEREAS, This shameful historic incident demands the focus of public
attention and calls for an inquest, or an admission of guilt, and an
apology by the parties involved and is worthy of the prayerful remem-
brance, long overdue, of this most heinous of crimes against all humani-
ty; and
WHEREAS, This great State of New York, which is enriched by one of the
largest populations of citizens of Polish ancestry in our Nation, is the
source of countless supporters who stand in solidarity with the eternal
principles of liberty and freedom for the Polish people and who yearn
for the return of a truly free Polish state; and
WHEREAS, This Legislative Body, recognizing the significance of the
legacy of the Katyn Forest Massacre and its impact upon the people of
Poland, as well as on all freedom-loving people of a civilized world, is
moved, therefore, to call for a Day of Remembrance for the Polish
Martyrs of Katyn Forest; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to
memorialize Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to proclaim April 23, 2011, as a
Day of Remembrance for the Polish Martyrs of Katyn Forest; and be it
further
RESOLVED, That copies of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be tran-
smitted to The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of the State of New
York, and Frank J. Spula, President, Polish National Alliance.