06 Apr The Katyn Order
The Katyn Order by Douglas W. Jacobson
(2012) In 1940 the NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police, murdered more than twenty thousand Polish army officers and civilians. The graves of more than four thousand of these officers were found at the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia. Even though Joseph Stalin had signed the order, the Russians played dumb and blamed the Germans.
Finally, in 1990 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev publicly acknowledged the Soviet Union’s responsibility.
That’s a little background for this novel-based-on-the-truth. As always, the best part of reading historical novels is when I learn about a slice of the past I might never have studied otherwise.
A large part of the action occurs at the time of the Warsaw Uprising, when the Polish Resistance Home Guard known as the AK fought to regain control of their city from the Germans. They never had a chance. Poland never had a chance.
When I was growing up I was always told that my paternal grandfather was from Poland. I know now that he was actually from Lithuania but that at various times throughout history the two countries were united.
I enjoyed the book and half way through didn’t want to put it down. The characters are all representative of who was really there … resistance, SOE, NKVD, Gestapo. Exhaustive research is a term I don’t take lightly. I’m exhausted just thinking about what went into making the story so real.
When the author of The Katyn Order, Douglas W. Jacobson, sent me this book I’m sure he knew nothing about my personal connection to massacres in the region. My grandfather’s family lived in a small Lithuanian village, a shetl, called Rimse. When he went back to Lithuania after World War II was over he found that his entire family, everyone who was still there, had been marched into a forest and murdered by the authorities in their town, right before the Germans moved in.
That’s my connection.
The Katyn Order: A Novel, at amazon.com
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