Nazi Germany’s Gestapo officers accompanied Katyn commission
Аs follows from testimonies by a laboratory technician, the German Army’s Senior Ensign Ludwig Schneider, contained in the declassified FSB archive materials | The Katyn case owes its name to the Katyn forest near Smolensk, where mass graves of executed Polish prisoners of war were found in 1943 in German-occupied territory. The discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943 was first reported by Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, an Army Group Center intelligence staff officer. [...] Officers of the Nazi Germany's state secret police (Gestapo) accompanied the members of an international commission to investigate the mass killing of Polish soldiers and officers in the Katyn forest, as follows from testimonies by a laboratory technician, the German Army’s Senior Ensign Ludwig Schneider, contained in the declassified FSB archive materials, seen by TASS. [...] [In] the Katyn forest a large number of bodies had been found. Allegedly, the Bolsheviks had shot Polish officers there, and "the upcoming investigation is very important for Germany, and for that reason, as Hilbers said, the laboratory staff must be very attentive, instantly and clearly follow all orders without asking questions and do not make any experiments on their own, as the slightest inaccuracy or error can cause irreparable harm."