God's eye (Fox).pdf

Acknowledgments

I owe more than words can express to two friends whose knowledge of the subject

and commitment to historical truth spurred me on to complete this work. Aerial

photography expert Wacław Godziemba-Maliszewski and historian Simon Schochet

sacrificed many hours to assist me, though I hasten to add they are not responsible for

any errors that may have crept into this study. I would also like to pay personal tribute

to Professor Janusz K. Zawodny, who at great personal risk alerted the world to the

truth about the "Katyń forest" massacre. 1

I am grateful for the support given me by Bill Anderson of West Chester University

publications and his staff. To Professor Walther Kirchner who read an earlier version

of the manuscript and who in his long and distinguished career as a teacher never

ceased to await results of his patient tutelage, I offer this study as a recompense, albeit

a partial one. To my daughter Nina, who has always asked me to find subjects other

than massacres to write about, I can only say that historians describe such events so

that there may be a future without them. To my son Julian, whose computer skills

(and helpful criticisms) have been invaluable in all my writing efforts, I offer grateful

thanks. To my patient wife Anne, a fellow writer, my personal reward was the smile

on her face when I told her that I had found a publisher. To Rafał Olbiński, a premier

illustrator whose talent and friendship I treasure, my thanks for the cover which

illustrates this work. Peter Obst, a writer and friend, provided invaluable assistance in

preparing the book for printing. Diana Burgwyn read the manuscript and helped

improve it. Finally, I dedicate this work to the many who died a cruel and lonely death

in that "inhuman land."

1. It should be understood throughout this manuscript that "Katyń forest" includes sites other than

the area cited here (and in other works) as "Katyń."

Preface

1999 was the year of Kossovo. The horrors of that war had been foreshadowed by

the earlier conflict in Bosnia—and both were photographed from the skies. On August

9, 1995, Madeline K. Albright, the chief American delegate to the United Nations,

presented to the Security Council a pair of photographs taken by a U-2 "spy" plane.

The first showed Muslim "safe areas" of Srebrenica before July 11, the day when this

enclave fell to Serb forces. The photograph included an empty field. The second

image taken after the town was captured highlighted the same field with the telltale

signs of freshly dug and hastily covered surfaces. As for Kossovo, NATO officials

released in April 1999 a surveillance photograph that showed Serb forces in the act of

"ethnic cleansing"—homes destroyed and villages cleared of inhabitants with what

was described as "grim efficiency." On May 19, it was reported that NATO was

examining satellite photography in order to determine whether Serb forces were

digging up mass graves and reburying the remains. On June 7, the Associated Press

reported that stalling on pullback was "to eliminate evidence of war crimes." Now that

Kossovo is empty of its death-dealing invaders (except for those who still perpetrate

and will undoubtedly continue individual acts of vengeance) those who return find

numerous mass graves. The International Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia is

ready to do its grim investigative work. Aerial photographs will be an essential tool.

Fifty-five years ago aerial photography provided a record of history's worst crime.

On June 26,1944, a South African Air Force Mosquito flying out of an allied air base

in Italy passed over the majestic Alps on the way to Auschwitz. But the complex of

concentration camps located along the Sola River in south central Poland was not the

target of this photo reconnaissance mission. Several miles from Auschwitz were the

Buna works built by I. G. Farben for the manufacture of fuel, rubber and other

synthetics. Sweeping the countryside and using large-lens split verticals to include as

much of the area as possible, the cameras automatically photographed the Auschwitz-

Birkenau death camps. It was, as Roy M. Stanley wrote in his remarkable book World

War II Photo Intelligence, "an unexpected bonus coverage." The series of

photographs, some of which were made a few days before the camps were liberated,

were not made public until 1978, when one of CIA's most experienced photo

interpreters, Robert G. Poirier, with the assistance of Gino Brugioni (who discovered

the sites of Russian missiles sites in Cuba), decided to look again at the I. G. Farben

wartime photography. They knew that the death camps were in direct alignment with

that plant, and since the plane's cameras were turned on before the target was reached,

they were confident that the concentration camps would be on those photographs.

They found a treasure trove of horror. There were twenty cans of films (with about

200-250 exposures in each can), clearly showing evidence of gassing and cremation,

undeniable proof of the "conveyer-belt" murderous enterprise that was Auschwitz-

Birkenau. Fifty-five years has dimmed world's memories but the photographs were

still clear. They showed lines of people lined up at crematoria, the nicely landscaped

quarters for those administering the killing process, the roofs empty of snow on the

barracks of those still alive and the snow-covered roofs of the medical bloc whose

inmates had been put to death. An analysis of some of the key photographs makes one

an impotent witness to horror. A photo taken on August 25, 1944, shows a transport

has just arrived. Matching it with German and survivor records what one sees are

Jews from the Łódź ghetto about to be exterminated. Groups of people are moving

from the rail cars to the men's and women's camps. In consecutive pictures the lines of

these condemned people end where there is no gate. The only exit leads to the gas

chambers and crematoria. The photographs of Birkenau displayed the effects of a

revolt the preceding year—one of the gas chambers had been destroyed and two were

being dismantled. The condemned did fight back.

Unlike the images from Auschwitz, the photographs from Bosnia and Kossovo

were not hidden from the public, but while they provide us with a historical record

they are still in the service of leaders and states whose interests may not be to find and

punish the perpetrators. The fact is that while the technology available to surveillance

today—U-2 planes, spy satellites, video recorders in Predator drones and RC-135

River Joint that can monitor communications on the battlefield—their usefulness in

preventing mass murder or at the very least punishing those responsible, is limited.

Governmental secrecy about intelligence gathering sometimes serves interests of

bureaucracy more than those of justice. The twentieth century has recorded millions

of brutal deaths as well as unprecedented attempts to eradicate or hide traces of mass

murder. In recent times, Cambodia, Srebrenica in Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Chile,

Guatemala, Honduras, the killing grounds in Africa and the province of Kossovo are

proof that the end of Nazi and Soviet dictatorships did not put a stop to massacres and

efforts to conceal them. But if perpetrators cannot always be punished it is imperative

to find proof of their crimes and at the very least to search and identify victims'

remains so that the dead may be honored.

Of all crimes in World War II, the most puzzling has been the massacre in

Katyń forest. Not until the fall of the Soviet Union did the new leaders of Russia

acknowledge that their government ordered the murder of 27,000 Polish soldiers and

civilians. The painstaking and unheralded work of a young Polish-American photo-

interpreter has been crucial in this investigation. Wacław Godziemba-Mal-iszewski

came across a hoard of German aerial photographs at the National Archives and

began to unravel one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Russian intelligence

services-the burial sites for the Polish officers. For the past ten years he has been

supplying the Polish government with information that has enabled it, in spite of

opposition and interference from the Russian side, to locate many of the remains. It is

particularly important for the American public to read this record at a time when

American treasure and trust are being invested in a Russia whose leaders until

recently concealed the truth about Katyń.

This book is not only about lives cruelly extinguished, but also about the few who

have struggled to honor the dead with truth. Professor Janusz Zawodny, the dean of

Katyń studies, is one of the few. He told me recently of his trip to Spain to find burial

places of Polish lancers who sacrificed themselves at the Somosierra pass during the

Napoleonic Wars, thereby opening the road to Madrid. He said: "I always speak for

those who can no longer speak for themselves." This spirit has led him to "speak" for

the dead in Katyń forest. He has been an inspiration to others, and particularly to

Maliszewski.

This work should serve as an antidote to those who see contemporary history as a

record of failure for individuals who fight against a faceless bureaucracy. The

achievements of Maliszewski show us how in a struggle between the expediency of

state power and moral principles, the dedication of one person can make a difference.

Frank Fox Merion Station, Pennsylvania

Introduction

In April 1943, the German forces that had occupied the Katyń forest in the area of

Smolensk since 1941, discovered, exhumed and reburied approximately 4,000 Polish

officers. The medical examinations proved conclusively that these murders were

committed in 1940 while the area was under Russian control. While German

propaganda used the discovery for its own purposes, the Russians blamed Germans

for the mass murder and saw an opportunity to break off relations with the Polish

government-in-exile that vainly sought an International Red Cross investigation of

this atrocity. Prime Minister Winston Churchill for whom the wartime alliance was

paramount was unwilling to say that the Russians were responsible. President

Franklin D. Roosevelt took Stalin at his word.

As World War II was coming to an end, a cache of millions of German war

photographs was found in Bad Reichenhall and promptly sent to America to be

analyzed by the intelligence services. These films were part of a 1946 Anglo-

American project whimsically code-named Dick Tracy. The captured materials,

images gathered over the British Isles, Central and Eastern Europe, Balkans and the

Middle East, were assembled in Medmenham, England, the very efficient wartime

center of photographic intelligence. Within that index there were individual

photographs with geographical coordinates. Still in their original boxes with the mylar

overlays kept separately, they framed a flight plan of a particular area and gave the

time of day, and other technical data. Known as the GX series, these photographs

were eventually deposited at the National Archives. It was within the GX file that

Robert G. Poirier, one of CIA's most-experienced photo interpreters made a startling

discovery.

Poirier assumed that German photography of Smolensk might also encompass the

area of Katyń forest, only 13 kilometers from the city. Smolensk was an important rail

center for the German forces, and Poirier foresaw correctly that the Luftwaffe would

photograph it at various times: before the 1941 invasion, after they were in possession

of the area (that is until 1943), and following their retreat. He discovered in the GX

films that Germans flew as many as seventeen sorties over the site between July 9,

1941 and June 10, 1944. The majority of prints were made after the region was

recaptured by the Russians in late September 1943. These photographs, would, in

Poirier's words, allow an insight into the history of Katyń "never meant to be seen."

According to Poirier, there were no differences in the films taken between July 9, two

weeks after German the invasion of Russia, and September 2, 1941. But as of

September 2, 1941, when the Russians still held the area, there were visible changes

in vegetation in the area of Katyń forest and nearby woods that suggested intentional

disruption. In February 1943, the same month that Germans suffered the catastrophic

defeat at Stalingrad, their 537 Signal Corps Regiment billeted at

Gnezdovo located the Katyń graves and proceeded with exhumations. The bodies of

the Polish officers were then reinterred in four large graves and a monument was

placed there. The Germans took no aerial photographs over the site until after the

Russians recaptured the territory in September 1943, but images taken by the

Germans in October 1943 show that the area of the mass graves had again undergone

considerable alteration. The German memorial to the Polish dead officers could still

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