70 Years of the Madden Committee Report – Reflections on the US Select House Committee to Investigate the Katyn Massacre – A talk by Krystyna Piorkowska

Madden Committee Katyn Massacre: A Powerful Retrospective

December 22, 2022, marked the 70th anniversary of the issuance of the Final Report of the House Committee formed to investigate and study the Madden Committee Katyn Massacre. Our understanding of the creation of the Committee, its processes, powers, and ability to require testimony has remained unclear. It was appropriate at the conclusion of 70 years to review the procedures and operation of the Madden Committee Katyn Massacre investigation and what its final report concluded.

Familiarly referred to as the Madden Committee, this was the first time that the US Congress had held hearings on a massacre of foreign Prisoners of War, specifically, the World War II massacres of over 17,000 Polish citizens at various sites in the USSR.

The Madden Committee had held its first hearing on October 11, 1951, and issued a total of seven transcripts of the testimony presented by over a hundred witnesses, plus an interim and final report.

Our speaker, Krystyna Piórkowska, has been focusing on various aspects of the English-speaking powers and their actions both during the wartime period, the immediate post-war period (1946-50), and finally, the post-1950 events.  She is the author of English-speaking Witnesses to Katyn Recent Research which was published in a bilingual tête-bêche edition.

To learn more about the Katyn Massacre, visit the National Archives’ Katyn Forest Massacre collection, which offers original records and documents illuminating the tragedy.

For a list of upcoming and past events, see the Kosciuszko Foundation Events page.