70 Years of the Madden Committee Report – Reflections on the US Select House Committee to Investigate the Katyn Massacre – A talk by Krystyna Piorkowska
70 Years of the Madden Committee Report - Reflections on the US Select House Committee to Investigate the Katyn Massacre - A talk by Krystyna Piorkowska
We will shortly observe the 70th anniversary of the issuance of the Final Report of the House Committee formed to investigate and study the Katyn Massacre. Our understanding of the creation of the Committee, its processes, powers, and abilities to require testimony has remained unclear. It is appropriate that at the conclusion of 70 years, December 22, 2022, since the report, we would review the procedures and operation of the Madden Committee 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.
