Katyn Commission or the International Katyn Commission was the International Red Cross committee formed in April 1943 under request by Germany to investigate the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish nationals during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland , mostly prisoners of war from the September Campaign including Polish Army officers , intelligentsia , civil servants , priests , police officers and numerous other professionals . Their bodies were discovered in a series of large mass graves in the forest near Smolensk in Russia following Operation Barbarossa . The investigation was led by world-class pathologists , including Professor François Naville from University of Geneva , Dr. Ferenc Orsós from the University of Budapest , Professor Louis Speleers of the Ghent University in Belgium and Eduard Miloslavić , Croatian professor of pathology among others . The Commission concluded that the Soviet Union had been responsible for the massacre . Consequently , the German government made extensive reference to the massacre in its own propaganda in an attempt to drive a political wedge between the Allies of World War II alliance . The severing of relations between the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet Union was a direct result of Polish support for the investigation
Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
Katyn Commission