On August 2 , 1939 he was mobilized in the Polish Army as a reserve officer . He took part in the Polish Defensive War at the onset of World War II . After the Soviet invasion of Poland , his unit attempted to reach the Hungarian or Romanian borders in order to evade being captured and to find its way to France , where the Polish Army was being re-created . However , after the battle of Krasnobród on September 23 , he was taken prisoner of war by the Soviets . Through the transfer camp in Putyvl he was interned in the NKVD camp in Kozelsk , together with several thousand other Polish officers , professors , border guards and policemen . Interrogated by kombrig Vasili Mikhaylovich Zarubin , Swianiewicz spoke fluent Russian and was apparently found useful . After the start of the Katyn Massacre in the spring of 1940 , he was attached to a group of c. 100 Polish officers being moved by train to a small station in Gniezdovo near Katyn . There all of his comrades were massed in buses with blindfolded windows and transported to the mass murder site , while Swianiewicz himself was withdrawn from the transport
Katyn
Katyn massacre
Stanisław Swianiewicz