After a short stay in various Soviet prisons and POW camps , at the end of 1939 he was transferred to the NKVD Special Camp in Kozelsk . Smorawiński left the camp on 7 April 1940 . Together with most of the Polish officers imprisoned there he was executed by the NKVD at Katyn , in the spring of 1940 , aged forty-six , in what became known as the Katyn massacre . During the exhumation of 1943 his body was exhumed and identified , as one of the Polish generals to be identified . Among the Katyn victims were 14 Polish generals including Leon Billewicz , Bronisław Bohatyrewicz , Xawery Czernicki ( admiral ) , Stanisław Haller , Aleksander Kowalewski , Henryk Minkiewicz , Kazimierz Orlik-Łukoski , Konstanty Plisowski , Rudolf Prich ( murdered in Lviv ) , Franciszek Sikorski , Leonard Skierski , Piotr Skuratowicz , and Alojzy Wir-Konas
Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
Mieczysław Smorawiński