In June 1943 Mackiewicz was invited by the international Katyn Commission , headed by German occupying authorities , to the site of Katyn massacre . Upon consent of the Polish government-in-exile , he assisted in the first excavations of the mass graves of the Polish officers killed by Soviet NKVD there in 1940 . Upon his return to Vilnus , the local German-sponsored daily '' Goniec Codzienny '' published an interview with Mackiewicz titled " Widziałem na własne oczy " ( " I saw with my own eyes " ) . He later arrived in Italy where he worked for the II Corps ( Poland ) and , in this capacity , he edited a compilation of documents related directly to the Katyń Massacre under the title '' Zbrodnia katyńska w świetle dokumentów '' ( The Katyn murder in light of new evidence ) , published in 1948 with an introduction by General Władysław Anders . At the same time he wrote his own book under the title '' Katyń . Zbrodnia bez sądu i kary '' ( Katyn . Murder without Trial nor Sentence ) . Its first Polish language publication was destroyed by the publisher in London , UK , for political reasons . In 1949 he published its German language version , '' Katyn – ungesühntes Verbrechen '' , in Zurich , Switzerland . In 1951 he published the English-version of his book under a title '' The Katyn Wood Murders '' , the very first book in English on the subject ( Italian version in 1954 as '' Il Massacro della foresta di Katyn '' , in Spanish in 1957 as '' Las Fosas de Katyn '' , in Russian published in Canada in 1988 as '' Катынь '' ) . In 1952 he testified before US Senate Committee known as " Select Committee to Investigate and Study the Facts , Evidence , and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre " about the genocidal nature the Katyń Massacre ( the Polish version of '' Katyń . Zbrodnia bez sądu i kary '' was published in 1997 in Poland , and again under different title : '' Sprawa mordu katyńskiego . Ta książka była pierwsza '' in 2009 )
Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
Józef Mackiewicz