Katyn war cemetery ( ) is a Polish military cemetery located in Katyn , a small village 22 kilometres away from Smolensk , Russia , on the road to Vitebsk . It contains the remnants of 4,412 Polish officers of the Kozelsk prisoner of war camp , who were murdered in 1940 in what is called the Katyn massacre . Except for bodies of two Polish generals exhumed by German authorities in 1943 and then buried separately , all Polish officers murdered in Katyn were buried in six large mass graves . There is also a Russian part of the cemetery , where some 6,500 victims of the Soviet Great Purges of the 1930s were buried by the NKVD . The cemetery was officially opened in 2000 . The cemetery is a large , irregular area covering roughly 22 hectares of forest . All mass graves are located on both sides of the main alley . There is also a circular alley with thousands of names of the officers who perished in the massacre . At the end of the main alley there is a war memorial and an altar with a memorial bell located underground
Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
Katyn war cemetery