Katyń Remembered in Warsaw at the Military Medical Institute

21 September 2009

(l-r) Andrzej Klarkowski, President’s Advisor; GEN (ret) Czesław Piątas, Secretary of State, Ministry of National Defense; Dr. Richard Olesinski and Col Timothy Burke, ODC

A moving ceremony took place at the Military Medical Institute (WIM) on September 17, 2009 to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland followed by the execution of over 20,000 prisoners of war, including high ranking military officers, members of Poland’s intellectual elite, top-level law enforcement and administration officials, and other Polish nationals in the Katyń Forest and elsewhere in the Soviet Union. The ceremony was organized by Prof. Stanisław Ilnicki and opened by BG Grzegorz Gielerak, WIM Director. The event commemorated BG Jan W. Nelken, a foremost Polish military psychiatrist who died in Katyń. Col Timothy Burke and Dr. Richard Olesinski of the U.S. Embassy’s Office of Defense Cooperation attended. The ODC has a long-standing relationship with WIM’s Clinic of Psychiatry and Battlefield Stress led by Prof. Ilnicki.  

Announced by Richard Olesinski, DCA.