For Decades The Word Katyn, Forrnthe Poles, has stood for an unspeakable crime as well as tragedy. Henceforth, it will stand also for an additional national disaster-but perhaps also for hope.rnIn the past, Katyn signified mass murder committed in 1940 in a forest just west of the Russian town of Smolensk by troops of the Soviet Union, who killed defenseless Polish prisoners of war. The victims of the atrocity accounted for much of Poland's military as well as intellectual elite. The second Katyn tragedy-the April 10 crash on the approach to Smolensk airport of a plane carrying dignitaries to a ceremony commemorating that very 1940 massacre-led to the death of nearly 100 of the top political personalities of a newly independent, and once again democratic, Poland.
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