THE HORRIBLE STORY IF PROFESSOR HERHARD BUHTZ FORENSIC MEDICINE SPECIALIST FROM BRESLAU....

 


In late March 1943, Professor Gerhard Buhtz, forensic medicine specialist from Breslau, oversaw the first exhumations of Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in Katyń.

It wasn’t long before the Polish laborers excavating the pits came across two bodies which seemed out of place: one belonged to a 13 year-old boy wearing shorts, sandals and a jacket, the other to a young woman dressed in a military garb.

At first, they were thought to be mother and son – which didn’t add up, since this was an execution site for Polish officers, policemen, border guards and public servants, not for families – and less so for children. With time, the puzzle was solved.

The woman was Janina Lewandowska, Polish Army pilot and radio operator, and the boy must have been an accidental victim – probably a local child who got too curious about the shooting in the woods, came too close, was spotted and killed as well.

Both – 2nd Lieutenant Lewandowska, née Dowbor-Muśnicka, and the lad – were most likely shot on 22 April 1940, on her 32nd birthday. She was the only servicewoman murdered in Katyń, but unlike other victims, she wouldn’t stay there.

Professor Buhtz did his job and returned to Breslau, apart from the memory of the horrible Soviet crime bringing seven skulls he intended to turn into classroom exhibits. In 1944, he got another assignment in Ukraine and was killed there.

After WWII, when Breslau was Wrocław, Buhtz’s pathology institute was taken over by Professor Popielski, who was aware where the skulls came from but kept quiet because the communists would never allow him to publicize their crime.

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