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Katyn massacre

Name: Katyn massacre
Start: 1940-01-01
Location: Katyn massacre, , Soviet Union

Katyn massacre · , Soviet Union · 1940-01-01

Soviet mass murder of ca. 22,000 Poles in several parts of European Russia, including in the Katyn forest, which became a pars pro toto name for the whole massacre.

The record

Date	1940-01-01
Place	Katyn massacre, , Soviet Union
Coordinates	54.77333, 31.78889 (landmark-level precision)
Scope	World-historic
Sources	Wikidata Q134301
Added	2026-08-14 · source: wikidata

Go deeper. This page records the place, the date and what is tied to them — the full story is told better elsewhere: Wikidata Q134301. What you will not find there is this location’s other time layers, the map, and the memories readers add below.

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

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Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
National and municipal archives of Soviet Union, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

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Harvested from a regional source. This entry came out of Wikidata Q134301 rather than being written here, which is why it is short and why it is marked as needing a check. It is published as a lead for someone who knows the place: fill it in.

You can add to this page

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What readers have added

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Old photographs, what your family remembers being on the corner, a shop that is not on any map we have. Contributions are read by a person before anything is published, and we never publish the names of living people.

Nearby in Europe

An event, not a property assessment. This page records what happened at a location. It says nothing about the condition, value or safety of any property there, and it is not part of any environmental record. Methodology and limits.