Bulletin de la Société des sciences médicales du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg
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Bull Soc Sci Med Grand Duche Luxemb · Jan 2004
Biography Historical Article[Professor Francis Naville (1883 - 1968), His role in the inquiry on the massacre in Katyn].
On April 13th 1943, the German radio announced that a common grave containing the corpses of Polish officers was found in the forest of Katyn, near Smolensk. Further enquiries showed that the dead bodies were those of officers imprisoned by the Russians in autumn 1939 and about who nobody had news since Springtime 1940. The CICR refused to deal with this problem without the agreement of the Soviets. ⋯ Naville got no support from the CICR, who "did not want to know" who was responsible in order to avoid diplomatic complications with the Soviet Union. Only in 1989 the discovery of Prof. Naville was accepted and confirmed by the Soviet authorities.