As a result of a decision by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b) of 5 March 1940, in the spring of 1940 the NKVD murdered around 22,000 Polish citizens: prisoners of war taken prisoner after the USSR's aggression against the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic in September 1939; they were imprisoned in three special NKVD camps (Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk) and prisons in so-called Western Belarus and so-called Western Ukraine. The officers of the Polish Army - reserve, permanent service and retired - as well as senior military and state officials were held at Kozelsk. The prisoners of war from Kozelsk were murdered in the Katyn Forest and most probably partly in the cellars of the NKVD Regional Board in Smolensk, and their bodies were hidden in the so-called death pits in the Katyn Forest.

Families of the victims of the Katyn Massacre in Poland and all over the world, associated in associations focused primarily on the Federation of Katyn Families, were striving for a dignified commemoration of the victims of the Katyn Massacre. Representatives of Katyn circles cooperated with the Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Combat and Martyrdom, the institution responsible on behalf of the Polish state for the commemoration of the murdered, which led to the construction in 1999-2000 of Polish War Cemeteries in Katyn, Mednoye and Kharkiv and in 2012. - Polish War Cemetery in Kyiv-Bykivnia. The ceremonial opening and consecration of the cemetery in Katyn took place on 28.07.2000.

. In the cemetery, covering an area of about 1.4 ha, there are 6 mass graves with crosses and 2 individual graves of Generals Mieczysław Smorawiński and Bronisław Bohaterewicz. The places of the death pits have been marked with plaques. A total of 4,412 epitaph plates have been placed on the wall surrounding the graves. Next to the altar is a plaque with an inscription: In tribute to the more than 4400 Polish Army officers resting in the Katyn Forest - prisoners of war from the Kozielsk camp murdered in the spring of 1940 by the NKVD. Polish nation. The necropolis included the following elements made of cast iron: an altar with a cross and an altar wall on which the names of the victims are engraved, a memorial bell, obelisks with the national emblem, the Virtuti Militari Cross and the Cross of the September Campaign. Signs of the four religions professed by the citizens of the Second Republic of Poland (the Latin cross, the Orthodox cross, the Star of David and the Muslim crescent) are placed in the cemetery. The Polish character of the cemeteries is emphasised by bas-reliefs depicting Polish military eagles placed at the entrance and trilingual information boards installed in 2010. Each of those buried has an individual epitaph plaque containing: military rank or service rank, name and surname, date and place of birth, occupation, service assignment, year of death.

The Polish War Cemetery at Katyn is part of the Russian Memorial Complex. A separate section there commemorates Soviet citizens of various nationalities (including Poles) who were murdered by the USSR authorities between 1933 and 1938. In addition, Katyn symbolically honours Soviet prisoners of war who were shot by the Germans in May 1943, and an Orthodox Church of the Resurrection was built at the entrance to the complex, dedicated to the Soviet victims of political repression buried in the Katyn Forest. The Russian Memorial Complex is under the care of the State Central Museum of Contemporary Russian History. The OPWiM Council carried out repair and maintenance work at the Polish cemetery in 2009, 2010 and 2016.

For more information on the discovery of the mass graves and the construction of the cemetery, visit https://katyn.miejscapamieci.gov.pl.