thumb|upright=2|The show trial of 16 leaders of the Polish wartime underground movement (including the Home Army and civil authorities) convicted of "drawing up plans for military action against the U.S.S.R.", Moscow, June 1945. All of them had been invited to help organize the new "Polish Government of National Unity" in March 1945 and were subsequently captured by the [[NKVD.]]

The Trial of the Sixteen () was a staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet authorities in Moscow in 1945. All captives were kidnapped by the NKVD secret service and falsely accused of various forms of 'illegal activity' against the Red Army. The Polish politicians were presented with a warrant of safety, but were instead arrested in Pruszków and brutally beaten by the NKVD on 27 and 28 March. Leopold Okulicki, Jan Stanisław Jankowski and Kazimierz Pużak were arrested on the 27th with 12 others the following day. Alexander Zwierzyński had been arrested earlier. They were brought to Moscow for interrogation in the Lubyanka.

After several months of brutal interrogation and torture they were presented with trumped-up accusations of:

  1. Collaboration with Nazi Germany
  2. Carrying-out intelligence gathering and sabotage at the rear of the Red Army The verdict was issued on 21 June, with most of the defendants coerced into pleading guilty by the NKVD. General Okulicki's witnesses for the defense were declared unreachable "owing to bad atmospheric conditions", and no evidence was offered during the trial. Of the sixteen defendants, twelve were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four months to ten years, while charges against the four others were dropped by the prosecution. may have been murdered on Christmas Eve of 1946 but may have died due to complications caused by hunger strike. As a result of the trial, the Polish Secret State was deprived of most of its leaders. Its structures were soon rebuilt, but were never able to fully recover. On 6 July 1945 the United Kingdom and the United States withdrew support for the legitimate Polish government in exile, and all its agendas in Poland. Soviet and Polish Communist repressions aimed at former members of the Polish Secret State and the Armia Krajowa lasted well into the 1960s, corporal Józef Franczak being killed in a shootout with paramilitary-police in 1963.

See also

  • Anti-Polonism
  • Western betrayal

References

Further reading

English language

  • Norman Davies, Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw. Viking Books, 2004. . Hardcover, 784 pages.
  • Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State. Simon Publications, 2001. . Paperback, 391 pages.
  • Edward Raczynski, In allied London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962 pp. 284–285, 295
  • Zbigniew Stypulkowski, "Invitation to Moscow", 1950, 1951.

Polish language

  • Waldemar Strzałkowski, Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert, Andrzej Chmielarz, <cite>Proces Szesnastu. Dokumenty NKWD</cite>. Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, Warsaw, 1995. . Paperback, 543 pages.
  • Eugeniusz Duraczyński, <cite>Generał Iwanow zaprasza. Przywódcy podziemnego państwa polskiego przed sądem moskiewskim</cite>. Warsaw, Wydawnictwo ALFA, 1989.
  • The Moscow Trial of the 16 Polish Leaders. Liberty Publications, London, 1945, 24 pages, 2 ill. Electronic version, via Internet Archive.
  • Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, "The Case of the Sixteen". Chapter 24 of The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Union, a pro-Soviet view of the trial. Excerpt archived 4 January 2013.