At first the terrible stench made me feel sick and I had to use all my willpower to suppress the nausea. We followed a path running among the rows of exhumed corpses and there - there, beyond a thick pine-tree, beyond a bank of excavated sand I looked down. Horrible... Horrible. To see one, two or three human corpses is a hard, overwhelming experience. Please, imagine thousands of corpses, thousands - and all in the uniforms of Polish officers. The flower of intelligentsia, the Nation's knighthood! They form descending layers, layers of human bodies placed one upon another. At this moment an awful comparison comes to my mind - a huge box of sardines. The bodies are arranged like sardines - alternately, a head of one body resting close to the legs of another, squeezed and pressed together in the putrid juice showing at the bottom of some holes in the form of green, dull liquid which reflects neither the treetops nor the clouds. We bared our heads and stood motionless. Some birds were chirping among the branches of the pine. It stopped raining and the blessed wind blew away the overpowering stench to the other side of the grave. Even the sun showed from behind the clouds for a while.[...] In such moments even life itself seems to be a cynicism. Spring over the grave full of intertwined arms and legs, contorted faces, caked hair, knee-high boots, decaying uniforms and belts. Just think, each position of these lying bodies, a bend of the knee, a throwing back of the head was the last reaction of utmost suffering, despair, pain ... or of some other excruciating human feelings that I am not able to determine.
Katyn forest, May 1943
Katyń. Relacje, wspomnienia, publicystyka (Katyn. Relations, Reminiscences, Press Publications), ed. A. L. Szcześniak, Warsaw 1989