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Today, on 4th of April, we mark the 83rd anniversary of the events that were name by such euphemisms as "completion of the investigation", "discharge" or "liquidation" of the Ostashkov camp, and whitch in fact led to a mass crime against Polish prisoners-of-war. In historiography and journalism it is known under the name of the Katyn Massacre. Although we know that the Katyń Forest has become a symbol of a meticulously planned extermination of the Polish uniformed elite by the NKVD, nevertheless the places of burial and extermination and, before that, isolation in camps lasting several months, were different and spatially dispersed.

One of such places was the NKVD special camp at Ostashkov. Situated in the former monastery buildings on the island of Lake Seliger, it was characterized by particularly difficult conditions of confinement and the fact that, unlike the camps at Kozelsk and Starobelsk, it housed relatively few Polish Army officers, but as many as 6316 officers and rank-and-file policemen of the State Police and the Silesian Voivodship Police.

The latter constituted an exceptional group due to the fact that many of them had in their biographies written an uprising episode and years of work to strengthen the Polish identity in Silesia. Until the last moment they lived in the belief that they would have a chance to survive captivity and return to their families while their tragic fate had been already sealed by 5 May 1940. By an order of the highest authorities of the USSR, they were sentenced to death as "avowed enemies of the Soviet authorities and showing no hope for improvement". The "discharge" action of the Ostashkov camp began on 4 April and ended on 19 May 1940. During the operation, there were shot 1,231 Silesian policemen, who had been previously transported to the casemates in Kalinin (Tver).

The crime found its epilogue in the mass graves in Mednoye, where the corpses of the victims were secretly transported, and as a result of which, there is the world's largest police necropolis and at the same time the largest cemetery of Silesian insurgents.

The above-mentioned events are reminded to us by "The exterminated formation. The Police Force of the Silesian Voivodship 1922-1939" exhibition prepared by the Institute of National Remembrance in Katowice and the Museum in Tarnowskie Góry. The exhibition can be seen in the Opole seat of the CMJW until 5 May 2023.