POLISH COMBATANTS' ASSOCIATION HEAD EXECUTIVE BOARD POSITION ON THE SOVIET VERSION OF WORLD WAR II
On November 26, 2010, the Soviet parliament admitted that Stalin was directly to blame for the Katyn massacre.
We can only hope that all aspects of the Soviet Union's aggression of 1939-41 and 1944-89 and culpability in the atrocities committed during those years, will be as plainly admitted in the coming years.
HEAD EXECUTIVE BOARD
The Head Executive Board (HEB) represents the Polish Combatants' Association (PCA) branches at the national level. Almost two dozen branches are located in towns and cities across Canada from Montreal to Victoria. The individual branches were organized by the immigrant Polish soldiers in the cities and towns where they were settled by the Canadian government after World War Two. Currently, the HEB office resides in Toronto.
In the late 1940s, the HEB lobbied the Canadian government on behalf of its members, all of whom had been forced to sign two year labour contracts (mostly in forestry and agriculture) as a condition of their immigration to Canada.
THE POLISH COMBATANT'S ASSOCIATION IN CANADA
The Polish Combatants' Association (PCA) is an organization composed primarily of the Polish veterans of the Polish 2nd Corps who fought alongside British and Canadian troops during the Italian Campaign, 1943-45, under the operational command of the British Eighth Army. Most of these men had been prisoners of the Soviet Union during 1939-1941, languishing in Soviet prisons or toiling in the slave labour camps.
Many of these men and women lost friends and family members due to executions or the brutal conditions in the camps and prisons. Because Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union towards the end of the war, most Poles could not safely return home. As a result, the PCA was established after the war to help the demobilized Polish soldiers adjust to their new lives as civilians and exiles, to continue military traditions, and also to keep everyone at the ready, as many were expecting World War Three to soon erupt. (This almost happened a number of times - with the outbreak of the war in Korea, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.).
However, until the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 and in the Soviet Union shortly thereafter, the most difficult task of the PCA was to counter the unceasing and voluminous Soviet propaganda aimed at discrediting the Polish soldiers who fought with the western allies. There was an equal amount of propaganda which aimed to whitewash the Soviet atrocities against Poland and its people and promote communism. (For example, the Soviets constantly and loudly blamed the massacre of Polish officers in Katyn forest on the Nazis. They did not admit their guilt until 1990.). The task of countering the propaganda was entrusted to the Head Executive Board.