Trial of the Sixteen

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On March 27-28, 1945, in a villa in Pruszków, the NKVD arrested sixteen leaders of the Polish underground in what has been described as one of the greatest tragedies to befall the Polish state.

Invited for talks by the Soviets, they became the victims of a cruel deceit when they were arrested after having been given assurances of their safety.

They were then transported to by special plane to Moscow and imprisoned in the Lubyanka. The Polish underground leaders were charged with aiding the Germans and later handed down sentences in a show trial.

The trial of the underground leaders spelled the end of hopes electing an independent government in post-war Poland.

To modern observers it may seem foolhardy for Poland’s underground leaders to walk into what with hindsight was obviously a Soviet trap.

However, they believed there was at least a chance that the Soviet Union wished to implement what it had agreed with the Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta.

They believed that there would be democratic elections that would elect a government of “national”, independent of Soviet power, as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had agreed at Yalta.