WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) is pushing forward with her campaign to end the decades of secrecy surrounding the Katyn Forest massacre of 1940.

Congresswoman Kaptur has announced that the National Archives and Records Administration, the government’s official records keeper, will now meet with leaders of the Polish-American community to begin debriefing the public on the declassification of records relating to the Katyn atrocities.

"Almost seven decades have elapsed since the Soviets committed these crimes, and it is long overdue for all U.S. records to be made available and for all information to be made available to the public," said Congresswoman Kaptur.

"We will never give up until the whole truth is known about this horrible chapter in the history of the Twentieth Century. The victims of these atrocities, their families, and the American people deserve a full accounting of history."

Congresswoman Kaptur, recipient of the Congressional Leadership Award from the Ohio Division of the Polish American Congress, has devoted herself to pressuring the U.S. government to disclose all materials related to the Katyn incident.

Last September, Congresswoman Kaptur sponsored a conference in Washington, D.C. titled, "Katyn—Unfinished Inquiry," along with the Cleveland-based Libra Institute and numerous other civic and academic organizations from across the United States.

After the conference, Congresswoman Kaptur arranged a meeting between the senior archivist of the National Archives and several representatives of Polonia, including Frank Spula, president of the Polish American Congress, Maria Szonert, president of the Libra Institute, Aurelia Pucinski, daughter of the chief investigator of the committee to investigate the Katyn Massacre, and others.

They were shown 18 boxes of documents from the Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives into the Katyn Forest Massacre as well as documents from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

In 1940, the NKVD (the Soviet secret police during the Stalin era) systematically murdered thousands of Polish military officers, prisoners and intellectuals. The massacre of some 22,00 members of the Polish elite in the Katyn Forest and other locations was accompanied by mass deportations of victims’ families and other Polish people from occupied territories.

During the 1950s, Congress established a select committee on the Katyn Forest Massacre. However, many documents remained classified and were ultimately returned to various federal agencies.

The meeting with officials of the National Archives and Records Administration and members of the Polish-American community is part of an effort to search for federal records on the Soviet Union’s actions during World War II era.

Later this year, the National Archives is expected to release its findings to the public.