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RONALD REAGAN RADIO BROADCAST SUBJECT: Katyn Forest Not all memories are pleasant, but we shouldn't put the unpleasant ones out of our mind. At least not all of them. I'll be right back. In a tiny cemetery in Gunnersbury, England on September 18th, 7000 people from all over the world gathered for the unveiling of a monument. It is a 21 foot pyramid bearing the inscription, "Katyn 1940" and a carved Polish eagle with a crown of barbed wire. Katyn is a name we should all remember. It is the name of a forest in Poland. But the monument does not memorialize a place. It is dedicated to 14,500 Polish officers who served in the defense of Poland when the Nazis were invading from the West and the Russians from the East. The officers disappeared when the invading forces met and divided Poland. A few years later a mass grave was found in the Katyn forest. It contained the bodies of forty-five hundred of those Polish officers who had been executed and buried there. What of the other 10,000? It is believed they were put on barges that were towed out into icy arctic waters and sunk -- drowning all on board. For a time this massacre was thought to be just another Nazi atrocity, but with the Nuremburg trials the truth was finally revealed. The 14,500 officers had been captured by the Russians and murdered in 1940 -- the date now inscribed on the memorial. As a matter of fact, the Germans had found the grave in 1943 in what had been Russian occupied territory following the partition of Poland. The 4,500 had dug the grave and then standing on the pit's edge had been machinegunned. The selection of Gunnersbury cemetery is an interesting sidelight on relations between the free world and the Soviet Union. Maybe we need to be reminded there is still a Polish government in exile in London. more--more--more