I recently watched a Polish film entitled “Katyn.”  I will frequently rent out-of-the-mainstream movies and this one was a winner.  The story is based on a composite of actual people and events and centers on the Katyn Forest Massacre in 1940.  The film is characterized by an authenticity that is lacking in its Hollywood equivalents.  I attribute this to the fact that it was made in Poland where the Second World War lingers in—no, haunts—the collective memory in a way that is alien to Americans.  Added to this are the very personal memories of director Andrzej Wajda, whose father was murdered at Katyn and whose mother was destroyed by it.

Prior to Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union jointly invaded and partitioned defenseless Poland in September 1939.  Overwhelmed on her eastern and western borders, the Polish Army collapsed in a matter of days.  Six months later, the NKVD (think KGB) murdered some 22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals, and professionals, most of whom were executed just outside of Smolensk, Russia in the Katyn Forest.

Told mostly through the eyes of women—mothers, wives, and daughters—the story presents us with much more than the privation and violence of war.  It confronts us with the emotional anguish suffered by those family members whose sons, husbands, and fathers disappeared into the expanse of Russia never to be seen or heard from again.  Their tragedy came in two parts: the massacre and the decades-long lie that followed.  Not only were their men dead.  Not only were they denied justice.  Lacking official word, given conflicting accounts, and clinging to false hopes, they were denied even a chance to mourn their great loss.

In the DVD’s “special features” one finds an interview with the film’s director.  Should you rent this movie, it is well worth your time.  An elderly man, Mr. Wajda shares some personal recollections in an interview with Polish television.  Perhaps most intriguing to me was Mr. Wajda himself.  He is so calm and dispassionate throughout the interview.  That is, until the discussion turns to the failures of Poland’s military high command and government to prepare for the war.  The failure was so total that Mr. Wajda considers it an unforgivable lapse.  It was not his contention that a properly armed Poland could have overcome its invaders, only that the people deserved a fighting chance.

I continued to reflect on this interview for days.  He had talked about the Nazi and Soviet occupations and their respective atrocities with a historian’s objectivity, but not so much when it came to his own countrymen.  Why?  I think the answer lies in the fact that the hostility of one’s enemies is to be expected, but to be betrayed by one’s leaders is to stir emotions of an altogether different sort.  It was a sense of abandonment and betrayal that the Wajda interview conveyed.

The perpetrators of this genocide went to great lengths to hide it from history—they executed their victims in small groups (approximately 250 per day) and in desolate places; camouflaged the sound of gunfire with heavy machinery; buried the bodies in mass graves at night; once discovered, they produced elaborate propaganda films blaming the Nazis; and even executed some of the executioners to avoid a leak.  And though it took fifty years to extract the truth, in 1990 the Soviet Union finally admitted the atrocity.  Even so, they refused to punish any surviving perpetrators and, more recently, Putin’s government has not only continued that course, but has reverted to the old story—the Nazis did it.  In short, justice has not been served.

No doubt, many of these criminals, perhaps all of them, felt—or, for those who may still be alive, feel—that they have escaped the vengeance that was surely due to them.  But they did not reckon on the Living God who awaits them in eternity.  The God of the Bible is, to be sure, a God of grace.  But He is also a God of justice, and watching this film reminded me of this aspect of His character.  There are many passages in the Bible that speak of God’s judgment and how He will repay those who oppress the innocent, but one in particular comes to mind.  Recorded in Isaiah 66, it speaks of God comforting and restoring the afflicted.  But then there is this:

For behold, the LORD will come in fire
And His chariots like the whirlwind,
To render His anger with fury,
And His rebuke with flames of fire.
For the LORD will execute judgment by fire
And by His sword on all flesh,
And those slain by the LORD will be many.

Hardly a cheery image of the Heavenly Santa Claus many imagine God to be.  He sees the secrets of men and will one day expose them.  He hears the cries of the innocent.  Their “blood cries out from the ground” (Genesis 4:10) and one day He will render to each according to His deeds. (Romans 2:6)

Perhaps I sound a bit like the second/third century Christian theologian Tertullian who seemed to relish the idea of the wicked being punished by God.  And, frankly, it is hard not to when you reflect on the utter ruthlessness with which these men and their governments acted.  I simply wish to make the point that the Bible is emphatic that God does see and He does care.  He is not indifferent to suffering.  Furthermore, justice, a deeply embedded human desire, will be served.  And finally there is this—the Lord will restore the fallen.  As one great hymn puts it, “and in His name, all oppression shall cease.”  And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn; for they shall be comforted.”