Chicago Poles raise monument to Katyn victims

Members of Chicago's Polish community have completed a nearly $300,000 memorial to the around 20,000 Poles executed by Soviet agents in the Katyn Forest during World War II.

The completion of the memorial at St. Adalbert's Cemetery in Niles was marked Sunday with a Catholic Mass celebrated by Polish Cardinal Joseph Glemp. The Chicago-based Alliance of Polish Clubs in the USA erected the Katyn monument. It was designed by a Polish artist.

The monument contains a cross and an angel made in the shape of Poland's national emblem, a white eagle.

Those executed included Polish officers, intellectuals and priests. The massacre occurred in the spring of 1940 near Katyn, which is now in the former Soviet republic of Belarus.