Period Timeline: 1940
10 February 1940
The first resettlements of the interned families of Polish military settlers and forest guards from the areas granted to Poland under the Riga Treaty begin.
5 March 1940
CPSU CC’s Political Bureau takes a decision on killing more than 25,000 Polish prisoners of war kept at the camps at Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk, and the prisoners from prisons in the Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. The organization of the crime and the supervision of its execution was entrusted to the so-called NKVD Central Troika (Osoboye Soveshchaniye)
7 March 1940
Lavrenty Beria orders to carry out the deportation of the families of Polish prisoners of war kept at Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk to Kazakhstan.
4 April 1940
The liquidation of the Ostashkov camp begins. The first transports of Polish prisoners of war set off for the NKVD Board at Tver (then Kalinin).
5 April 1940
The first prisoners of war from the Starobelsk camp are sent to the NKVD Board in Kharkov.
8 April 1940
The first convoys of prisoners of war set off from Kozelsk for the NKVD Board in Smolensk, and then to the Gnezdovo station (Katyń Forest).
1 May 1940
The remaining Poles from Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov are transported to the camp at Yukhnov (Pavlishchebor), and then to the camp at Gryazovets near Vologda on 14 June 1940.
26 October 1940
Lavrenty Beria grants rewards to 125 NKVD functionaries for “efficient accomplishment of special tasks.”
