In January 1944, the Soviet Union sent a more prestigiousSpecial Commission for Determination and Investigation of the Shooting of Polish Prisoners of War by German-Fascist Invaders in Katyn Forest (Russian: Специальная Комиссия по установлению и расследованию обстоятельств расстрела немецко-фашистскими захватчиками в Катынском лесу военнопленных польских офицеров, Spetsial'naya Kommissiya po ustanovleniyu i rassledovaniyu obstoyatel'stv rasstrela nemetsko-fashistskimi zakhvatchikami v Katynskom lesu voyennoplennyh polskih ofitserov) to the site.[2][58] It was headed by Nikolai Burdenko, the President of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (hence the commission is often known as the "Burdenko Commission"), who volunteered, and received an official permission, investigate the incident.[2][58] Its members included internationally known figures such as the writer Alexei Tolstoy, but no foreign personnel were allowed to join the Commission.[2][58] The Burdenko Commission exhumed the bodies, rejected the 1943 German findings that the Poles were shot by the Soviets, and laid the guilt with the Germans and concluded that all the shootings were done by German occupation forces in autumn 1941.[2] Despite no evidence, it also blamed the Germans for shooting Russian prisoners of war, used as labor to dug the pits.[2] It is uncertain how many members of the commission were duped by the falsified reports and evidence, and how many suspected the truth; Cienciala and Materski note that the Commission had no choice but to issue findings in line with Merkulov-Kruglov report, and that Burdenko himself likely was aware of the cover up, and reportedly admitted some of that to friends and family, shortly before his death.[58] [58] It would be consistently cited by Soviet sources till the official admission of guilt by the Soviet government on 13 April 1990.[58]
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