BAZILEVSKY: The last time I know that the engineer camp was in the area of the Katyn wood was in 1941.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Consequently, if I understand you correctly, in 1940 and 1941 before the beginning of the war at any rate—and you speak of the spring of 1941—the Katyn wood was not a special reservation and was accessible to everybody?
BAZILEVSKY: Yes. I say that that was the situation.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Do you say this as an eyewitness or from hearsay?
BAZILEVSKY: No, I say it as an eyewitness who used to go there frequently.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Please tell the Tribunal under what circumstances you became the first deputy mayor of Smolensk during the period of the German occupation. Please speak slowly.
BAZILEVSKY: I was an administration official; and I did not have an opportunity of leaving the place in time, because I was busy in saving the particularly precious library of the Institute and the very valuable equipment. In the circumstances I could not try to escape before the evening of the 15th, but then I did not succeed in catching the train. I therefore decided to leave the city on 16 July in the morning, but during the night of 15 to 16 the city was unexpectedly occupied by German troops. All the bridges across the Dnieper were blown up, and I found myself in captivity.
After some time, on 20 July, a group of German soldiers came to the observatory of which I was the director. They took down that I was the director and that I was living there and that there was also a professor of physics, Efimov, living in the same building.
In the evening of 20 July two German officers came to me and brought me to the headquarters of the unit which had occupied Smolensk. After checking my personalia and after a short conversation, they suggested that I become mayor of the city. I refused, basing my refusal on the fact that I was a professor of astronomy and that, as I had no experience in such matters, I could not undertake this post. They then declared categorically and with threats, “We are going to force the Russian intelligentsia to work.”
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Thus, if I understand you correctly, the Germans forced you by threats to become the deputy mayor of Smolensk?