MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: From the examination of the corpses, to what conclusion did you come as to the date of death and date of burial?
PROSOROVSKI: On the basis of the experience I have gained and on the experiences of Smolianinov, Semenovski, and other members of the commission...
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: One moment, Witness. I would like you to tell the Tribunal briefly what these experiences were and how many corpses were exhumed. Did you personally exhume them or were they exhumed in your presence?
PROSOROVSKI: In the course of the great War, I was often medico-legal expert during the exhumation and the examination of corpses of victims who were shot by the Germans. These executions occurred in the town of Krasnodar and its neighborhood, in the town of Kharkov and its neighborhood, in the town of Smolensk and its neighborhood, in the so-called extermination camp of Maidanek, near Lublin, so that all told more than 5,000 corpses were exhumed and examined with my personal co-operation.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Considering your experience and your objective observations, to what conclusions did you arrive as to the date of the death and the burial of the victims of Katyn?
PROSOROVSKI: What I have just said applies to me as well as to many of my colleagues who participated in this work. The commission came to the unanimous conclusion that the burial of the Polish officers in the Katyn graves was carried out about 2 years before, if you count from January, the month of January 1944—that is to say that the date was autumn 1941.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Did the condition of the corpses allow the conclusion that they were buried in 1940, objectively speaking?
PROSOROVSKI: The medico-legal examination of the corpses buried in the Katyn wood, when compared with the modifications and changes which were noticed by us during former exhumations on many occasions and also material evidence, allowed us to come to the conclusion that the time of the burial could not have been previous to the autumn of 1941.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: Therefore, the year 1940 is out of question?
PROSOROVSKI: Yes, it is completely excluded.