In the spring of 1940, the Soviets massacred thousands of Polish officers who were in Soviet camps, and buried them in mass graves in Katyn. In 1943 Nazi Germany officially informed the world about this massacre. The communists ruthlessly tried to blame the Germans. Polish representatives went to Katyn. They were eyewitnesses to the discovery of the truth about the mass murder. Each of the Polish delegates was then harassed by the security apparatus. The lie promoted by the communist regime for half a century was only revealed in 1989. Families of the murdered officers were also victims for decades. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and the wave of perestroika (restructuring) in 1990, on the next anniversary of the crime the Soviet press agency reported for the first time in history that the Soviet NKVD was responsible for the murder of these Polish officers. The Katyn massacre was, and is, intertwined with politics.