title: [An international medical expert committee's participation in uncovering the truth on the liquidation of Polish officers found in mass graves at Katyn in the spring of 1943 and the biography of a Danish participant, Helge Tramsen (1910-1979)].
abstract: The article is based on a paper read as a invited speaker at a conference, entitled "Medical experts and expertise in cases of humanitarian crises "convened by the University of Geneva and the Committee of the International Red Cross in April 2007. The article starts with an overview of Polish history from the end of World War I up to the disclosure of the mass graves in the spring of 1943, but is otherwise a translation of the original English lecture with some additions from new findings.in archives. Helge tramsen was born into a bourgois family in Copenhagen. After graduation in medicine from the University of Copenhegen in 1936 he married a British woman and joined the naval medical corps and also embarked on a surgical career.. From 1940 to 1943 he was prosector at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. After the finding of the mass graves at Katyn, Germany requested from a number of European countries under German control forensic experts to join an international commission to investigate the findings. As the professor of forensic medicine declined perobably due to health reasons Tramsen was sent. During the German occupation of Denmark 1940 to 1945 Tramsen according to family tradition participated in the resistance movement and he consulted with members of the more conservative part of it and was recommended to go to Germany with an added purpose of being able to transport material out of Germany. He went with special plane from Copenhagen to Berlin, where he joined the international group, which later flew to Smolensk via Warszawa. He conducted a post mortem on the body of a Polish officer, selected by himself. Following that he attended in the discussion on the final report, which later in Berlin was handed over to the German minister of health, and which later formed an important part of the official German material accusing the USSR for the killing. During his stay in Berlin he claimed to have collected material, which in his opinion was drawings of the Eder Möwe dams and brought it back to Copenhagen with the severed head of the body of the Polish officer, on which he has carried out the post mortem. After Tramsen's return to Denmark, a British agent obtained his travel report and sent it to London and he later obtained additional information from Tramsen on the unanimous and voluntary conclusion of the experts. No information on the drawings and the head can be found in British archives. According to Tramsen's own account as a naval officer on activities during the occupation, he participated in sabotage actions, but that can not be substantiated by other sources. However, he participated in July 1944 in an attach on a fortress north of Copenhagen, held by the German Navy; the attach failed, and Transen went under ground, but later returned to his flat in Copenhagen, where he was taken prisoner by German security police. As prisoner he underwent torture and was subjected to mocked execution. He was transferred to a concentration camp, but probably due to the intervention by the permanent secretary of the Danish Foreign office, which after the Danish Government has stopped functioning in August 1943 kept the administration running and retained contacts with the German occupation authorities, Tramsen was not sent to a concentration camp in Germany, where survival rates were very low, but to one in Denmark. After the German defeat in May 1945 Tramsen continued his career in surgery, but went into general practice in Copenhagen in 1947, when he also obtained a permanent position in the naval medical service., where he remained until normal retirement in 1970, in the latter part as the highest ranking medical naval officer. He also served as medical chief at the Danish hospital ship Jutlandia serving as Danish contribution to the UN off the coast of Korea during the Korean war. He also attended as representative of the Danish Ministry of Defence the conference on the revision of the Geneva Conventions. No doubt Tramsen feared Soviet retaliation, but on the other hand he also showed courage by giving evidence at the US congressional hearings in 1952, where he confirmed that there had been no German pressure on the participants, and their conclusions had been voluntary and unanimous. He also gave an interview on Radio Free Europe transmitted to Poland in 1962. in which he desribed his experiences in Katyn. In 1971 his eldest daughter died in Warsaw, offially by carbon-monoxid poisoning from a gas heater. In theory it could be an accident, homicide or suicide. He felt it could be a revenge and in his grief he felt responsible and had a nervous break down. He died from a somatic illness in 1979 and during his terminal illness he told about his experiences from the war to a nephew.
authors.forename: Nils
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rosdahl
mesh_terms: D003718:Denmark; D005554:Forensic Medicine / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation / Q000266:history*; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000266:history*; D011044:Poland; D014342:Truth Disclosure; D014586:USSR; D014858:War Crimes / Q000266:history*; D047789:World War II