Bronisław Bohatyrewicz

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Graves of Gen. Makary Smorawiński (left) and Bronisław Bohatyrewicz at the Katyn War Cemetery

Bronisław Bohatyrewicz of Ostoja Coat of Arms (1870-1940) was a Polish military commander and a general of the Polish Army. Murdered during the Katyn massacre, Bohatyrewicz was one of the two Generals whose bodies were identified during the 1943 exhumation.

Born February 24 or April 24, 1870 (sources differ) in Hrodna (Polish: Grodno), to a Belarusian^[1] szlachta family, Bohatyrewicz joined the Imperial Russian Army, where he received officers training. In September of 1918 he joined the Polish Army. He started as the commanding officer of Belarusian-Lithuanian national self-defence units of his native Hrodna during the opening stages of the Russian Civil War and then the Polish-Bolshevik War. Successful in the battle of Grodno, in 1919 he became the commander of the Polish 81st Infantry Regiment. After the war he continued his career in the army and received further training in the Higher War School in Warsaw. Between 1923 and 1926 he commanded the infantry units of the Polish 18th Infantry Division and the following year he was promoted to the rank of generał brygady and retired from active duty.

After the Polish Defensive War of 1939 Bohatyrewicz was arrested by the NKVD and imprisoned in Kozielsk in the Soviet Union. He was murdered in Katyn in the spring of 1940, during the Katyń massacre.