François Naville (14 June 1883 – 3 April 1968) was a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and director of the medico-legal Institute of the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin as a theological seminary. It remained focused on theology until the 17th centu ...

. He was the only truly neutral expert participating in the international

Katyn Commission The Katyn Commission or the International Katyn Commission was a committee formed in April 1943 under request by Germany to investigate the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish nationals during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, mostly pri ...

investigating the Soviet

Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre, "Katyń crime"; russian: link=yes, Катынская резня ''Katynskaya reznya'', "Katyn massacre", or russian: link=no, Катынский расстрел, ''Katynsky rasstrel'', "Katyn execution" was a series of m ...

of some 22,000 Polish

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold priso ...

, mostly

Polish Army The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stret ...

officers, who had been arrested and imprisoned in the course of the Soviet and German

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...

. Their bodies were discovered in a series of large mass graves in the forest near

Smolensk Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest c ...

in Russia following the Nazi German

Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...

Katyn affair

:"''On April 13, 1943, the German radio announced that a common grave containing the corpses of Polish officers was found in the forest of Katyn, near Smolensk. Further enquiries showed that the dead bodies were those of officers imprisoned by the Russians in autumn 1939 and about who nobody had news since Springtime 1940. The CICR refused to deal with this problem without the agreement of the Soviets. So the Germans called together a committee of international experts to examine the grave in Katyn. Prof. Francis Naville, director of the medico-legal Institute of the University of Geneva, was the only expert really neutral in that commission. He had the merit to prove quite clearly that these criminal executions were ordered by Stalin. After the Second World War, Prof. Naville was criticised for having accepted to participate to the mission to Katyn by Jean Vincent, a deputy of the Swiss labour party (communist party) who claimed that the massacre of Katyn had been done by the Germans. Prof. Naville got no support from the CICR, who “did not want to know” who was responsible in order to avoid diplomatic complications with the Soviet Union. Only in 1989 the discovery of Prof. Naville was accepted and confirmed by the Soviet authorities.''" Kazimierz Karbowski
''Professeur François Naville (1883 - 1968): Son rôle dans l’enquête sur le massacre de Katyn''
, Texte élargi des conférences du 31 octobre 2002 à l’Université des aînés de langue francaise à Berne (UNAB), ainsi que du 14 novembre 2002 à la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie à Genève.

References

1883 births 1968 deaths 20th-century Swiss physicians Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland Katyn massacre investigators {{Switzerland-bio-stub