LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 to Krakow's Balice airport. The captain was Czesław Doliński (with 20 years of flying in PLL LOT and more than two million kilometres of experience). At 15.49, the first officer received a routine instruction: after passing Jędrzejów, less than 80 km north of the destination, descend to For today, the official death toll of 53 killed is controversial. LOT manifest included 53 passengers and 5 crew members, but two days after the crash Polish press agencies published (based on LOT's information) 46 surnames (part of them without an address or name). LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 LOT Polish Airlines Flight
Polish Operation of the NKVD of the Polish diversionist and espionage groups and POW units"," was approved on August 9, 1937 by the Party's Central Committee Politburo, and was signed by Nikolai Yezhov on August 11, 1937. It was distributed to the local subdivisions of the NKVD simultaneously with Yezhov's thirty-page "secret letter," explaining what the "Polish operation" was all about. The letter from Yezhov was titled, ""On fascist-resurrectionist, spying, diversional, defeationist, and terrorist activity of Polish intelligence in the USSR"". Stalin demanded the NKVD to "keep on digging out and cleaning out this Polish filth." The "Order" adopted the simplified so-called "album procedure" (as