[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)].

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.

[Building confidence in biological products].

During the last decades of the 19th century, discoveries in microbiology paved the way for health programmes as an integral part of social modernisation. Public opinion about the consequences for governmental involvement differed, but in Denmark the state's openness to modern medicine encouraged the establishment of Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in 1902, initially for the production of anti-diphtheritic serum. Under its director, Thorvald Madsen (1870-1957), the SSI soon acquired a reputation for the high quality of its products and its cutting edge research.