Pages of history. Who shot the Polish officers?
Archives reveal the secret: why exactly 22,000 Polish officers were shot in Katyn
The Polish-Soviet War began on April 25, 1920 with an attack by Polish troops. On May 6, Kiev was captured. In the occupied regions, the Poles organized reprisals against those who, according to their information, were Red Army soldiers and especially communists. At the same time, Jews were equated with communists. “In the Komarovskaya volost alone, the entire Jewish population, including infants, was slaughtered.”
In response to the atrocities committed, desperate resistance arose, and on May 26 the Red Army launched a counteroffensive. On June 12, it liberated the capital of Ukraine, and in mid-August it reached Warsaw and Lvov.
However, as a result of a carefully prepared counterattack by the White Poles and uncoordinated actions of Soviet military leaders, the Red Army was forced to retreat with significant human, territorial and material losses.
Unable to continue the war, both sides agreed to a truce on October 12, 1920, and on March 18, 1921, they concluded the Riga Peace Treaty, which consolidated all the losses suffered by Soviet Russia. The Polish invaders, led by Marshal Pilsudski, managed to annex to their lands large strategic spaces of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which belonged to Russia until October 1917.
Such an unfair outcome of the war became the cause of tense Soviet-Polish relations for many years, which should have led, at the first opportunity, to the restoration of what had been lost and the punishment of the brutal invaders. This is what happened in 1939-1940.
The truce of October 12, 1920 was very unfavorable for the then Russia... and especially for Stalin, who perceived this defeat as his own.
Strictly speaking, this battle was lost by the future Marshal Tukhachevsky under the military leadership of Trotsky, but in political terms, Lenin (as the head of the Soviet government) pinned his hopes for victory in this war primarily on Stalin. Not only did the Poles then significantly reduce Russian territories in their favor. Even more tragic was the fact that, having captured tens of thousands of the “red guardsmen” most loyal to Stalin (including from Budyonny’s 1st Cavalry Army), the White Poles doomed them to martyrdom in concentration camps.
Death - from torture, disease, hunger and even thirst...
There were also civilians among the prisoners, and among them there were many Jews, whom the White Poles considered the main spreaders of the Bolshevik infection.
Silenced to this day, Polish and Russian archives contain many ominous confirmations of this Greater Poland conceit. For example, in the lists of prisoners taken to Poznan from Ukraine among the Soviet employees there is a boy: “Shekhtman Matel, a Jew, a minor, caught red-handed while posting Bolshevik proclamations in Kiev”... About others sent to Polish concentration camps, it is said: “There is no proof of the guilt of these people . But it is undesirable to leave them free in Poland.” All these are civilians, arrested and taken to prisons and camps in Poland for political reasons. One of them, 15-year-old Bogin, wrote on May 30, 1921: “Suspecting me of belonging to an underground organization, but having no evidence, the Polish authorities interned me. I have been in a military prison for ten months now, the regime of which is oppressive.”
Modern high-ranking Polish leaders do not talk about such violations of human rights and, perhaps, do not know.
But they cannot forget about the “red revenge” in Katyn!
How many were there?
On June 22, 1920, Pilsudski’s personal secretary K. Switalski wrote: “The obstacle to the demoralization of the Bolshevik army through desertion to our side is the difficult situation resulting from the brutal and merciless destruction of prisoners by our soldiers...”
About how many Soviet prisoners were shot and tortured by the Poles? we're talking about? Without entering into a discussion of whose figures (Polish or Russian) are more accurate, we will simply present their extreme values indicated by both sides. Russian historians, citing archival sources, insist on a minimum of 60 thousand people. According to current data in Poland, this is a maximum of 16-18 thousand. But let there be even fewer Russian victims than the smallest official Polish confessions! And in this case, 8 thousand (according to other sources 22 thousand) Polish officers shot by the NKVD and buried in Katyn fully explain what happened - like Stalin’s Katyn retribution! Let me emphasize: explaining does not mean that they are justifying!
First of all, officers and gendarmes who showed sadism against Soviet citizens in 1919-22 were shot in Katyn. The rank and file of the Polish common people (and there were a majority of them - according to various sources, from 100 to 250 thousand), misled by their lords, mostly escaped execution.
Stalin would not have been Stalin if he had forgotten the Polish officers their brutal abuse of him, Stalin, “brothers in arms”!
Of course, it would be more correct for those fascist Polish officers to be judged by the Polish people themselves, and not by the NKVD... (However, the Polish people even today have every right to do this! Moreover, Russia, setting an example, has already repented for what it did fundamentally memorial complex in Katyn and... continues to repent! The turn, as they say, is for Poland...)
The archives have spoken
For a long time I did not dare to defile the hearing and sight of the Russian and Polish elite with what the gentlemen Polish officers did with Russian prisoners. But since my general words about human rights violations aroused obvious distrust and even suspicion of slander against “innocent Polish gendarmes,” I am forced to cite (for starters!) at least such an “ordinary” concrete example from a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Habicht (a Pole who has not lost his conscience) To the head of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland, General Gordynsky:
"Mr. General!
I visited the prisoner camp in Bialystok and now, under the first impression, I dared to turn to Mr. General, as the chief doctor of the Polish troops, with a description of the terrible picture that appears before everyone arriving at the camp...
In the camp at every step there is dirt, untidiness that cannot be described, neglect and human need that cry out to heaven for retribution. In front of the barracks doors are piles of human excrement, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The patients are so weakened that they cannot reach the latrines; on the other hand, the toilets are in such a state that it is impossible to approach the seats, because the floor is covered in several layers of human feces.
The barracks themselves are overcrowded, and among the “healthy” there are a lot of sick people. In my opinion, among those 1,400 prisoners there are simply no healthy ones. Covered with rags, they huddle together, warming each other. The stench from dysentery patients and gangrene-stricken feet swollen from hunger. In the barracks that were just about to be vacated, two especially seriously ill patients lay among other patients in their own feces, oozing through their shabby trousers; they no longer had the strength to get up to lie down on a dry place on the bunks. What a terrible picture of grief and despair this is... Moans are coming from all sides.”
Note from General Gordynsky:
“The reader of this report inevitably comes to mind the words of our immortal prophet Adam (Mickiewicz):
“If only a bitter tear had not flowed from the stone, prince!”
Is there any regulation on this and what kind? Or we must, realizing our helplessness, fold our hands and, following Tolstoy’s commandment of “non-resistance to evil,” be mute witnesses to the sad harvest of death and the devastation that it produces, putting an end to human suffering, for so long until the last prisoner and the last guard soldier fall asleep in a cemetery grave?
If this were to happen, then it would be better not to take prisoners than to allow them to die in thousands from hunger and infection.”
And after this they ask Stalin: how did he dare to organize the Katyn massacre for the Polish officers who organized THIS?
However, it would be more accurate to say: Katyn retribution...
Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the future Red Marshal, whose troops were defeated by the Poles on the Vistula. Photo from 1921.
Photo: RIA Novosti
WHAT DID THE USSR GOVERNMENT GUIDE BEFORE MAKING THE DECISION TO SHOOT POLISH OFFICERS IN KATYN IN 1940
Data from closed official Polish and Soviet sources (given in abbreviated form)
First - documentary information:
On October 8, 1939, the People's Commissar of the NKVD Beria gave instructions: under no circumstances should the captured Polish generals, officers and all persons in the police and gendarmerie service be released until the investigation establishes whether they were involved in the bullying and extermination (in 1919-1922) prisoners of war of the Red Army and Soviet citizens Jewish origin(including Ukraine and Belarus)!
On February 22, 1940, a special Merkulov Directive 641/b regarding captured Poles appeared. It said: “By order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Comrade. To Beria, I offer all former jailers, intelligence officers, provocateurs, court officials, landowners, etc., who were held in the Starobelsky, Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky NKVD camps. transfer to the investigative units of the NKVD for investigation.”
Addresses and codes for storing materials from Polish archives are given in Latin, from Soviet ones - in Russian.
Ministry of Military Affairs Sanitary Department No. 1215 T.
To the Ministry of Military Affairs, Warsaw
In connection with the increasingly serious and justified accusations and complaints repeated from all over the country about the situation in the prisoner camps, in connection with the voices of the foreign press, keenly interested in this issue...
All the reports of the inspection bodies correctly describe in horror-filled words the fate and life of the prisoners, forced to spend long days of deprivation and physical and mental torture in the camps, which in many reports of the delegates of the Sanitary Department are called “cemeteries of half-dead and half-naked skeletons,” “a hotbed of pestilence and the murder of people by starvation.” and need,” which they condemn as “an indelible stain on the honor of the Polish people and army.”
Ragged, covered with torn remnants of clothing, dirty, lice-infested, emaciated and emaciated, the prisoners present a picture of extreme misery and despair. Many are without shoes or underwear...
The thinness of many prisoners eloquently indicates that hunger is their constant companion, a terrible hunger that forces them to feed on any greenery, grass, young leaves, etc. Cases of starvation are not something extraordinary, and for other reasons death gathers its victims in the camp. In the Bug-Schuppe, 15 prisoners died over the past 2 weeks, and one of them died in front of the commission, and the remains of undigested grass were visible in the feces given after death.
This sad image of human misfortune...
Due to the lack of ceilings, two huge barracks, capable of accommodating about 1,700 people, stand empty, while the prisoners are choked like sardines in a barrel in smaller barracks, some also without frames and without stoves or only with small indoor stoves, warming themselves with their own heat.
The prisoner camp in Pikulitsa became a breeding ground for infection, even worse, a cemetery for prisoners
Bolshevik prisoners, dressed in rags, without underwear, without shoes, emaciated like skeletons, they wander like human shadows.
Their daily ration that day consisted of a small amount of clean, unseasoned broth and a small piece of meat. This would be enough, perhaps, for a five-year-old child, and not for an adult. The prisoners receive this lunch after they have been fasting all day.
In rain, snow, frost and ice, about 200 ragged unfortunates are sent into the forest every day without making the necessary supplies in a timely manner, a significant part of whom lie on their deathbeds the next day.
Systematic killing of people!
In overcrowded wards, patients lie on the floor on shavings. In a ward with 56 patients with dysentery, there is one room closet with one bedpan, and since the prisoners do not have the strength to get to the closet, they walk under themselves in shavings... The air in such a room is terrible, finishing off the prisoners. Therefore, every day, on average, 20 or more of them die in this hospital and in the barracks.
The prison camp does not want to deal with the burial of corpses, often sending them to the district hospital in Przemysl, even without coffins, on open carts, like cattle...
CAW. Cabinet Minister. I.300.1.402.
5 December1919 G.
Command of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front, head of sanitation No. 5974/IV/ San.
Main commissariat in Warsaw
In the camp Vilna there is often not even water due to a faulty pump within the camp.
CAW. NDWP. Szefostwo Sanitarne. I 301.17.53.
MinistrymilitaryaffairsPoland SupremecommandTroopsPolishOarticle (“Is it true?”)Vnewspaper"Couriernew"about abusedesertersfromRedArmy.
Ministry of Military Affairs Presidial Bureau No. 6278/20S. P. II. Pras.
High CommandBP
All this was nothing compared to the systematic torture of Latvians. It began with the appointment of 50 blows with a barbed wire rod. Moreover, they were told that the Latvians, as “Jewish hirelings,” would not leave the camp alive. More than ten prisoners died due to blood poisoning. Then, for three days, the prisoners were left without food and forbidden, under threat of death, to go out for water... Many died due to disease, cold and hunger.
CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. 1.301. 10.339.
INNKIDRSFSRabout bullyingPolishtroops over prisonersRed Army soldiersAndpartisans
To the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs
In transmitting this note about the atrocities of the Polish White Guards, I inform you that I received this information from the most reliable source.
It seems to me that it is impossible to leave this without protest.
G.L.Shkilov
7/ II1920.
Atrocities of the Polish White Guards
Among the victims was the assistant chief of the detachment, comrade, who was wounded in battle. Us, whom the bandits overtook, first gouged out his eyes and killed him. The wounded secretary of the Rudobel executive committee, Comrade Gashinsky, and clerk Olkhimovich were taken away by the Poles, and the latter was brutally tortured, and then tied to a cart and forced to bark like a dog. ...After this, reprisals began against the families of partisans, Soviet workers and peasants in general. First of all, they burned the house of Comrade Levkov’s father in the village of Karpilovka, and then they set fire to the village... The same fate befell the villages of Kovali and Dubrova, which were completely burned down. The families of the partisans were almost completely slaughtered. Up to a hundred people were thrown into the fire during the fire. Women, ranging from minors, were raped (one four-year-old girl was named among them). Victims of violence were bayoneted. The dead were not allowed to be buried. On January 19, on Epiphany, during a service in the surviving church in the village of Karpilovka, the Poles threw 2 bombs there, and when the peasants began to run away in panic, they opened fire on them. The priest was also hit: his property was plundered, and he himself was thoroughly beaten, saying: “You are a Soviet priest.”
WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 122. Op. 3. P. 5. D. 19. L. 8-9, 9v.
FrommemorandummilitaryAndcivilianprisonersVPolish prisons
Comrade David Tsamtsiev reports on the massacre in the village of Grichine, Samokhvalovichi volost, Minsk district, of captured Red Army soldiers. The regiment commander ordered to gather all the village residents. When they gathered, they brought out the prisoners with their hands tied back and ordered the residents to spit and beat them. The beating by those gathered lasted about 30 minutes. Then, after finding out their identity (it turned out that there were Red Army soldiers of the 4th Warsaw Hussar Regiment), the unfortunate people were completely naked and proceeded to mock them. Whips and ramrods were used. After pouring water over them three times, when the arrested were already dying, they were placed in a ditch and shot, also inhumanely, so that even some parts of the body were completely torn off.
Comrade Tsamtsiev was arrested along with a friend near the Mikhanovichi station and sent to headquarters. “There, in the presence of officers, they beat him anywhere and with anything, doused him cold water and sprinkled with sand. This abuse continued for about an hour. Finally, the chief inquisitor appeared, the brother of the regiment commander, headquarters captain Dombrovsky, who, like an enraged beast, rushed and began to hit him in the face with an iron rod. Having stripped us naked and searched us, he ordered the soldiers to spread us out, pulling us by the arms and legs, and give us 50 lashes. I don’t know if we wouldn’t be lying in the ground now if it weren’t for the cry “commissar, commissar” distracting their attention. They brought in a well-dressed Jew named Khurgin, originally from the town of Samokhvalovichi, and although the unfortunate man insisted that he was not a commissar and that he had never served anywhere, all his assurances and pleas led to nothing: he was stripped naked and immediately shot and abandoned, saying that a Jew is not worthy of burial on Polish soil...
T. Kuleshinsky-Kowalsky was brought to the hospital who had already lost human species. The arms and legs were swollen... It was impossible to make out any parts of the face. There were wires in the nostrils, as well as in the tips of the ears. It was with great difficulty that he pronounced his last name. Nothing more could be achieved from him. As soon as they put him in bed, he lay there like a nightstand until he died. A few days later, a rumor spread that a commission was coming from Warsaw to inspect the prison, and that same night counterintelligence agents appeared and, after many tortures, strangled him.
This was one of our best comrades left for underground work in Minsk.”
Comrade Vera Vasilyeva writes about the torture of a young witch (witch doctor), Comrade Zuymach: “Comrade. Zuymach was taken from prison at night, as if to be shot, brought to the gendarmerie, beaten, put against the wall and pointed at the barrel of a revolver, shouting: “Admit it, then we’ll spare you, otherwise you only have a few minutes left to live.” They forced me to write dying farewell letters to my relatives. They ordered her to put her head on the table and ran a cold sword across her neck, saying that her head would fly off if she didn’t confess. When she was returned to prison, she shook all night, as if in a fever... She, one might say, is still a child, and her head is already covered with gray hair. Finally, naked and barefoot, she was sent to the camp."
Comrade Epstein writes: “Drunken detectives enter the cell and beat anyone. Women are beaten, just like men. They beat fiercely, mercilessly. For example, Goldin was beaten on the head and sides with a log. They use revolvers, whips, iron springs and various other instruments of torture...”
In Bobruisk prison the same thing was done as in Minsk.
ComradeX. Khaimovich reports: “The Bobruisk gendarmerie, having arrested me, interrogated me twice a day, and each time they beat me mercilessly with rifle butts and whips. Investigator Eismont carried out the beatings and called the gendarmes for help. Similar tortures continued for 14 days.
When I fainted, they doused me with cold water and continued beating me until the torturers got tired. Once, in the gendarmerie premises, my hands were tied and hung from the ceiling. Then they beat us with anything. They took me out of town to be shot, but for some reason they didn’t shoot me.”
Comrade Giler Wolfson reports that after his arrest in Glusk on September 6, in prison he was stripped naked and beaten on his naked body with whips.
Comrade Georgy Knysh reports: “They brought me to the gendarmerie, they abused me, beat me with 40 whips, I don’t remember how many butts, and 6 ramrods on my heels; they tried to prick their nails, but then they left..."
From the hostages' statement.
From the prison we were escorted under heavy escort, and if any of those leaving were approached by relatives or friends with any conversation, the gendarmes uttered the most selective curses, threatened with weapons and even beat some, as, for example, Joseph Shakhnovich was hit by a gendarme for he walked sloppily, according to the gendarme.
The treatment on the road by the gendarmes was terrible, they didn’t let anyone out of the carriage for two days, they forced them to clean the dirty carriages with hats, towels or anything else; if the arrested refused, they forced them by force, as, for example, Libkovich Peysakh was hit in the face by a gendarme because he refused to clean up the dirt in the restroom with his hands...
RGASPI.F.63. Op.1 D.198. L.27-29.
Command of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front
№3473/ San.
Major of the Medical Service Dr. Bronislaw Hakbeil
Deputy Head of Sanitation
Report
Prisoner camp at the collection station for prisoners - this is a real dungeon. No one cared about these unfortunate people, so it is not surprising that a person unwashed, unclothed, poorly fed and placed in inappropriate conditions as a result of infection was doomed only to death.
The current commandant of the prisoner camp resolutely refuses to feed them. Next to them, in the vacant barracks, there are entire families of refugees... Women suffering from venereal diseases infect both military and civilians...
CAW. Oddzial IV NDWP. I.301.10.343.
StatementsreturnedfromcaptivityA. P. Matskevich, M.FridkinaAndPetrova
Andrey Prokhorovich Matskevich
The first duty was a general search... I, for example, received only two slaps in the face, and other comrades, such as Bashinkevich and Mishutovich, were beaten not only in the carriage, but even on the field, when they escorted us from Bialystok to the camps... Everyone When we were taken out of the city to Bialystok, they stopped us on the field only to beat Bashinkevich and Mishutovich a second time.
1920: Poles lead captured Red Army soldiers.
After some time, the Jewish community sent us a hot lunch from Bialystok, but our guards did not allow us to eat lunch and beat those who brought it with rifle butts.
The food in the camps is such that not even the healthiest person will be able to survive for more or less long time. It consists of a small portion of black bread, weighing about 1/2 pound, one shard a day of soup, which looks more like slop than soup, and boiling water.
This slop, called soup, was served unsalted. Due to hunger and cold, diseases reached incredible proportions. Medical assistance none, and the circle exists only on paper. Dozens of people die every day. In addition to starvation, many die from beatings from barbarian gendarmes. One Red Army soldier (I don’t remember his last name) was beaten so severely by a barracks corporal with a stick that he was unable to get up and stand on his feet. The second, a certain Comrade Zhilintsky, received 120 rods and was placed in a prison cell. T. Lifshits (former chairman of the trade union of arts workers in Minsk) completely died after various tortures. Fain, a very old man, a native and resident of the Pleshchenichsky volost of the Borisov district, was subjected to daily torture in the form of cutting off his beard with a cleaver, striking his naked body with a bayonet, marching at night in his underwear in the frost between barracks, etc.
M. Fridkina
We were taken to the Brest-Litovsk camp. The commandant addressed us with the following speech: “You Bolsheviks wanted to take our lands away from us, okay, I’ll give you the land. I have no right to kill you, but I will feed you so much that you yourself will die! And indeed, despite the fact that we had not received bread for two days before, we did not receive anything like that that day either, we ate only potato peels, sold our last shirts for a piece of bread, the legionnaires persecuted us for this and, seeing how they were collecting or they boiled this husk, dispersed it with whips, and those who, due to weakness, did not run away in time, were beaten half to death.
We did not receive bread for 13 days; on the 14th day, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but it was very rotten and moldy; everyone, of course, greedily attacked him, and the diseases that had existed before that time intensified: the sick were not treated, and they died in dozens. In September 1919, up to 180 people died. in a day…
Petrova
In Bobruisk there were up to 1,600 captured Red Army soldiers, most of whom were completely naked...
Chairman Budkevich
RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 198. L. 38-39.
Reportabout inspectioncampsStrzałkowo
19/ IX-20 g.
They are buried in a cemetery not far from the camp, naked and without coffins.
RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.8-10.
Main triage room for the sick and wounded of the Polish Army
Report
To the hygiene section of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs
According to the chief, the prisoners give the impression of being very exhausted and hungry, as they break out of the cars, look for scraps of food in the garbage and greedily eat potato peelings that they find on the tracks.
S.Gilevich, major of medical service
Head of the main sorting of the sick and wounded of the Polish Army
CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. 1.301.10.354.
Bacteriological Department of the Military Sanitary Council
№ 405/20
To the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of War,IVsection, Warsaw
All the prisoners give the impression of being extremely hungry, since they rake raw potatoes straight out of the ground and eat them, collect in the trash heaps and eat all kinds of waste, such as bones, cabbage leaves, etc.
Dr. Szymanowski, Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Service,
Head of Bacteriological Department
Military Sanitary Council
CAW. MSWojsk. Dep.Zdrowia.I.300.62.31.
The result of an inspection of our prisoner of war camps in Poland.
90% are completely without clothes, naked, and are covered only with rags and paper mattresses. They sit hunched over on the bare boards of the bunks. They complain of insufficient and bad food and poor treatment.
RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.20-26.
High Command.
Section of prisoners. Warsaw.
To the command of the Warsaw General District - a copy.
The main causes of the disease are prisoners eating various raw peelings and a complete lack of shoes and clothing.
Malevich. Modlin Fortified Area Command
CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. I.301.10.354.
DelegatecommunicationsRVSWesternfrontRedArmy under18- thdivisionsTroopsPolish Comrade PostnekOvisiting prisoners of warRed Army soldiers.
Report
The patients, completely naked and barefoot, are so exhausted that they can barely stand on their feet and are shaking all over. Many, when they saw me, cried like children. Each room accommodates 40-50 people, lying on top of each other.
4-5 people die every day. All without exception from exhaustion.
GARF.F.R-3333.Op.2.D.186.L.33
ProtocolinterrogationValuevaIN. IN. – a Red Army soldier who escaped from Polish captivity
Communists were chosen from our composition, command staff commissars and Jews, and right there, in front of all the Red Army soldiers, one Jewish commissar (I don’t know his last name and unit) was beaten and then immediately shot. They took away our uniforms; whoever did not immediately follow the orders of the legionnaires was beaten to death, and when he fell unconscious, then the legionnaires forcibly dragged the boots and uniforms from the beaten Red Army soldiers. Afterwards we were sent to the Tuchol camp. The wounded lay there, unbandaged for weeks, and their wounds were full of worms. Many of the wounded died, 30-35 people were buried every day.
RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 198. L. 40-41.
RepresentativeRussiansocietyRedCross StefaniaSempolovskayaPolishsocietyRedCross about bullyingprisonerscommunistsAndJews inPolishcampsStrzałkowo, TukholiAndDombe
Exceptional laws against Jews and "communists" in prison camps
In the camps in Strzałkowo, Tuchola, Dąba, Jews and “communists” are kept separately and are deprived of a number of rights enjoyed by other categories of prisoners. They are kept in the worst quarters, always in “dugouts”, completely devoid of straw bedding, worst dressed, almost without shoes (in Tukholi, almost all Jews were barefoot on 16/XI, while in other barracks the majority were shoed).
These two groups have the worst moral attitude - the most complaints about beatings and ill-treatment.
In Strzałkowo the authorities simply stated that it would be best to shoot these groups.
When the lights were installed in the camp, the barracks of Jews and communists were left without lighting.
Even in Tukholi, where the treatment of prisoners is generally better, Jews and communists complained of beatings.
I also receive complaints from Dombe about the harassment of Jews - the beating of Jewish men and Jewish women and the violation of decency by soldiers when bathing Jewish women.
The communists also complained that during a short walk, officers ordered them to lie down and stand up 50 times.
In addition, I have received complaints that when Jewish communities send donations for Jews to Strzałkowo, they are not always distributed to the Jews.
CAW. 1772/89/1789 pt.l
Telegram from A.A. Ioffe to Comrade Chicherin, Polburo, Tsentroevak.
The situation of prisoners in the Strzhalkovo camp is especially difficult.
The mortality rate among prisoners of war is so high that if it does not decrease, they will all die out within six months.
All captured Red Army Jews are kept in the same regime as communists, keeping them in separate barracks. Their regime is deteriorating due to the anti-Semitism cultivated in Poland. Ioffe
RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 199. L. 31-32.
From a telegramG. IN. ChicherinaA. A. IoffeOsituation of the Red Army soldiersVPolishcaptivity.
Ioffe, Riga
In the Komarovskaya volost alone, the entire Jewish population was slaughtered, including infants.
Chicherin
RGASPI. F. 5. Op. 1. D. 2000. L. 35.
Chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation A. Ioffe
To the Chairman of the Polish delegation J. Dąbski
All Jewish Red Army prisoners are kept in the same conditions as communists.
In Domb there were cases of prisoners of war being beaten by officers of the Polish army; in Zlochev, prisoners were beaten with iron wire whips from electrical wires.
In the Bobruisk prison, one prisoner of war was forced to clean the latrine with his hands when he took a shovel, because he did not understand the order given to Polish language, then the legionnaire hit him on the arm with the butt, which is why he could not raise his arms for 3 weeks.
Instructor Myshkina, captured near Warsaw, testified that she was raped by two officers who beat her and took away her clothes...
The Red Army field theater performer Topolnitskaya, captured near Warsaw, reveals that she was interrogated by drunken officers; she claims that she was beaten with rubber bands and hung from the ceiling by her legs.
Not allowing even the thought of the possibility of similar conditions of existence for Polish prisoners of war in Russia and Ukraine, even on the basis of reciprocity, the Russian and Ukrainian Governments nevertheless, in the event of non-acceptance by the Polish Government necessary measures, will be forced to apply repression to Polish prisoners of war in Russia and Ukraine.
Ioffe
WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 122. Op. 4. D. 71. P. 11. L. 1-5.
RGASPI. F. 5. Op. 1. D. 2001. L. 202-204
Soviet Commission for Prisoners of War Affairs
(Excerpts from the letter)
Two Jews were taken from custody to a room of Polish soldiers, where blankets were thrown over their heads and they were beaten with anything to the accompaniment of singing and dancing to muffle the screams of those being beaten.
The fact remains that in addition to the powerful influence of the Sov. No one can help Russia through repressions against Polish officers and prisoners.
Watering the fields inside the camp with sewage...
During the last epidemic of typhus and dysentery in the Strzhalkovsky camp, up to 300 people died. a day, of course, without any help, because they didn’t even have time to bury them: the constantly replenished gravediggers did not have time to fulfill their duty before they died. In the dead bodies, corpses lay in stacks, eaten by rats, and the serial number of the list of those buried exceeded the 12th thousand, while for all time German war he only reached 500.
The chronic lack of dressing materials forced the surgical department to not change dressings for 3-4 weeks. The result is a lot of gangrene and amputations.
80-190 people die from typhus and cholera. daily. Patients are placed two on a bed, and illnesses are exchanged. Due to lack of beds, patients are discharged the next day after the temperature drops. New attacks - and the result: in the dead room there are corpses up to the ceiling and mountains around it. The corpses lie for 7-8 days.
Graves two shovels deep were dug in the frozen ground. There are thousands of such graves.
AVP RF.F.384.Op.1.D.7.P.2.L.38-43 vol.
Camp survey results
In the Shchelkovo camp, prisoners of war are forced to carry their own excrement on themselves instead of horses. They carry both plows and harrows.
AVP RF.F.0384.Op.8.D.18921.P.210.L.54-59.
AVP RF.F.0122.Op.5.D.52.P.105a.L.61-66.
Report of Moisei Yakovlevich Klibanov, who returned from Polish captivity
As a Jew I was persecuted at every turn.
24/5-21 years. Minsk.
RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.48-49.
Report of Ilya Tumarkin, who returned from Polish captivity
First of all: when we were taken prisoner, the slaughter of Jews began, and I was spared death by some strange accident. The next day we were driven on foot to Lublin, and this transition was a real Golgotha for us. The bitterness of the peasants was so great that the little boys threw stones at us. Accompanied by curses and abuse, we arrived in Lublin at the feeding station, and here the most shameless beating of Jews and Chinese began...
RGASPI.F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.46-47.
From the statement of captured Red Army soldiers
former camp Strzhalkovo
now 125th work department. Warsaw, citadel
The prisoners in the camp were deprived of all clothing and wore Adam costumes...
He (Lieutenant Malinovsky), as a sadist, morally corrupt, enjoyed our torment of hunger, cold and illness. Besides this, it's time. Malinovsky walked around the camp, accompanied by several corporals who had wire lashes in their hands, and whoever he liked ordered to lie down in a ditch, and the corporals beat as much as was ordered; if the beaten one moaned or begged for mercy, it was time. Malinovsky took out his revolver and fired.
If the sentries (posterunki) shot the prisoners then. Malinowski gave 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks as a reward. The following phenomena could be observed more than once: a group led by por. Malinovsky climbed onto machine gun towers and from there fired at defenseless people driven like a herd behind a fence
Originally signed:
Martinkevich Ivan, Kurolapov, Zhuk, Posakov,
Vasily Bayubin
WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 384. Op. 1. P. 2. D. 6. L. 58-59 pp.
Mr. Chairman of the Polish delegation
Russian-Ukrainian-Polish Mixed Commission
There were cases when prisoners of war were not allowed out of their barracks for 14 hours; people were forced to send their natural needs into cooking pots, from which they then had to eat...
WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 188. Op. 1. P. 3. D. 21. L. 214-217.
SupremeemergencycommissionerByaffairs of struggleWithepidemicsColonel of Medical Service Professor Dr.E. Godlevskymilitaryto the Minister of PolandTO. SosnkovskyOprisoners of warXVPulawahAndWadowice
Top secret
Mister Minister!
I consider it a duty of my conscience to bring to the attention of Mr. Minister my observations that I made in some of the camps and places of deployment of prisoners of war that I visited. I am forced to do this by the feeling that the situation existing there is simply inhuman and contrary not only to all hygiene requirements, but also to culture in general.
Here are the facts: during my stay in Pulawy on Sunday, November 28, I was informed that in the bathhouse that the Commissariat for the Fight against Epidemics installed in the local barracks, several prisoners were dying every day. Therefore, I went at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, accompanied by doctors, captain Dr. Dadey and lieutenant Dr. Vuychitsky, to the indicated bathhouse and found on a table used for folding things a corpse, next to which other prisoners were undressing for bathing. In another room of the same bathhouse, a second corpse and two people in agony lay in the corner. The prisoners in the bathhouse were trembling with their appearance: they were so hungry, exhausted and exhausted.
The head of the camp, Major Khlebovsky, in a conversation with me, said that the prisoners were so unbearable that “from the dung heap that is in the camp,” they constantly chose potato peelings to eat: therefore, he was forced to post a guard near the dung. However, he argues that this is not enough, and believes that this manure heap will need to be surrounded with barbed wire to protect the waste dumped there.
There were 4 days during which people were not given food at all.
It is completely unacceptable for dying people to be dragged into a bathhouse, and the corpses then carried to hospital beds with the sick.
We need to feed the prisoners better, since the situation that exists now, for example in Pulawy, simply means starvation of the people we took prisoner. If the previous situation there remains, then, as is clear from the figures given above, in 111 days everyone in the camp in Puławy will die out.
...Please believe me, Mr. Minister, that the motive for this letter was not a desire to criticize the military authorities or your government. I know well that the concept of war is associated with various difficult trials for people; I have been observing them for 6 years. But as a Pole and a person who has been working in the oldest Polish school for 19 years, I perceive with pain what I see in our camps of prisoners who are unarmed and today can no longer harm us.
CAW. Oddzial I Sztabu MSWojskowych. 1.300.7.118.
№ 1462 Inf. III. C.1/2 22 g.
To the office of the Minister of Military Affairs
... The camp in Tukholi is especially famous, called the “death camp” by internees (about 22,000 prisoners of the Red Army died in this camp).
BossIIDepartment of the General Staff Matushevsky, lieutenant colonel attached to the General Staff.
CAW. Oddzial II SG. I.303.4.2477.
P. S. Was it not this confession of a high-ranking Polish official that turned out to be the reason for the retaliatory measures of the USSR Government when in 1940 (according to documents recently declassified by the Kremlin) they were executed exactly22005 Polish officers?!
(These and other unknown materials about Stalin’s time will see the light in the book “STALIN and CHRIST” that I promised, which will be an unexpected continuation of the book “HOW WE KILLED STALIN.” The delay in publication is due to the fact that only recently it was possible to buy out the archives, without which the new book would not be possible would make sense)
Without trial or investigation
In September 1939 Soviet troops entered Polish territory. The Red Army occupied those territories that were entitled to it according to the secret additional protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that is, the current western Ukraine and Belarus. During the march, the troops captured almost half a million Polish residents, most of whom were later released or handed over to Germany. According to the official note, about 42 thousand people remained in Soviet camps.
On March 3, 1940, in a note to Stalin, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria wrote that a large number of people were being held in camps on Polish territory. former officers Polish army, former employees Polish police and intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, members of uncovered counter-revolutionary insurgent organizations and defectors.
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria ordered the execution of Polish prisoners
He branded them “incorrigible enemies of Soviet power” and proposed: “Cases about prisoners of war in camps - 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege officers and jailers, as well as cases about those arrested and in prison western regions of Ukraine and Belarus in the amount of 11,000 members various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special manner, with application to them capital punishment punishment - execution." Already on March 5, the Politburo made a corresponding decision.
Execution
By the beginning of April, everything was ready for the destruction of prisoners of war: prisons were liberated, graves were dug. The condemned were taken away for execution in groups of 300-400 people. In Kalinin and Kharkov, prisoners were shot in prisons. In Katyn, those who were especially dangerous were tied up, an overcoat thrown over their heads, taken to a ditch and shot in the back of the head.
At Katyn, prisoners were tied up and shot in the back of the head.
As subsequent exhumation showed, the shots were fired from Walter and Browning pistols, using German-made bullets. The Soviet authorities later used this fact as an argument when they tried to blame German troops for the execution of the Polish population at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The tribunal rejected the charge, which was, in essence, an admission of Soviet guilt for the Katyn massacre.
German investigation
The events of 1940 have been investigated several times. German troops were the first to investigate in 1943. They discovered burials in Katyn. The exhumation began in the spring. It was possible to approximately establish the time of burial: the spring of 1940, since many of the victims had scraps of newspapers from April-May 1940 in their pockets. It was not difficult to establish the identities of many of the executed prisoners: some of them kept documents, letters, snuff boxes and cigarette cases with carved monograms.
At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the USSR tried to shift the blame to the Germans
The Poles were shot with German bullets, but they were supplied in large quantities to the Baltic states and the Soviet Union. Local residents also confirmed that the trains with captured Polish officers were unloaded at a station nearby, and no one ever saw them again. One of the participants in the Polish commission in Katyn, Jozef Mackiewicz, described in several books how it was no secret to any of the locals that the Bolsheviks shot Poles here.
Soviet investigation
In the fall of 1943, another commission operated in the Smolensk region, this time a Soviet one. Her report states that there were actually three work camps for prisoners in Poland. The Polish population was employed in road construction. In 1941, there was no time to evacuate the prisoners, and the camps came under German leadership, which authorized the executions. According to members of the Soviet commission, in 1943 the Germans dug up the graves, seized all newspapers and documents indicating dates later than the spring of 1940, and forced locals to testify. The famous “Burdenko Commission” largely relied on the data from this report.
Crime of the Stalinist regime
In 1990, the USSR officially admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre.
In April 1990, the USSR admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre. One of the main arguments was the discovery of documents indicating that Polish prisoners were transported by order of the NKVD and were no longer listed in statistical documents. Historian Yuri Zorya found out that the same people were on the exhumation lists from Katyn and on the lists of those leaving the Kozel camp. It is interesting that the order of the lists for the stages coincided with the order of those lying in the graves, according to the German investigation.
Today in Russia the Katyn massacre is officially considered a “crime of the Stalinist regime.” However, there are still people who support the position of the Burdenko Commission and consider the results of the German investigation as an attempt to distort Stalin’s role in world history.
The investigation into all the circumstances of the mass murder of Polish military personnel, which went down in history as the “Katyn massacre,” still causes heated discussions in both Russia and Poland. According to the "official" modern version the murder of Polish officers was the work of the NKVD of the USSR. However, back in 1943-1944. a special commission headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko came to the conclusion that the Polish soldiers were killed by the Nazis. Despite the fact that the current Russian leadership agreed with the version of the “Soviet trace,” there are indeed a lot of contradictions and ambiguities in the case of the mass murder of Polish officers. To understand who could have shot Polish soldiers, it is necessary to take a closer look at the investigation process of the Katyn massacre itself.
In March 1942, residents of the village of Kozyi Gory, in the Smolensk region, informed the occupation authorities about the site of a mass grave of Polish soldiers. The Poles working in the construction platoon dug up several graves and reported this to the German command, but they initially reacted with complete indifference. The situation changed in 1943, when a turning point had already occurred at the front and Germany was interested in strengthening anti-Soviet propaganda. On February 18, 1943, German field police began excavations in the Katyn Forest. A special commission was formed, headed by Gerhardt Butz, a professor at the University of Breslau, a “luminary” of forensic medicine, who during the war years served with the rank of captain as the head of the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center. Already on April 13, 1943, German radio reported that the burial site of 10 thousand Polish officers had been found. In fact, German investigators “calculated” the number of Poles who died in the Katyn Forest very simply - they took the total number of officers of the Polish army before the start of the war, from which they subtracted the “living” - the soldiers of Anders’ army. All other Polish officers, according to the German side, were shot by the NKVD in the Katyn Forest. Naturally, it was not without the inherent anti-Semitism of the Nazis - German means mass media They immediately reported that Jews took part in the executions.
On April 16, 1943, the Soviet Union officially denied the “slanderous attacks” of Nazi Germany. On April 17, the Polish government in exile turned to the Soviet government for clarification. It is interesting that at that time the Polish leadership did not try to blame the Soviet Union for everything, but focused on the crimes of Nazi Germany against the Polish people. However, the USSR broke off relations with the Polish government in exile.
Joseph Goebbels, the “number one propagandist” of the Third Reich, managed to achieve even greater effect than he had originally imagined. The Katyn massacre was presented by German propaganda as a classic manifestation of the “atrocities of the Bolsheviks.” It is obvious that the Nazis, accusing the Soviet side of killing Polish prisoners of war, sought to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of Western countries. The brutal execution of Polish prisoners of war, allegedly carried out by Soviet security officers, should, in the opinion of the Nazis, push the USA, Great Britain and the Polish government in exile away from cooperation with Moscow. Goebbels succeeded in the latter - in Poland, many people accepted the version of the execution of Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD. The fact is that back in 1940, correspondence with Polish prisoners of war who were in the territory stopped Soviet Union. Nothing more was known about the fate of the Polish officers. At the same time, representatives of the United States and Great Britain tried to “hush up” the Polish issue, because they did not want to irritate Stalin during such a crucial period, when Soviet troops were able to turn the tide at the front.
To ensure a larger propaganda effect, the Nazis even involved the Polish Red Cross (PKK), whose representatives were associated with the anti-fascist resistance, in the investigation. On the Polish side, the commission was headed by Marian Wodzinski, a physician from the University of Krakow, an authoritative person who participated in the activities of the Polish anti-fascist resistance. The Nazis even went so far as to allow representatives of the PKK to the site of the alleged execution, where graves were being excavated. The commission's conclusions were disappointing - the PKK confirmed the German version that the Polish officers were shot in April-May 1940, that is, even before the start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union.
On April 28-30, 1943, an international commission arrived in Katyn. Of course, this was a very loud name - in fact, the commission was formed from representatives of states occupied by Nazi Germany or that maintained allied relations with it. As one would expect, the commission took Berlin's side and also confirmed that Polish officers were killed in the spring of 1940 by Soviet security officers. Further investigative actions by the German side, however, were stopped - in September 1943, the Red Army liberated Smolensk. Almost immediately after the liberation of the Smolensk region, the Soviet leadership decided on the need to conduct its own investigation - to expose Hitler’s slander about the involvement of the Soviet Union in massacres Polish officers.
On October 5, 1943, a special commission of the NKVD and NKGB was created under the leadership of People's Commissar of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov and Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Sergei Kruglov. Unlike the German commission, the Soviet commission approached the matter in more detail, including organizing interrogations of witnesses. 95 people were interviewed. As a result, it became clear interesting details. Even before the start of the war, three camps for Polish prisoners of war were located west of Smolensk. They housed officers and generals of the Polish Army, gendarmes, police officers, and officials captured on Polish territory. Most of the prisoners of war were used for road work of varying degrees of severity. When the war began, the Soviet authorities did not have time to evacuate Polish prisoners of war from the camps. So the Polish officers ended up in German captivity, and the Germans continued to use the labor of prisoners of war on road and construction work.
In August - September 1941, the German command decided to shoot all Polish prisoners of war held in Smolensk camps. The execution of the Polish officers was carried out directly by the headquarters of the 537th Construction Battalion under the leadership of Chief Lieutenant Arnes, Chief Lieutenant Rekst and Lieutenant Hott. The headquarters of this battalion was located in the village of Kozyi Gory. In the spring of 1943, when a provocation against the Soviet Union was already being prepared, the Nazis rounded up Soviet prisoners of war to excavate graves and, after the excavations, removed from the graves all documents dated after the spring of 1940. This is how the date of the supposed execution of Polish prisoners of war was “adjusted”. The Soviet prisoners of war who carried out the excavations were shot by the Germans, and local residents were forced to give testimony favorable to the Germans. 
On January 12, 1944, a Special Commission was formed to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution German fascist invaders in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk) prisoners of war of Polish officers. This commission was headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Lieutenant General of the Medical Service Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, and included a number of prominent Soviet scientists. It is interesting that the commission included the writer Alexei Tolstoy and Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia Nikolai (Yarushevich). Although public opinion in the West by this time it was already quite biased, nevertheless, the episode with the execution of Polish officers in Katyn was included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal. That is, Hitler Germany’s responsibility for committing this crime was actually recognized.
For many decades the Katyn massacre was forgotten, however, when in the late 1980s. The systematic “shaking” of the Soviet state began, the history of the Katyn massacre was again “refreshed” by human rights activists and journalists, and then by the Polish leadership. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev actually admitted the responsibility of the Soviet Union for the Katyn massacre. From that time on, and for almost thirty years now, the version that Polish officers were shot by the NKVD of the USSR has become the dominant version. Even the “patriotic turn” of the Russian state in the 2000s did not change the situation. Russia continues to “repent” for the crime committed by the Nazis, and Poland is putting forward more and more strict requirements recognition of the Katyn massacre as genocide.
Meanwhile, many domestic historians and experts are expressing their point of view on the Katyn tragedy. Thus, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin in the book “Katyn. A lie that became history” draws attention to very interesting nuances. For example, all the corpses found in burials in Katyn were dressed in Polish army uniforms with insignia. But until 1941, Soviet prisoner of war camps were not allowed to wear insignia. All prisoners were equal in status and could not wear cockades or shoulder straps. It turns out that Polish officers simply could not have worn insignia at the time of death if they had actually been shot in 1940. Since the Soviet Union for a long time did not sign the Geneva Convention, the detention of prisoners of war with the preservation of insignia in Soviet camps was not allowed. Apparently, the Nazis did not think through this interesting point and themselves contributed to exposing their lies - Polish prisoners of war were shot after 1941, but then the Smolensk region was occupied by the Nazis. Anatoly Wasserman also points out this circumstance, referring to the work of Prudnikova and Chigirin, in one of his publications.
Private detective Ernest Aslanyan draws attention to a very interesting detail - Polish prisoners of war were killed with firearms manufactured in Germany. The NKVD of the USSR did not use such weapons. Even if the Soviet security officers had German weapons at their disposal, they were by no means in the same quantity as was used in Katyn. However, for some reason this circumstance is not considered by supporters of the version that the Polish officers were killed by the Soviet side. More precisely, this question, of course, was raised in the media, but the answers to it were given somewhat incomprehensible, notes Aslanyan.
The version about the use of German weapons in 1940 in order to “write off” the corpses of Polish officers as Nazis really seems very strange. The Soviet leadership hardly expected that Germany would not only start a war, but would also be able to reach Smolensk. Accordingly, there was no reason to “expose” the Germans by shooting Polish prisoners of war with German weapons. Another version seems more plausible - executions of Polish officers in the camps of the Smolensk region actually took place, but not at all on the scale that Hitler’s propaganda spoke of. There were many camps in the Soviet Union where Polish prisoners of war were kept, but nowhere else were mass executions carried out. What could force the Soviet command to arrange the execution of 12 thousand Polish prisoners of war in the Smolensk region? It is impossible to answer this question. Meanwhile, the Nazis themselves could well have destroyed Polish prisoners of war - they did not feel any reverence for the Poles, and were not distinguished by humanism towards prisoners of war, especially towards the Slavs. Killing several thousand Poles was no problem at all for Hitler’s executioners.
However, the version of the murder of Polish officers by Soviet security officers is very convenient in current situation. For the West, the use of Goebbels propaganda is a wonderful way to once again “prick” Russia and blame Moscow for war crimes. For Poland and the Baltic countries, this version is another tool of anti-Russian propaganda and a way to achieve more generous funding from the United States and the European Union. Concerning Russian leadership, then his agreement with the version of the execution of the Poles on the orders of the Soviet government is explained, apparently, by purely opportunistic considerations. As “our answer to Warsaw,” we could raise the topic of the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Poland, of whom there were more than 40 thousand people in 1920. However, no one is addressing this issue.
A genuine, objective investigation into all the circumstances of the Katyn massacre is still waiting in the wings. We can only hope that it will completely expose the monstrous slander against Soviet country and confirm that the real executioners of Polish prisoners of war were the Nazis.
In 1940, more than 20 thousand Polish prisoners of war disappeared without a trace on the territory of the USSR. For a long time it was believed that they were killed by the Nazis. But in 1990, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev declassified part of the documents about the Katyn massacre and handed them over to Poland. The truth shocked both Russians and Poles.
In 1943, during the occupation of the Smolensk region by German troops, mass graves of people in Polish military uniforms were discovered for the first time in the Katyn Forest.
Tragedy without witnesses In the 1940s, on one of the islands of Lake Seliger there was the so-called Ostashkovsky camp, where more than 5 thousand Polish military and police were kept. The prisoners were brought to the USSR after the outbreak of World War II, when the German army and Soviet troops entered Poland, dividing the country. The captured Poles were distributed to several camps: Ostashkovsky, Starobelsky and Kozelsky.
In August 1939, a non-aggression pact was signed in Moscow between the USSR and Germany, which went down in history as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The treaty had a secret annex on the division of Eastern Europe. On September 1, Germany attacked Poland, and already on September 17, units of Soviet troops entered the country. The Polish army ceased to exist.
In the Ostashkovsky camp, mainly police officials and employees of the border troops were kept. The dam they built connecting the island to the mainland is still preserved. The Poles were here for a little over six months. In April 1940, the first batches of prisoners of war began to be sent to an unknown destination.
In 1943, near Smolensk, in the town of Katyn, mass graves were discovered. German military medical experts said: the bodies of more than 4 thousand Polish officers were found in the forest in 7 trenches. The exhumation was led by the famous forensic expert, professor at the University of Breslau Gerhard Butz. He later presented his findings international commission Red Cross.
In the spring of 1943, the so-called “Katyn Lists” began to appear in Warsaw. Behind them there were queues at the newsstands. Every day the lists were replenished with the names of Polish prisoners of war identified during the exhumation
At the end of 1943, Soviet troops liberated Smolensk region. Soon a medical commission began working in the Katyn Forest under the leadership of the famous Soviet surgeon Nikolai Burdenko. The duties of the commission included searching for evidence that the captured Poles were destroyed by the Germans after the German attack on the USSR.
According to historian Sergei Alexandrov, “the main argument that the Polish officers were shot by the Germans was the discovery of a German-style Walter pistol. And this was the basis for the version that it was the Nazis who destroyed the Poles.” During the same period, they were looking for those among local residents who believed that the Poles were shot by NKVD units. The fate of these people was sealed.
In 1944, after the end of the work of the Soviet commission, a cross was erected in Katyn with an inscription stating that Polish prisoners of war, shot by the Nazis in 1941, were buried here. The opening ceremony of the memorial was attended by Polish soldiers from the Kosciuszko division, who fought on the side of the USSR.
After the end of World War II, Poland entered the socialist bloc. Any discussion of the Katyn issue was prohibited. At the same time, in contrast to the official Soviet monument in Katyn, Warsaw had its own place in memory of compatriots. Relatives of the victims had to hold memorial services in secret from the authorities for a long time. The silence dragged on for almost half a century. Many relatives of the executed Polish prisoners of war died without waiting for the truth about the tragedy.
The secret becomes clear For many years, access to Soviet archives was limited to selected party officials. Most documents are marked “top secret”. In 1990, on the instructions of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, this package with materials about the executions in Katyn was transferred to the Polish side. The most valuable of the documents is a note from the head of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs, Lavrentiy Beria, addressed to Stalin, dated April 1940. According to the note, Polish prisoners of war “tried to continue counter-revolutionary activities,” which is why the head of the NKVD of the USSR advised Stalin to sentence all Polish officers to death.
Now it was necessary to find the burial places of all Polish prisoners of war. The tracks led to the city of Ostashkov, next to which there was a camp. Here the investigators were helped by surviving witnesses. They confirmed that the Poles were taken from the camp by rail in April 1940. Nobody saw them alive again. Local residents only learned decades later that prisoners of war were taken to Kalinin.
Opposite the Kalinin monument in the city is the former building of the regional NKVD. This is where Polish prisoners were shot. More than 50 years later, the former head of the local NKVD, Dmitry Tokarev, told investigators of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office about this during interrogation.
Overnight, up to 300 people were shot in the basements of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of Kalinin. Everyone was taken to the execution basement one by one, ostensibly for background checks. Personal belongings and valuables were also taken away here. Only at this moment did the prisoners begin to realize that they would never get out of here.
During interrogation in 1991, Dmitry Tokarev agreed to draw a route map to the place where the bodies of the murdered Polish officers were buried. Here, not far from the village of Mednoye, there was a rest house for the leadership of the NKVD, and nearby was the dacha of Tokarev himself.
In the summer of 1991, excavations began on the territory of the former NKVD dachas in the Tver region. A few days later the first terrible discoveries were made. Polish forensic experts took part in the identification along with Soviet investigators.
New disaster 2010 marked 70 years since the execution of Polish prisoners of war. On April 7, a funeral ceremony took place in the Katyn Forest, which was attended by relatives of the victims, as well as the prime ministers of Russia and Poland.
Three days later, a plane crash occurred near Katyn. The plane of Polish President Lech Kaczynski crashed near Smolensk during landing. Along with the president, who was rushing to the funeral ceremony in Katyn, the relatives of the executed prisoners of war also died.
It’s too early to put an end to the Katyn affair. The search for burials is still ongoing.
On March 5, 1940, the USSR authorities decided to apply to Polish prisoners of war highest form punishment - execution. A start has been made Katyn tragedy, one of the main stumbling blocks in Russian-Polish relations.
Missing officers
On August 8, 1941, against the backdrop of the outbreak of war with Germany, Stalin entered into diplomatic relations with his newfound ally, the Polish government in exile. As part of the new treaty, all Polish prisoners of war, especially those captured in 1939 on the territory of the Soviet Union, were granted an amnesty and the right to free movement throughout the territory of the Union. The formation of Anders' army began. However, the Polish government was missing about 15,000 officers who, according to documents, were supposed to be in the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Yukhnovsky camps. To all the accusations of the Polish General Sikorski and General Anders of violating the amnesty agreement, Stalin replied that all the prisoners were released, but could escape to Manchuria.
Subsequently, one of Anders’ subordinates described his alarm: “Despite the “amnesty”, Stalin’s own firm promise to return prisoners of war to us, despite his assurances that prisoners from Starobelsk, Kozelsk and Ostashkov were found and released, we did not receive a single call for help from prisoners of war from the above-mentioned camps. Questioning thousands of colleagues returning from camps and prisons, we have never heard any reliable confirmation of the whereabouts of the prisoners taken from those three camps.” He also owned the words spoken a few years later: “Only in the spring of 1943 a terrible secret was revealed to the world, the world heard a word that still emanates horror: Katyn.”
re-enactment
As you know, the Katyn burial site was discovered by the Germans in 1943, when these areas were under occupation. It was the fascists who contributed to the “promotion” of the Katyn case. Many specialists were involved, the exhumation was carefully carried out, they even took local residents on excursions there. The unexpected discovery in the occupied territory gave rise to a version of a deliberate staging, which was supposed to serve as propaganda against the USSR during the Second World War. This became an important argument in accusing the German side. Moreover, there were many Jews on the list of those identified.
The details also attracted attention. V.V. Kolturovich from Daugavpils outlined his conversation with a woman who, together with fellow villagers, went to look at the opened graves: “I asked her: “Vera, what did people say to each other while looking at the graves?” The answer was the following: “Our careless slobs can’t do that - it’s too neat a job.” Indeed, the ditches were perfectly dug under the cord, the corpses were laid out in perfect piles. The argument, of course, is ambiguous, but we should not forget that according to the documents, the execution of such a huge number of people was carried out as quickly as possible. short time. The performers simply did not have enough time for this.
Double jeopardy
At the famous Nuremberg Trials on July 1-3, 1946, the Katyn massacre was blamed on Germany and appeared in the indictment of the International Tribunal (IT) in Nuremberg, section III “War Crimes”, about cruel treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of other countries. Friedrich Ahlens, commander of the 537th regiment, was declared the main organizer of the execution. He also acted as a witness in the retaliatory accusation against the USSR. The tribunal did not support the Soviet accusation, and the Katyn episode is absent from the tribunal’s verdict. All over the world this was perceived as a “tacit admission” by the USSR of its guilt.
The preparation and progress of the Nuremberg trials were accompanied by at least two events that compromised the USSR. On March 30, 1946, the Polish prosecutor Roman Martin, who allegedly had documents proving the guilt of the NKVD, died. Soviet prosecutor Nikolai Zorya also fell victim, who died suddenly right in Nuremberg in his hotel room. The day before, he told his immediate superior, Prosecutor General Gorshenin, that he had discovered inaccuracies in the Katyn documents and that he could not speak with them. The next morning he “shot himself.” There were rumors among the Soviet delegation that Stalin ordered “to bury him like a dog!”
After Gorbachev admitted the guilt of the USSR, researcher on the Katyn issue Vladimir Abarinov in his work cites the following monologue from the daughter of an NKVD officer: “I’ll tell you what. The order regarding the Polish officers came directly from Stalin. My father said that he saw an authentic document with Stalin’s signature, what should he do? Put yourself under arrest? Or shoot yourself? My father was made a scapegoat for decisions made by others.”
Party of Lavrentiy Beria
The Katyn massacre cannot be blamed on just one person. Nevertheless biggest role in this, according to archival documents, Lavrentiy Beria played, “ right hand Stalin." The leader’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, noted the extraordinary influence that this “scoundrel” had on her father. In her memoirs, she said that one word from Beria and a couple of forged documents was enough to determine the fate of future victims. The Katyn massacre was no exception. March, 3rd people's commissar Internal Affairs Beria suggested that Stalin consider the cases of Polish officers “in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution.” Reason: “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system.” Two days later, the Politburo issued a decree on the transport of prisoners of war and preparations for execution.
There is a theory about the forgery of Beria’s “Note”. Linguistic analyzes give different results; the official version does not deny Beria’s involvement. However, statements about the falsification of the “note” are still being made.
Frustrated hopes
At the beginning of 1940, the most optimistic mood was in the air among Polish prisoners of war in Soviet camps. Kozelsky and Yukhnovsky camps were no exception. The convoy treated foreign prisoners of war somewhat more leniently than its own fellow citizens. It was announced that the prisoners would be transferred to neutral countries. In the worst case, the Poles believed, they would be handed over to the Germans. Meanwhile, NKVD officers arrived from Moscow and began work.
Before departure, the prisoners, who truly believed they were being sent to a safe place, were given vaccinations against typhoid fever and cholera, presumably to reassure them. Everyone received a packed lunch. But in Smolensk everyone was ordered to prepare to leave: “We have been standing on a siding in Smolensk since 12 o’clock. April 9, getting up in the prison cars and preparing to leave. We are being transported somewhere in cars, what next? Transportation in “crow” boxes (scary). We were taken somewhere in the forest, it looked like a summer cottage..." - this last record in the diary of Major Solsky, who rests today in the Katyn forest. The diary was found during exhumation.
The downside of recognition
On February 22, 1990, the head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, V. Falin, informed Gorbachev about new archival documents found that confirm the guilt of the NKVD in the Katyn execution. Falin proposed to urgently formulate a new position of the Soviet leadership in relation to this case and inform the President of the Polish Republic, Wladimir Jaruzelski, about new discoveries in the matter of the terrible tragedy.
On April 13, 1990, TASS published an official statement admitting the guilt of the Soviet Union in the Katyn tragedy. Jaruzelski received from Mikhail Gorbachev lists of prisoners being transferred from three camps: Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk. The main military prosecutor's office opened a case on the fact of the Katyn tragedy. The question arose of what to do with the surviving participants of the Katyn tragedy.
This is what Valentin Alekseevich Alexandrov, a senior official of the CPSU Central Committee, told Nicholas Bethell: “We do not exclude the possibility of a judicial investigation or even a trial. But you must understand that Soviet public opinion does not entirely support Gorbachev's policy regarding Katyn. We in the Central Committee have received many letters from veterans’ organizations in which we are asked why we are defaming the names of those who were only doing their duty in relation to the enemies of socialism.” As a result, the investigation against those found guilty was terminated due to their death or lack of evidence.
Unresolved issue
The Katyn issue became the main stumbling block between Poland and Russia. When a new investigation into the Katyn tragedy began under Gorbachev, the Polish authorities hoped for a confession of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, the total number of which was about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the issue of the role of genocide in the Katyn tragedy. However, following the results of the case in 2004, it was announced that it was possible to establish the deaths of 1,803 officers, of whom 22 were identified.
The Soviet leadership completely denied the genocide against the Poles. Prosecutor General Savenkov commented on this as follows: “during the preliminary investigation, at the initiative of the Polish side, the version of genocide was checked, and my firm statement is that there is no basis to talk about this legal phenomenon.” The Polish government was dissatisfied with the results of the investigation. In March 2005, in response to a statement by the Main Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, the Polish Sejm demanded recognition of the Katyn events as an act of genocide. Members of the Polish parliament sent a resolution to the Russian authorities, in which they demanded that Russia “recognize the murder of Polish prisoners of war as genocide” based on Stalin’s personal hostility towards the Poles due to defeat in the 1920 war. In 2006, relatives of the dead Polish officers filed a lawsuit in the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, with the aim of obtaining recognition of Russia in the genocide. The end to this pressing issue for Russian-Polish relations has not yet been reached.
