FORGOT NKVD
INTERVIEW OF PAP WITH THE past OF IPN A SCHOOL PIOT
THE SOVIEC OCCUPATION
Piotr Szubarczyk: The number of Polish victims of the NKVD crimes of June and July 1941 is undetermined today, but it could be respective tens of thousands – says PAP Piotr Szubarczyk, historian from the Education Office of the IPN branch in Gdańsk. On Wednesday, 75 years have passed since the beginning of mass crimes of the NKVD on Polish political prisoners.
PAP: In June 1941, during the retreat of the Red Army after the 3rd German Reich, NKVD officers murdered thousands of Poles in prisons on the captured Borders of the Second Republic, as well as during the “evacuation” of these prisoners. Why and how did this crime happen?
Piotr Szubarczyk: In Poland, I think everyone heard about evacuations of German concentration camps, in the face of the approaching east front, in early 1945. These evacuations affect the deaths of many hungry, cold, exhausted people, as well as crimes committed on them by German convoys. We rightly call them “death marches”. However, erstwhile I say publically that despite all this, these German marches light towards the cruelty of russian death marches – in June and July 1941, after Germany attacked the russian Union, people look at me with disbelief. And yet it's true.
Let me give you an example. This was on June 24, 1941, from the prison in Minsk to Ihumenia, (it was a town in the Minsk region, in russian times called Red), about 7,000 prisoners – Poles, Belarusians, Lithuanians – left. And only a fewer 100 scope the target! German raids? No! No! Convoys mockly “invite” prisoners to roadside ditches and shoot them in the head. Well, it's a good occupation not to waste ammunition in 1 shot. There are inactive the last witnesses of this hell road. She died a fewer years ago, Joanna Stankiewicz-Januszak, a associate in the march, wrote a book "March of Death", in which she posts their relations and asks for her memory. Since 1991 at the end of June, the yearly Polish-Belarusian-Lithuanian celebrations are held in Ihumen. Despaired, though so many years have passed, and prayed. There have been times erstwhile Mrs. Joanna was the only typical of Poland on these squires.
PAP: There were besides mass killings by the NKVD on site, in prisons...
Piotr Szubarczyk: They were performed with peculiar cruelty. Prisoners were set up in the prison courtyard and killed with series of device guns, abruptly exposed from under the car tarp. The surviving were beaten to death. Crimes were committed in almost all prisons on plundered Polish Borderlands, in the area of present-day Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.
Logically, in the face of German aggression, Soviets should see possible allies in these imprisoned Poles, after all, we have been fighting Germany since September 1939. However, the totalitarian russian state, and especially its political police, was guided by a different logic. Poland, and especially its east Kresy, were treated as russian operating area. Stalin then imposed this way of reasoning on president Roosevelt. In this area, the Soviets did not want for any "Polish element" conscious of their Polishness, Polish national interests and Polish state's rations.
And specified an component was undoubtedly political prisoners. It can be said that this was a logical consequence of the Katyn Crime, in which it was not only about killing officers of the hated army, the Bolshevik slayer in 1920, but mostly about “the ignominiousness”, that is, depriving the nation of the head, which is the most educated and conscious part of society.
Another example is the activity of russian guerrillas, or alternatively diversions, on occupied Borderlands. They considered their enemies not only Germans, but besides AK-owers fighting against Germans.
The “Brigada of Death” Major “Łupaszki” took its name from the fact that the russian guerrillas committed a sneaky execution on 80 Polish guerrillas, having gained their trust in joint actions against the Germans. The Soviets in this war were not our ally! Their goal was not an alliance with Poland, but to dominate it and this goal, with the aid of our allies, achieved. After all, the formal “soy” of July 1941 forced the Western Allies on them. On the occasion of the discovery of the Katyn crime, they utilized the pretext to break relations with the legal Government of the Polish Republic in exile and make their Colombian government. The later “brotherhood of arms” with the “people” army was besides based on submission alternatively than alliance. This is why General Władysław Anders' mission to Russia was doomed to failure and it was essential to evacuate the Polish Army, which the Soviets were incapable to comply with.
In fresh years it has been established that 22,000 russian officers have passed through the ranks of the "people" army from 1943 to 1989. On the occasion of the anniversary of the horrid crimes of 1941, it is worth a deeper reflection. It should besides address the problem of Polish “gratitude” for enslavement, expressed in inactive standing Polish aggressor army monuments.
PAP: Is the scale of crimes committed by the NKVD known?
Piotr Szubarczyk: The number of victims is undetermined today, but it could be respective tens of thousands of people. Comparable to the number of Katyn Crime victims. Only that these crimes of the summertime of 1941 do not have a uniform name in the Polish historiography, as in the case of Katyń. I am besides horrified by the gloomy paradox: these Polish victims present appear in Russian statistic as russian victims of Hitler! After all, in the fall of 1939 they were "scapported" and became formally russian citizens. They were condemned for “the envy of their homeland” or russian Union! For pre-war activities in Boy Scouts, considered an anti-Soviet organization. For serving “the Jasniepanian Poland”...
PAP: In which places did this unnamed crime take on the top size?
Piotr Szubarczyk: The top crimes, apart from the march to Ihumenia, occurred in Berezwecz, Szmian and Lviv, which had respective prisoners. In each of the Lviv prisons, the encavudous criminals murdered respective 1000 people! The victims could be counted here, due to the fact that the Germans wanted to. They even did “open days” in prisons where the Soviets committed peculiarly vile crimes. frightened people searched for their loved ones, courtyards and corridors were sticky with blood. They saw dead bodies in the courtyards and in the cells.
PAP: What was the mechanics of crime in the largest prison in Brigidki in Lviv? It seems that there was chaos there due to the fact that the prison defender first withdrew, but later her officers returned.
Piotr Szubarczyk: Panic fear caused by German blitzkrieg, much more spectacular than in September 1939 in Poland caused the crew of Brygidek prison at Kazimierzowska Street in Lviv to evacuate. The prisoners did not immediately realize the situation, they did not have time to leave the prison. It was not easy to open closed targets. Meanwhile, on orders from Moscow, NKVD criminals returned to kill. They shot straight at crowded and terrified prisoners with device guns. any were sent back to their cells, then selected after respective and systematically murdered. It took 2 days! erstwhile the criminals left, the target's door was opened, and they were seen stacked in piles of bodies murdered. Blood flowed from the prison gate across the street. About a 100 survivors of respective 1000 prisoners. Only a fewer have escaped.
PAP: What do we know about the victims? Were there representatives of Polish intelligence among them? After all, it is known that Polish patriots were sent to russian prisons, which the Soviets included as “counterrevolutionists”.
Piotr Szubarczyk: First of all, it should be stressed that the Soviets murdered political prisoners. Criminals were fired due to the fact that it was a “class-close element”. Politicians in this criminal country were a very large category, especially during the war. The “Politic” could be, for example, a Pole, detained on the fresh German-Soviet border, tearing the Polish Kresy. People suspected of deficiency of enthusiasm for the state's criminal ideology were “classically foreign”. The erstwhile citizen of the “Hispanic Poland” was inherently suspicious, so Poles prevailed among the “political” ones.
From the victims of that time, it is worth reminding Colonel Jerzy Dąmbrowski "Łupaszka", the legendary hero of the Vilnius self-defense from the period of war with Bolsheviks. It was after him that Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz – late buried with the highest honors in Warsaw – inherited this different nickname. Dąmbrowski “Łupasko” played the same function in the russian business region as Major Henryk Dobrzański “Hubal” under German occupation. Everyone knows about ‘Hubalu’. Who's heard of the first "Suck"? There are many indications that he was murdered in Minsk prison for news of a German attack on the Soviets.
PAP: Are the crimes of NKVD on Polish political prisoners forgotten in June and July 1941?
Piotr Szubarczyk: Unfortunately, they are forgotten and widely unknown, although there is historical literature on this subject, e.g. excellent survey
Professor Jerzy Hungarian "Lviv under russian business 1939-1941", inactive from 1991. The aforementioned book by Joanna Stankiewicz-Januszczak is looking forward to the second edition. As if we felt that it was not worth spending, due to the fact that it does not concern Poland... past textbooks besides make it hard to find mention to these crimes. I'm certain the teachers themselves know small about these events. I hope that the fresh historical policy will change this situation.
Norbert Nowotnik (PAP) spoke
