During World War II, both sides of the conflict committed many crimes against humanity. Millions of civilians and military personnel died. One of the controversial pages of that history is the execution of Polish officers near Katyn. We will try to find out the truth, which was hidden for a long time by blaming others for this crime.

For more than half a century, the real events in Katyn were hidden from the world community. Today, information on the case is not secret, although opinions on this matter are ambiguous among historians and politicians, as well as among ordinary citizens who participated in the conflict between the countries.

Katyn massacre

For many, Katyn became a symbol of brutal murders. The shooting of Polish officers cannot be justified or understood. It was here, in the Katyn Forest in the spring of 1940, that thousands of Polish officers were killed. The mass murder of Polish citizens was not limited to this place. Documents were made public according to which, during April-May 1940, more than 20 thousand Polish citizens were exterminated in various NKVD camps.

The shooting in Katyn has long complicated Polish-Russian relations. Since 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the State Duma have recognized that the mass murder of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest was the activity of the Stalinist regime. This was made public in the statement “On the Katyn tragedy and its victims.” However, not all public and political figures in the Russian Federation agree with this statement.

Captivity of Polish officers

Second World War for Poland began on September 1, 1939, when Germany entered its territory. England and France did not enter into conflict, awaiting the outcome of further events. Already on September 10, 1939, USSR troops entered Poland with the official goal of protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian population of Poland. Modern historiography calls such actions of aggressor countries the “fourth partition of Poland.” Red Army troops occupied the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. By decision, these lands became part of Poland.

The Polish military, defending their lands, could not resist the two armies. They were quickly defeated. Eight camps for Polish prisoners of war were created locally under the NKVD. They are directly related to the tragic event, called the “execution in Katyn.”

In total, up to half a million Polish citizens were captured by the Red Army, most of whom were eventually released, and about 130 thousand people ended up in camps. After a while, some of the ordinary military, natives of Poland, were sent home, more than 40 thousand were transported to Germany, the rest (about 40 thousand) were distributed among five camps:

• Starobelsky (Lugansk) - 4 thousand officers.
• Kozelsky (Kaluga) - 5 thousand officers.
• Ostashkovsky (Tver) - gendarmes and police officers in the amount of 4,700 people.
• allocated for road construction - 18 thousand privates.
• 10 thousand ordinary soldiers were sent to work in the Krivoy Rog basin.

By the spring of 1940, letters to relatives, which had previously been regularly transmitted through the Red Cross, stopped coming from prisoners of war in three camps. The reason for the silence of the prisoners of war was Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which connected the fates of tens of thousands of Poles.

Execution of prisoners

In 1992, a proposal document dated August 3, 1940 from L. Beria to the Politburo was made public, which discussed the issue of shooting Polish prisoners of war. The decision on capital punishment was made on March 5, 1940.

At the end of March, the NKVD completed the development of the plan. Prisoners of war from the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps were taken to Kharkov and Minsk. Former gendarmes and police officers from the Ostashkovsky camp were transported to the Kalinin prison, from which ordinary prisoners were taken in advance. Huge pits were dug not far from the prison (Mednoye village).

In April, prisoners began to be taken out for execution in groups of 350-400. Those sentenced to death assumed that they would be released. Many left in the carriages in high spirits, not even realizing that they would soon die.

How the execution at Katyn took place:

• the prisoners were tied up;
• they threw an overcoat over their heads (not always, only for those who were especially strong and young);
• led to a dug ditch;
• killed with a shot in the back of the head from a Walther or Browning.

It was the latter fact that for a long time indicated that German troops were guilty of crimes against Polish citizens.

Prisoners from the Kalinin prison were killed right in their cells.

From April to May 1940 the following were shot:

• in Katyn - 4421 prisoners;
• in the Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps - 10,131;
• in other camps - 7305.

Who was shot in Katyn? Not only career officers were executed, but also lawyers, teachers, engineers, doctors, professors and other representatives of the intelligentsia mobilized during the war.

"Missing" officers

When Germany attacked the USSR, negotiations began between the Polish and Soviet governments regarding joining forces against the enemy. Then they began to search for the officers taken to Soviet camps. But the truth about Katyn was still unknown.

None of the missing officers could be found, and the assumption that they escaped from the camps was unfounded. There was no news or mention of those who ended up in the camps mentioned above.

The officers, or rather their bodies, were found only in 1943. Mass graves of executed Polish citizens were discovered in Katyn.

Investigation of the German side

German troops were the first to discover mass graves in the Katyn Forest. They exhumed the excavated bodies and conducted their investigation.

The exhumation of the bodies was carried out by Gerhard Butz. International commissions were brought in to work in the village of Katyn, which included doctors from German-controlled European countries, as well as representatives of Switzerland and Poles from the Red Cross (Polish). Representatives of the International Red Cross were not present due to a ban by the USSR government.

The German report included the following information about Katyn (the execution of Polish officers):

• As a result of the excavations, eight mass graves were discovered, from which 4,143 people were removed and reburied. Most of the dead were identified. In graves No. 1-7 people were buried in winter clothes (fur jackets, overcoats, sweaters, scarves), and in grave No. 8 - in summer clothes. Also in graves No. 1-7 were found newspaper scraps dating from April-March 1940, and there were no traces of insects on the corpses. This indicated that the execution of Poles in Katyn took place in the cool season, that is, in the spring.
• Many personal belongings were found with the dead; they indicated that the victims were in the Kozelsk camp. For example, letters from home addressed to Kozelsk. Many also had snuff boxes and other items with the inscription “Kozelsk”.
• Tree cuttings showed that they were planted on the graves about three years ago from the time of discovery. This indicated that the pits were filled in in 1940. At this time, the territory was under the control of Soviet troops.
• All Polish officers in Katyn were shot in the back of the head with German-made bullets. However, they were produced in the 20-30s of the 20th century and were exported in large quantities to the Soviet Union.
• The hands of those executed were tied with a cord in such a way that when trying to separate them, the noose was tightened even more. The victims from grave No. 5 had their heads wrapped so that when they tried to make any movement, the noose would strangle the future victim. In other graves, the heads were also tied, but only of those who stood out with sufficient physical strength. On the bodies of some of the dead, traces of a tetrahedral bayonet, like a Soviet weapon, were found. The Germans used flat bayonets.
• The commission interviewed local residents and found that in the spring of 1940, a large number of Polish prisoners of war, who were loaded into trucks and taken away towards the forest. The local residents never saw these people again.

The Polish commission, which was present during the exhumation and investigation, confirmed all German conclusions in this case, without finding any obvious traces of document fraud. The only thing the Germans tried to hide about Katyn (the execution of Polish officers) was the origin of the bullets used to carry out the killings. However, the Poles understood that similar weapons representatives of the NKVD could also have.

Since the autumn of 1943, representatives of the NKVD took up the investigation of the Katyn tragedy. According to their version, Polish prisoners of war were engaged in road work, and when the Germans arrived in the Smolensk region in the summer of 1941, they did not have time to evacuate them.

According to the NKVD, in August-September of the same year, the remaining prisoners were shot by the Germans. To hide traces of their crimes, representatives of the Wehrmacht opened the graves in 1943 and removed from them all documents dating from after 1940.

The Soviet authorities prepared a large number of witnesses to their version of events, but in 1990 the surviving witnesses retracted their testimony for 1943.

The Soviet commission, which carried out repeated excavations, falsified some documents, and completely destroyed some of the graves. But Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which haunted Polish citizens, nevertheless revealed its secrets.

Katyn case at the Nuremberg trials

After the war from 1945 to 1946. The so-called Nuremberg trials took place, the purpose of which was to punish war criminals. The Katyn issue was also raised at the trial. The Soviet side blamed German troops for the execution of Polish prisoners of war.

Many witnesses in this case changed their testimony; they refused to support the conclusions of the German commission, although they themselves took part in it. Despite all the attempts of the USSR, the Tribunal did not support the prosecution on the Katyn issue, which actually gave rise to the idea that Soviet troops were guilty of the Katyn massacre.

Official recognition of responsibility for Katyn

Katyn (the shooting of Polish officers) and what happened there have been reviewed by different countries many times. The United States conducted its investigation in 1951-1952; at the end of the 20th century, a Soviet-Polish commission worked on this case; since 1991, the Institute of National Remembrance was opened in Poland.

After the collapse of the USSR in Russian Federation We also took up this issue again. Since 1990, a criminal investigation by the military prosecutor's office began. It received #159. In 2004, the criminal case was dropped due to the death of the accused.

The Polish side put forward a version of the genocide of the Polish people, but the Russian side did not confirm it. The criminal case on the fact of genocide was discontinued.

Today, the process of declassifying many volumes of the Katyn case continues. Copies of these volumes are transferred to the Polish side. The first important documents on prisoners of war in Soviet camps were handed over in 1990 by M. Gorbachev. The Russian side admitted that the Soviet government in the person of Beria, Merkulov and others was behind the crime in Katyn.

In 1992, documents on the Katyn massacre were made public, which were stored in the so-called Presidential Archives. Modern scientific literature recognizes their authenticity.

Polish-Russian relations

The issue of the Katyn massacre appears from time to time in Polish and Russian media. For Poles, it has significant significance in the national historical memory.

In 2008, a Moscow court rejected a complaint about the execution of Polish officers by their relatives. As a result of the refusal, they filed a complaint against the Russian Federation in Russia, which was accused of ineffective investigations, as well as of disdainful attitude towards close relatives of the victims. In April 2012, he qualified the execution of prisoners as a war crime, and ordered Russia to pay 10 of the 15 plaintiffs (relatives of 12 officers killed in Katyn) 5 thousand euros each. This was compensation for the plaintiffs' legal costs. Have the Poles achieved their goal, for whom Katyn has become a symbol of family and national tragedy, it's hard to say.

Official position of the Russian authorities

Modern leaders of the Russian Federation, V.V. Putin and D.A. Medvedev, share the same point of view on the Katyn massacre. They made statements several times condemning the crimes of the Stalinist regime. Vladimir Putin even expressed his assumption, which explained Stalin's role in the murder of Polish officers. In his opinion, the Russian dictator thus took revenge for the defeat in 1920 in the Soviet-Polish war.

In 2010, D. A. Medvedev initiated the publication of classified documents Soviet time documents from “package No. 1” on the Rosarkhiv website. The Katyn massacre, the official documents of which are available for discussion, is still not fully resolved. Some volumes of this case still remain classified, but D. A. Medvedev told the Polish media that he condemns those who doubt the authenticity of the documents presented.

On November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted the document “On the Katyn Tragedy...”. This was opposed by representatives of the Communist Party faction. According to the accepted statement, the Katyn massacre was recognized as a crime that was committed on the direct orders of Stalin. The document also expresses sympathy for the Polish people.

In 2011 official representatives The Russian Federation began to declare its readiness to consider the issue of rehabilitation of the victims of the Katyn massacre.

Memory of Katyn

Among the Polish population, the memory of the Katyn massacre has always remained part of history. In 1972, a committee was created in London by Poles in exile, which began raising funds for the construction of a monument to the victims. massacre Polish officers in 1940. These efforts were not supported by the British government, as they were afraid of the reaction of the Soviet government.

By September 1976, a monument was opened at the Gunnersberg cemetery, which is located west of London. The monument is a low obelisk with inscriptions on the pedestal. The inscriptions are made in two languages ​​- Polish and English. They say that the monument was built in memory of more than 10 thousand Polish prisoners in Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. They went missing in 1940, and part of them (4,500 people) were exhumed in 1943 near Katyn.

Similar monuments to the victims of Katyn were erected in other countries of the world:

• in Toronto (Canada);
• in Johannesburg (South Africa);
• in New Britain (USA);
• at the Military Cemetery in Warsaw (Poland).

The fate of the 1981 monument at the Military Cemetery was tragic. After installation it was taken out at night unknown people using a construction crane and machines. The monument was in the form of a cross with the date “1940” and the inscription “Katyn”. Adjoining the cross were two pillars with the inscriptions “Starobelsk” and “Ostashkovo”. At the foot of the monument were the letters “V. P.”, meaning “Eternal Memory”, as well as the coat of arms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the form of an eagle with a crown.

The memory of the tragedy of the Polish people was well illuminated in his film “Katyn” by Andrzej Wajda (2007). The director himself is the son of Jakub Wajda, a career officer who was executed in 1940.

The film was shown in different countries, including Russia, and in 2008 it was in the top five of the international Oscar award in the category for best foreign film.

The plot of the film is based on a story by Andrzej Mularczyk. The period from September 1939 to the autumn of 1945 is described. The film tells the story of the fate of four officers who ended up in a Soviet camp, as well as their close relatives who do not know the truth about them, although they guess the worst. Through the fate of several people, the author conveyed to everyone what the real story was.

“Katyn” cannot leave the viewer indifferent, regardless of nationality.

On March 5, 1940, the USSR authorities decided to apply the highest form of punishment to Polish prisoners of war - execution. This marked the beginning of the 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 anxiety: “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 identified ones.

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 as follows: “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 (ITT) in Nuremberg, section III"War Crimes", about the 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.
Preparation and progress 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. On March 3, People's Commissar of 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: “They are all sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred for 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 provide 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 being sent to prisoners who sincerely believe that they are being sent to safe place, were vaccinated against typhoid and cholera - apparently to calm them down. 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 is the last entry 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 Wojciech 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 are in Central Committee We have received many letters from veterans’ organizations asking why we are defaming the names of those who were only doing their duty against 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 an admission of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, total number which numbered 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.

The small village near Smolensk Katyn went down in history as a symbol of the massacre in the spring of 1940 of Polish soldiers held in various Soviet concentration camps and prisons. The secret action of the NKVD to liquidate Polish officers in the Katyn Forest began on April 8.

German troops cross the German-Polish border. September 1, 1939

On April 13, 1943, Berlin radio reported that the German occupation authorities had discovered mass graves of executed Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. The Germans blamed the Soviet authorities for the murders; the Soviet government stated that the Poles were killed by the Germans. For many years in the USSR, the Katyn tragedy was hushed up, and only in 1992 the Russian authorities released documents showing that Stalin gave the order for the murder. (Secret papers from the special archive of the CPSU about Katyn surfaced in 1992, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin proposed that the Constitutional Court include these documents in the “case about the CPSU.”)

In big Soviet encyclopedia The 1953 edition of the Katyn massacre is described as “a mass execution by Nazi invaders of prisoners of war of Polish officers, committed in the fall of 1941 on Soviet territory temporarily occupied by Nazi troops,” supporters of this version, despite documentary evidence of Soviet “authorship,” are still confident that this is so that's all it was.

A little history: how it all happened

At the end of August 1939, the USSR and Germany signed a non-aggression pact, equipped with a secret protocol on the division of Eastern Europe on the spheres of influence between Moscow and Berlin. A week later, Germany entered Poland, and after another 17 days the Red Army crossed the Soviet-Polish border. As provided for in the agreements, Poland was divided between the USSR and Germany. On August 31, mobilization began in Poland. The Polish army desperately resisted; all the newspapers in the world circulated a photograph in which the Polish cavalry rushed to attack German tanks.

The forces were unequal, and German units reached the suburbs of Warsaw on September 9. On the same day, Molotov sent congratulations to Schulenberg: “I received your message that German troops have entered Warsaw. Please convey my congratulations and greetings to the government of the German Empire."

After the first news of the Red Army crossing the Polish border, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, Marshal Rydz-Smigly, gave the order: “Do not engage in battle with the Soviets, resist only if they attempt to disarm our units that came into contact with Soviet troops. Continue to fight the Germans. The surrounded cities must fight. If Soviet troops approach, negotiate with them in order to achieve the withdrawal of our garrisons to Romania and Hungary.”

As a result of the defeat of almost a million Polish army in September-October 1939, Nazi troops captured more than 18 thousand officers and 400 thousand soldiers. Part of the Polish army was able to leave for Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, and Latvia. The other part surrendered to the Red Army, which carried out the so-called operation to liberate Western Ukraine and Belarus. Different sources give different figures for Polish prisoners of war on the territory of the USSR; in 1939, at a session of the Supreme Council, Molotov reported 250 thousand captured Poles.

Polish prisoners of war were kept in prisons and camps, the most famous of them being Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky. Almost all the prisoners in these camps were exterminated.

On September 18, 1939, a German-Soviet communique was published in Pravda: “In order to avoid all kinds of unfounded rumors about the tasks of the Soviet and German troops operating in Poland, the government of the USSR and the government of Germany declare that the actions of these troops do not pursue any goal contrary to the interests of Germany or the Soviet Union and contrary to the spirit and the letter of the non-aggression pact concluded between Germany and the USSR. The task of these troops, on the contrary, is to restore order and tranquility in Poland, disturbed by the collapse of the Polish state, and to help the population of Poland reorganize the conditions of their state existence.”

Heinz Guderian (center) and Semyon Krivoshein (right) at the joint Soviet-German military parade. Brest-Litovsk. 1939

In honor of the victory over Poland, joint Soviet-German military parades were held in Grodno, Brest, Pinsk and other cities. In Brest, the parade was hosted by Guderian and brigade commander Krivoshein, in Grodno, along with the German general, Corps Commander Chuikov.

The population joyfully greeted the Soviet troops - for almost 20 years Belarusians and Ukrainians were part of Poland, where they were subjected to forced Polishization (Belarusian and Ukrainian schools were closed, orthodox churches turned into churches, confiscated from local peasants best lands, handing them over to the Poles). However, with the Soviet army and Soviet power came Stalinist orders. Mass repressions began against new “enemies of the people” from among the local residents of the western regions.

From November 1939 until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, until June 20, 1940, trains with deportees went east to “remote areas of the USSR.” Polish army officers from the Starobelsky (Voroshilovgrad region), Ostashkovsky (Stolbny Island, Lake Seliger) and Kozelsky (Smolensk region) camps were initially supposed to be transferred to the Germans, but the opinion prevailed in the USSR leadership that the prisoners should be destroyed. The authorities rightly judged: if these people were free, they would certainly become organizers and activists of anti-fascist and anti-communist resistance. The sanction for destruction was given in 1940 by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the verdict itself was passed by a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR.

"Ministry of Truth" at work

The first indications of the disappearance of approximately 15 thousand Polish prisoners of war appeared in the early autumn of 1941. The formation of the Polish army began in the USSR, the main personnel of which were recruited from former prisoners of war - after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the Polish emigrant government in London, they were declared an amnesty. At the same time, it was discovered that among the arriving recruits there were no former prisoners of the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps.

The command of the Polish army repeatedly turned to the Soviet authorities with requests about their fate, but no definite answers were given to these requests. On April 13, 1943, the Germans announced that 12 thousand corpses of Polish military officers - officers captured by the Soviets in September 1939 and killed by the NKVD - had been found in the Katyn Forest. (Further research did not confirm this figure - almost three times fewer corpses were found in Katyn).

On April 15, Moscow radio broadcast the TASS Statement, which placed the blame on the Germans. On April 17, the same text was published in Pravda with the addition of the presence of ancient burials in those places: “In their clumsy and hastily concocted nonsense about numerous graves allegedly discovered by the Germans near Smolensk, Goebbels’ liars mention the village of Gnezdovaya, but they are silent about that , that it is near the village of Gnezdova that archaeological excavations of the historical “Gnezdovsky burial ground” are located.”

The place of execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest was located one and a half kilometers from the NKVD dacha (a comfortable cottage with a garage and a sauna), where the authorities from the center rested.

Expertise

The Katyn graves were first opened and examined in the spring of 1943 by the German doctor Gerhard Butz, who headed the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center. That same spring, burials in the Katyn Forest were examined by a commission of the Polish Red Cross. On April 28-30, an international commission consisting of 12 experts from European countries. After the liberation of Smolensk, the Soviet “Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of Prisoners of War in the Katyn Forest” arrived in Katyn in January 1944, headed by Burdenko.

The conclusions of Dr. Butz and the international commission directly blamed the USSR. The Polish Red Cross Commission was more cautious, but the facts recorded in its report also implied the guilt of the USSR. The Burdenko Commission, naturally, blamed the Germans for everything.

François Naville, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Geneva, who headed an international commission of 12 experts that examined the Katyn graves in the spring of 1943, was ready to appear in Nuremberg as a defense witness in 1946. After the meeting on Katyn, he stated that he and his colleagues did not receive “gold, money, gifts, awards, valuables” from anyone and all conclusions were made by them objectively and without any pressure. Subsequently, Professor Naville wrote: “If a country caught between two powerful neighbors learns about the destruction of almost 10,000 of its officers, prisoners of war, whose only guilt was that they defended their homeland, if this country tries to find out how it all happened, a decent person will not can accept a reward for going to the place and trying to lift the edge of the veil that hid, and still hides, the circumstances under which this action was carried out, caused by disgusting cowardice, contrary to the customs of war.”

In 1973, a member of the 1943 international commission, Professor Palmeri, testified: “There were no doubts among any of the twelve members of our commission, there was not a single reservation. The conclusion is irrefutable. It was willingly signed by Prof. Markov (Sofia), and prof. Gajek (Prague). It should not be surprising that they subsequently retracted their testimony. Maybe I would have done the same thing if Naples had been “liberated” Soviet Army... No, there was no pressure put on us from the German side. The crime is the work of Soviet hands; there can be no two opinions about it. To this day, before my eyes, there are Polish officers on their knees, with their arms twisted behind them, kicking their legs into the grave after being shot in the back of the head...”

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(mostly captured officers of the Polish army) on the territory of the USSR during the Second World War.

The name comes from small village Katyn, located 14 kilometers west of Smolensk, in the area of ​​the Gnezdovo railway station, near which mass graves of prisoners of war were first discovered.

As evidenced by documents transferred to the Polish side in 1992, the executions were carried out in accordance with the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940.

According to an extract from minutes No. 13 of the Politburo meeting of the Central Committee, more than 14 thousand Polish officers, police officers, officials, landowners, factory owners and other “counter-revolutionary elements” who were in camps and 11 thousand prisoners in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus were sentenced to death.

Prisoners of war from the Kozelsky camp were shot in the Katyn forest, not far from Smolensk, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky - in nearby prisons. As follows from a secret note from KGB Chairman Shelepin sent to Khrushchev in 1959, a total of about 22 thousand Poles were killed then.

In 1939, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army crossed the eastern border of Poland and Soviet troops captured, according to various sources, from 180 to 250 thousand Polish military personnel, many of whom, mostly ordinary soldiers, were later released. 130 thousand military personnel and Polish citizens, whom the Soviet leadership considered “counter-revolutionary elements,” were imprisoned in the camps. In October 1939, residents of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were liberated from the camps, and more than 40 thousand residents of Western and Central Poland were transferred to Germany. The remaining officers were concentrated in the Starobelsky, Ostashkovsky and Kozelsky camps.

In 1943, two years after the occupation of the western regions of the USSR by German troops, reports appeared that NKVD officers had shot Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. For the first time, the Katyn graves were opened and examined by the German doctor Gerhard Butz, who headed the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center.

On April 28-30, 1943, an International Commission consisting of 12 forensic medicine specialists from a number of European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Croatia, Holland, Slovakia, Romania, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Czech Republic) worked in Katyn. Both Dr. Butz and the international commission concluded that the NKVD was involved in the execution of captured Polish officers.

In the spring of 1943, a technical commission of the Polish Red Cross worked in Katyn, which was more cautious in its conclusions, but the facts recorded in its report also implied the guilt of the USSR.

In January 1944, after the liberation of Smolensk and its environs, the Soviet “Special Commission to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution of prisoners of war Polish officers in the Katyn Forest by the Nazi invaders” worked in Katyn, headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army, academician Nikolai Burdenko. During the exhumation, examination of material evidence and autopsy of corpses, the commission found that the executions were carried out by the Germans no earlier than 1941, when they occupied this area of ​​the Smolensk region. The Burdenko Commission accused the German side of shooting the Poles.

The question of the Katyn tragedy remained open for a long time; The leadership of the Soviet Union did not recognize the fact of the execution of Polish officers in the spring of 1940. By official version the German side in 1943 used the mass grave for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union to prevent surrender German soldiers captured and attract the peoples of Western Europe to participate in the war.

After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, Katyn case are back again. In 1987, after the signing of the Soviet-Polish Declaration on Cooperation in the Fields of Ideology, Science and Culture, a Soviet-Polish commission of historians was created to investigate this issue.

The Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR (and then the Russian Federation) was entrusted with the investigation, which was conducted simultaneously with the Polish prosecutor's investigation.

On April 6, 1989, a funeral ceremony took place to transfer symbolic ashes from the burial site of Polish officers in Katyn to be transferred to Warsaw. In April 1990, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev handed over to Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski lists of Polish prisoners of war transported from the Kozelsky and Ostashkov camps, as well as those who had left the Starobelsky camp and were considered executed. At the same time, cases were opened in the Kharkov and Kalinin regions. On September 27, 1990, both cases were combined into one by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

On October 14, 1992, the personal representative of Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa copies of archival documents about the fate of Polish officers who died on the territory of the USSR (the so-called “Package No. 1”).

Among the transferred documents, in particular, was the protocol of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 5, 1940, at which it was decided to propose punishment to the NKVD.

On February 22, 1994, a Russian-Polish agreement “On burials and places of memory of victims of wars and repressions” was signed in Krakow.

On June 4, 1995, a memorial sign was erected in Katyn Forest at the site of the execution of Polish officers. 1995 was declared the Year of Katyn in Poland.

In 1995, a protocol was signed between Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Poland, according to which each of these countries independently investigates crimes committed on their territory. Belarus and Ukraine provided the Russian side with their data, which was used in summing up the results of the investigation by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

On July 13, 1994, the head of the investigative group of the GVP Yablokov issued a resolution to terminate the criminal case on the basis of paragraph 8 of Article 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR (due to the death of the perpetrators). However, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation canceled Yablokov's decision three days later, and assigned further investigation to another prosecutor.

As part of the investigation, more than 900 witnesses were identified and questioned, more than 18 examinations were carried out, during which thousands of objects were examined. More than 200 bodies were exhumed. During the investigation, all the people who worked at that time were questioned. government agencies. The director of the Institute of National Remembrance, Deputy Prosecutor General of Poland, Dr. Leon Keres, was notified of the results of the investigation. In total, the file contains 183 volumes, of which 116 contain information constituting a state secret.

The Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation reported that during the investigation of the Katyn case it was established exact amount persons who were kept in camps “and in respect of whom decisions were made” - just over 14 thousand 540 people. Of these, more than 10 thousand 700 people were kept in camps on the territory of the RSFSR, and 3 thousand 800 people were kept in Ukraine. The death of 1 thousand 803 people (of those held in the camps) was established, the identities of 22 people were identified.

On September 21, 2004, the Main Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation again, now finally, terminated criminal case No. 159 on the basis of paragraph 4 of part 1 of Article 24 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation (due to the death of the perpetrators).

In March 2005, the Polish Sejm demanded that Russia recognize the mass executions of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest in 1940 as genocide. After this, relatives of the victims, with the support of the Memorial society, joined the fight for recognition of those shot as victims. political repression. The Main Military Prosecutor's Office does not see repression, answering that “the actions of a number of specific high-ranking officials of the USSR are qualified under paragraph “b” of Article 193-17 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1926) as an abuse of power, which had grave consequences in the presence of particularly aggravating circumstances, 21.09 In 2004, the criminal case against them was terminated on the basis of clause 4, part 1, article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation due to the death of the perpetrators."

The decision to terminate the criminal case against the perpetrators is secret. The military prosecutor's office classified the events in Katyn as ordinary crimes, and classified the names of the perpetrators on the grounds that the case contained documents constituting state secrets. As a representative of the Main Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation stated, out of 183 volumes of the "Katyn Case", 36 contain documents classified as "secret", and in 80 volumes - "for official use". Therefore, access to them is closed. And in 2005, employees of the Polish prosecutor's office were familiarized with the remaining 67 volumes.

The decision of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation to refuse to recognize those executed as victims of political repression was appealed in 2007 in the Khamovnichesky Court, which confirmed the refusals.

In May 2008, relatives of the Katyn victims filed a complaint with the Khamovnichesky Court in Moscow against what they considered to be an unjustified termination of the investigation. On June 5, 2008, the court refused to consider the complaint, arguing that district courts do not have jurisdiction to consider cases that contain information constituting state secrets. The Moscow City Court recognized this decision as legal.

The cassation appeal was transferred to the Moscow District Military Court, which rejected it on October 14, 2008. On January 29, 2009, the decision of the Khamovnichesky Court was upheld Supreme Court RF.

Since 2007, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) from Poland began to receive claims from relatives of Katyn victims against Russia, which they accuse of failing to conduct a proper investigation.

In October 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) accepted for consideration a complaint in connection with the refusal of Russian legal authorities to satisfy the claim of two Polish citizens, who are descendants of Polish officers executed in 1940. The son and grandson of Polish Army officers Jerzy Janowiec and Antoni Rybowski reached the Strasbourg court. Polish citizens justify their appeal to Strasbourg by the fact that Russia is violating their right to a fair trial by not complying with the provision of the UN Human Rights Convention, which obliges countries to ensure the protection of life and explain every case of death. The ECHR accepted these arguments, taking the complaint of Yanovets and Rybovsky into proceedings.

In December 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decided to consider the case as a matter of priority, and also referred a number of questions to the Russian Federation.

At the end of April 2010, Rosarkhiv, on the instructions of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, for the first time posted on its website electronic samples of original documents about the Poles executed by the NKVD in Katyn in 1940.

On May 8, 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev handed over to the Polish side 67 volumes of criminal case No. 159 on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. The transfer took place at a meeting between Medvedev and acting President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski in the Kremlin. The President of the Russian Federation also handed over a list of materials in individual volumes. Previously, materials from a criminal case had never been transferred to Poland - only archival data.

In September 2010, as part of the execution by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation of the Polish side's request for legal assistance, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation transferred to Poland another 20 volumes of materials from the criminal case on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn.

In accordance with the agreement between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, the Russian side continues to work on declassifying materials from the Katyn case, which was conducted by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office. On December 3, 2010, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation transferred another significant batch of archival documents to Polish representatives.

On April 7, 2011, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office handed over to Poland copies of 11 declassified volumes of the criminal case on the execution of Polish citizens in Katyn. The materials contained requests from the main research center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, certificates of criminal records and burial places of prisoners of war.

As Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika reported on May 19, Russia has practically completed the transfer to Poland of the materials of the criminal case initiated upon the discovery of mass graves of the remains of Polish military personnel near Katyn (Smolensk region). Accessed May 16, 2011, Polish side.

In July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) declared admissible two complaints by Polish citizens against the Russian Federation related to the closure of the case of the execution of their relatives near Katyn, in Kharkov and in Tver in 1940.

The judges decided to combine two lawsuits filed in 2007 and 2009 by relatives of the deceased Polish officers into one proceeding.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

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 politically 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 cut back Russian territories in your 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...”

How many Soviet prisoners were shot and tortured by the Poles? 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 with the fundamental 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 the “innocent Polish gendarmes,” I am forced to cite (for starters!) at least such an “ordinary” specific 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 Gordynski:

"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 of 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 foreign press, keenly interested in this question...

All the reports of the inspection authorities 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, having already lost his human appearance. 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 passed a cold blade 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 medical services dr Bronislaw Hackbeil

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

From our composition they chose communists, command staff of 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 will still, if the Polish Government does not take the 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 during the entire German war it reached only 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 I promised “STALIN and CHRIST”, 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)