Extermination

At the turn of March and April, there were 3895 prisoners of war in the Starobelsk camp, 4599 in Kozelsk and 6364 in the Ostashkov camp. Prisoners were transported to the places of execution in batches, as and when the threes signed "orders" (nariads), which were tantamount to execution. Those from Kozelsk were transported in special isolation vans (so-called wagonzaks) to the Gnezdovo railway station near Smolensk, from where they were delivered in special isolation vans (so-called avtozaks) to the NKVD dacha in the Katyn forest. Most, with their hands tied, were killed by a shot below the occiput at previously dug pits, a few in the building of the dais itself. It is likely that some of the POWs from the Kozel camp were murdered in the internal prison of the UNKVD (local NKVD Board) of the Smolensk region. A similar scenario applied to the POWs from Starobelsk and Ostashkov. The first prisoners were transported by train to Kharkiv, to the internal prison of the UNKVD, where they were murdered. The bodies were buried at a distance of 1.5 km from the village of Pyatichatki, near the UNKVD dacha. The victims from Ostashkov were transported by rail to Kalinin and then by truck to the local NKVD building, where they were murdered in a special room using a tried and tested method. The bodies were buried in pre-prepared pits near the village of Mednoye, not far from the NKVD dacha.

The operation to murder the Polish prisoners of war involved officers of the NKVD central apparatus sent from Moscow, as well as employees of the NKVD of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSR, NKVD district divisions (Smolensk, Kharkiv and Kalinin) and NKVD convoy and military units. The role of executioners was played by special NKVD execution squads, assisted by employees of the local interior ministry prisons (in Kalinin the squad of murderers and those assisting them, for example, in restraining a prisoner of war, numbered 30, in Kharkov and Katyn 23 each). German Walther pistols, with German 7.65mm calibre ammunition, were used in the executions. Approximately 25 percent of the officers had their hands bound from behind with a double loop of wire or rope, and in one Katyn grave, corpses were found that had sacks on their heads, wrapped at the neck with rope and connected to a loop tying their hands.

 

Survivors

The Soviets shot 97 percent of all officers, policemen and other prisoners of war from the camps at Starobielsk, Kozelsk and Ostashkov. 395 prisoners were left alive: all but two were in Juchnov - one general, eight colonels, 16 lieutenant colonels, eight majors, 18 captains, 201 other officers, eight ensigns, nine police non-commissioned officers, 38 police privates, one non-commissioned officer and one private of the gendarmerie, nine prison guards, two settlers, eight clerks, 15 army and Border Protection Corps privates, 12 juniors, one forestry worker and 38 refugees. Incidentally, that general was Jerzy Wolkowicki, a former officer in the Tsarist navy. At the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War, Volkovicki distinguished himself by exceptional valour and courage, exhorting Admiral Niebogatov and a group of officers and sailors not to surrender to the Japanese and to fight at all costs. This act brought him fame with his book Tsushima by Novikov-Priboy, which was reprinted many times in the Soviet Union: when asked by the enkavudznik interrogating him if he was a relative of the "famous michman Volkovitsky", he was to reply "It's me!".

In any case, it is most likely that the 5th Division of the Main Board of the NKVD Political Bureau (Intelligence) selected these prisoners of war - because of their willingness to cooperate or their possession of valuable information, as well as their extensive international contacts - as useful for exploitation. 47 had their lives saved thanks to influential acquaintances or relatives who intervened with the Third Reich Foreign Ministry, which, through its representative in Moscow, succeeded in forcing the Soviets to transfer them to the Yuchnov camp. Many of them were of no importance to the Germans. Examples include the landowner Włodzimierz Piątkowski and Count Józef Czapski, in whose case Count Ferdinand du Chastel intervened. The surviving group also included 24 prisoners of German nationality, while the Lithuanian Mission in Moscow intervened in the case of 19 others. Due to haste, Mistakes were made and same of those excluded from the death lists were shot. The only officer earmarked for execution who avoided death was the aforementioned Vilnius University professor Stanislav Svantsevich, an expert on German and Soviet economy, who was delivered to the station in Gryazovets at the end of April. At the last moment, he was excluded from the transport to the Katyn forest and escorted to an empty wagon.

 

"You are going where I would very much like to go too".

The prisoners of war were convinced to the end that they would be sent back to neutral countries. The Soviets reassured them of this by skilfully disseminating false information. The commander of the Starobel camp, standing on the steps of the Orthodox church, bid farewell to successive batches of departing prisoners: "You are leaving where I would very much like to go too". So they waited impatiently for their turn. Quite a few asked the camp commandants to speed up their dispatch. However, doubts persisted for a large proportion of them.

Information about the true purpose of the transports was supposed to be provided by the first departing prisoners, who, on leaving the camp, threw away notes in matchboxes and left inscriptions in the wagons indicating the final station. On 7 April, someone left an inscription in Polish on the empty carriages returning from Smolensk, "Second batch - Smolensk, 6. IV 1940". The escorts quickly detected these attempts to send messages and from then on they meticulously went through the isolations in the wagons and removed the inscriptions. In addition, some kept notes until the very end, which were later found next to their corpses.

The preparation and execution of the operation to murder Polish prisoners of war from the special camps and prisons of the western regions lasted almost three months, from 5 March to the end of June 1940 (the 'unloading' of the three special camps lasted from 3 April to 16 May.

According to the latest findings of historians, in the spring of 1940 the Soviets murdered 22,079 (or 23,109) citizens of the Second Polish Republic. These included 14,463 military, police and KOP officers from special camps (4,410 from Kozelsk, 6314 from Ostashkov and 3,739 from Starobielsk) and, according to various data, from 7,616 to 8,646 inmates of prisons in the western regions of the Ukrainian and Belarusian SSR (executions were carried out in prisons in Kiev and Minsk), among whom were about a thousand Polish officers. In the Katyn forest, Smolensk and Kharkov, the Soviets executed 12 generals, a Rear Admiral, 77 colonels, 197 lieutenant colonels, 541 majors, 1,441 captains, 6,061 lieutenants, second lieutenants, captains and ensigns, and 18 chaplains and other clergy.

 

Reward for executioners

Following the completion of the operation to murder the Polish prisoners of war of the special camps and prisons of the western oblasts, Beria, by a special order of 26 October 1940 ('for the successful completion of special tasks'), awarded rewards amounting to one month's emoluments to 125 employees of the ministry who had taken a direct part in it. The other side of this Ekavudzist coin was downright horrifying: the reports that kept flowing to Moscow showed that the executioners were losing their humanity during the operation to "unload" the three special camps - after each execution they relieved their stress with huge quantities of spirutus, and several of them committed suicide.

"Unloading" the camps at Kozelsk, Juchnov, Starobielsk and Ostashkov was not the end of the Gehenna of the Polish prisoners of war. Soon, new contingents were brought there, including officers and soldiers of the Polish Army who had been interned in September 1939 on the territory of Lithuania and Latvia, which the USSR had annexed in June 1940. In total, there were more than 6,000 soldiers and officers.

 

Relations:

Smolensk NKVD employee Petr Klimov, in a letter to the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Repression of the Smolensk region about the shooting of Poles in the inner prison:

"In a tiny basement room there was a sewer manhole. They would bring the victim in and open the manhole, lay his head on its edge and shoot him in the back of the head or in the temple. (...) They shot almost every God's day, starting in the evening, and took them to Kozi Gory and returned before 2 o'clock at night. (...) Apart from the chauffeur, 2-3 men and the commandant would leave. (...) They shot (of those whom I remember) the following: Gribow, Stielmach I.I., Gwozdowski, Riejson Karł. (...) Poles were brought to the executions in wagons, along the railway branch to Gniezdovo station. The place of execution was guarded by an NKVD convoy regiment".

("Moskovskiye novosti", 16 September 1990)

 

Professor Svanovich's account of the "transport of death":

"Once I was officially summoned to the transport, I took a sack with my meagre belongings and presented myself at the indicated place. (...) In a rather brutal but efficient manner, a very strict personal search was carried out (...) then, under a much more reinforced convoy than we were used to, we were escorted to the trucks that were waiting in front of the camp gate. (...) We were brought to a siding where six prison wagons, prepared (...), were already waiting. (...) The normal capacity of a compartment was eight people (...) we travelled exceptionally fast. We reached Smolensk in the morning light. (...) After a short stop, the train started up again, and after a dozen or so kilometres, the train stopped. From outside, the sounds of more people moving, the whirr of a motorbike, and broken words of command began to come in. (...) Under the ceiling I saw an opening through which I could see what was happening outside. (...) In front of us was a square partly covered with grass, (...) densely cordoned off by NKVD troops with bayonet to arms. This was a novelty in relation to our previous experience. (...) A passenger bus pulled out of the road into the square. (...) The windows were smeared with lime (...) it pulled up with its back to a neighbouring wagon, so that the prisoners could exit directly from the steps of the wagon without stepping on the ground. (...) After half an hour the bus returned to take the next batch. (...) Nearby stood a large car in the shape of a black box without windows (...) the famous czornyj woron, or "black raven", which is used to transport prisoners".

(S. Swaniewicz, "In the Shadow of Katyn")

 

Excerpt from the diary of 32-year-old lieutenant, talented sculptor Waclaw Kruk, a prisoner of war from the Kozel camp (number 73 on the death list 29/2):

"08.04.40 (...) Today it was my turn. In the morning I took a bath, washed my socks and handkerchiefs in the bathhouse (...). After taking off my belongings, we were searched again from the 19th barracks, and from there, through a gate, we were led out to cars, which took us to a station not in Kozelsk (Kozelsk was cut off by a flood). At the station we were loaded into prison cars under a sharp escort. There are thirteen of us in the prison cell (which I see for the first time at all). I do not yet know my incidental companions in misery. Now we are waiting for departure. Just as I was optimistic before, I now conclude that this journey is no good at all. We are heading towards Smolensk. The weather (...) sunny, there is still a lot of snow in the fields. 09.04. Tuesday. We spent the night more comfortably than in the old cattle wagons. There was more space and it did not shake so terribly. Today, the weather (...) quite wintry. Snow is falling, it is cloudy. The fields are snowy like it's January. It is impossible to know which direction we are going. At night we drove very little, now we passed the bigger station Spas-Demenskoye. I have not seen such a station on the way to Smolensk on the map. (...) Yesterday morning they gave a portion of bread and sugar, and cold boiled water in the wagon. Now it is approaching noon, and they give nothing new to eat. The treatment is also (...) rude. They do not allow anything. You can only go to the toilet when the escorts like it; neither requests nor shouts help. (...) It is 2.30 p.m. We are driving to Smoleńsk. (...) It is evening, we have passed Smolensk, we have reached the Gnezdovo station. It looks as if we are going to get off here, as there are many military men hanging around. In any case, so far they have given us literally nothing to eat. Since yesterday's breakfast we have been living on a portion of bread and a modest dose of water."

("Memoirs found in Katyn")

 

Extract from Major Adam Solski's notes (number 41 on death list 015/2):

"8.04. 3.30 a.m. - departure from Kozielsk station to the west. 9.45 a.m. At Jelnia station. 9.04. A few minutes before 5 a.m. - wake up in prison cars and prepare to leave. We have to go somewhere by car. And what next? 9.04. Five o'clock in the morning. From dawn onwards the day began in particular. Departure by prison ambulance in cells (horrible!). We were brought somewhere in the woods; a sort of summer resort. Here a detailed search. They took my watch, on which the time was 6.30 (8.30). I was asked about my wedding ring, which (...). Rubles, a main belt, a penknife (...) were taken away."

("Pamiętniki znalezione w Katyniu")

 

Count Józef Czapski:

"Each new sent out consignment disproved our conjectures of one sort or another. In one thing we were all unanimous: each of us waited feverishly for that hour when they would announce the new census of the departed (perhaps he would be on the list at last); we called it the "parrot hour", because the randomness of the census reminded us of those cards pulled by the parrots of wandering cattlemen in Poland. The camp commandant, Lt. Col. Berezhkov, and Commissar Kirshon, were officially vouching to the camp elders that this was the liquidation of the camp, that we were being directed to the distribution points from where we were to be sent back to the country on both the German and Soviet sides. Standing on the grand church steps, the commandant bid farewell to the departing parties with a smile full of promises. 'You are leaving there,' he said to one of us, 'where I too would very much like to go'".

(J. Czapski, "On Inhuman Earth")

 

Extracts from the minutes of the interrogation of retired state security captain Dmitry Tokariev, in 1939-1940 head of the NKVD Board of the Kalinin region, one of the managers of the operation to "unload" the Ostashkov camp (interrogator: Anatoly Yablokov, military prosecutor lieutenant colonel of the justice service, 20 March 1991, Vladimir Volynsky):

Yablokov: Dmitry Stepanovich, for what purpose - at the request of Blokhin (head of the NKVD detachment sent from Moscow to carry out the executions in Kalinin - ed.) - were you present at the examination of the Polish prisoners of war before their execution? (...)

Tokarev: When they were comparing personal data in the red light room... I spoke not at the request of (Blokhin - ed.), but the three of them entered: Siniegubov, Blokhin and Krivinko. I sat in the office. Well let's go, let's go!

Yablokov: Was it already on the first day?

Tokariev: It was already on the first day. So we went. And that's when I saw the horror. We came there. After a few minutes Blokhin put on his special clothes: a brown leather cap, a long brown leather apron, leather gloves with cuffs above the elbows. It made a huge impression on me - I saw an executioner!

Yablokov: And that's how everyone was dressed?

Tokariev: Not only him. The others didn't have the attitude of executioners, only him. It was apparently his special clothes. It's such a small thing, and it made an impression on me.

Yablokov: And what did they tell you? To be present at the interrogations, or as you stated, at the interrogation?

Tokariev: No, he did not interrogate anyone. He only asked: surname, first name, year of birth, what position he worked in. That's all, nothing more - four questions. (...)

Yablokov: You say that you were present during two - three interrogations, yes? And how many people did you question then?

Tokariev: Yes, but I didn't question anyone, I only asked one boy: "How old are you?" He said - 18. "Where did he serve?" "In the border guard. What did he do for a living? He was a telephone operator. (...)

Yablokov: And the border guard boy - what kind of uniform did he have?

Tokariev: In my opinion he was without headgear. He walked in and smiled, yes, a boy, a complete boy, 18 years old, and how much did he work? He started counting in Polish - 6 months. (...)

(Ministry of Justice - National Prosecutor's Office. Materials of the investigation of the Katyn crime, Tokariev's testimony was published in "Katyn Notebooks", 1994, no. 3, pp. 7-71)