POLISH PRISONERS OF WAR IN SOVIET CAPTIVITY

On 17 September 1939, the Red Army entered the territory of Poland from the east, determining the tragic fate of the Second Republic. Thousands of Polish Army soldiers were then taken into Soviet captivity. For most officers and state officials, this was a prelude to tragedy.

It is estimated that around 240,000 Polish soldiers, including several thousand officers and cadets, were captured and imprisoned by the Soviets in autumn 1939 (they were later joined by soldiers interned in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia). According to the directives of 1st rank commandant Boris Shoshnikov, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, all prisoners of war were handed over to the organs of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), thereby violating the provisions of the 1929 Geneva Convention.

However, the Soviets were not properly prepared to detain such a large number of people. The temporary camps
quickly filled up with thousands of Polish prisoners of war, who began to pose an increasing problem for their administration. Thus, as early as 23 September 1939, a directive was issued by the People's Commissar of Defence, Kliment Voroshilov, ordering the release of war prisoners of Byelorussian and Ukrainian nationality who could present documents proving their mobilisation. After a few days, the mass releases were halted, but as early as 3 October, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrenty Beria, issued top-secret order No. 4441/b, which ordered as follows: Prisoners of war from the Ukraine, Belarus and prisoners of other nationalities - residents of the Stanislavivsk, Lviv, Ternopil and Lutsk provinces of Western Ukraine and the Novogrudok, Vilnius, Bialystok and Polesie provinces of Western Belarus - must be released home. At that point, a significant number of soldiers of Polish nationality who had concealed that they were Polish during the census were released from Soviet captivity. However, most of those who managed to deceive the vigilance of the Soviet security apparatus were quickly found, arrested and deported deep into the Soviet Union.

On 11 October 1939, Beria offered to negotiate the transfer of persons from Polish areas
seized by the Third Reich to Germany. As a result of the negotiations held between 24 October and 23 November,
the Soviets handed over 42,492 Polish citizens to the Germans. Meanwhile, 13,757 people were sent to the USSR.

NKVD SPECIAL CAMPS

Over the following weeks, the number of detainees decreased steadily. According to NKVD documents, more than 40,000 Poles were kept in prisoner-of-war camps at the turn of 1939 and 1940. Private and non-commissioned officers (nearly 25,000) were mostly 'employed' by the Soviet authorities as free labour in the construction of the road linking Novohrad Volynskyi to Lviv and in mines of strategic raw materials. Approximately 15,000 Polish citizens were placed in so-called NKVD special camps. Their tragic fate has been described by historians and publicists on many occasions. Particularly noteworthy are the works of Stanisław Jaczyński, who has for many years been making meticulous and reliable efforts to reconstruct and academically analyse the events at the turn of 1939 and 1940, which still cast a shadow over Polish-Russian relations, using documents and accounts of various origins.

The NKVD special camps, similarly to the aforementioned temporary camps, were not designed to hold so many people. Generals, officers and high rank public officers - in other words, the command personnel and the flower of the Polish intelligentsia - were placed in the Starobelsk camp. Ostashkov held mostly soldiers of the Border Protection Corps and officers of the State Police, Prison Guard and Border Guard. Polish Army officers were sent to Kozelsk, which had previously been a POW camp for Polish privates.

Lt. Maksymilian Trzepałka, who was incarcerated in the latter camp, wrote: We are living in what seems to be a circus - 500 people crowded
like herrings on 3 tiers of bunks. Going up and down is life-threatening, nothing gets done. Bickering and squabbles are the normal agenda. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to sit, nothing to read, play, etc. The buildings were not heated in winter. The piercing and relentless chill was felt mostly by those who were housed in corridors and spacious hallways as the blocks were not spacious enough. 'My regiment mates and I learnt to position ourselves in a special system, squeezed next to each other so that one blanket was enough for three', one of the surviving captives described years later. - We would also spread papers on top of the blanket to protect us from the cold. Nevertheless, I couldn't stand the already freezing temperature and squeezed myself into one of the cramped dormitories, where we took turns being eaten by lice, where it was so cramped that you couldn't move if you sat hunched over, but at least it was warm there [...].

The plight of the captives was exacerbated by the poor sanitary condition of the camps. There was not enough latrines and rubbish pits. Although the internal regulations of the NKVD camps from the second half of September 1939 granted all prisoners of war access to compulsory haircuts, baths and disinfection of clothing, the reality was very different. There was no plumbing and, as a consequence, no washroom or laundry facilities. There were lice and vermin everywhere. The captives also suffered from hunger resulting from small and low-calorie rations. Many of the so-called scarce products, such as butter or sugar, were stolen by NKVD officers. On top of that, the food provided to the captives was very often poor quality (out of date, soggy and mouldy). This situation could not be changed by the occasional parcels sent by the families.

The hastily organised medical and sanitary services,
although properly qualified, did not have an adequate number of rooms or sufficient medicines and dressing supplies.

What was particularly distressing for the Polish prisoners of war, as it is clear from their memoirs, was the constant, often vulgar indoctrination. All day long, the camp radio broadcasts were dominated by speeches by Stalin and Molotov, and
information slandering and defaming Poland, its government and military. Political division officers conducted numerous compulsory lectures and talks to demonstrate the superiority of the communist
regime over the capitalist system.

PATRIOTIC SPIRIT

Initially, many officers were heartbroken over the loss of the September campaign and the ambiguous attitude of the Western allies: Great Britain and France. 'The return of that dirty, lice-ridden, desperate bunch of human beings to humanity and intellectual life was one of the most poignant events for me', recalled cavalry captain Józef Czapski, a surviving prisoner of the Starobelsk camp. The first shock was on 11 November (1939). Although the camp authorities forbade the celebration of Independence Day, in the evening every barracks sang the Polish national anthem, the Rota oath and Boże coś Polskę religious hymn. This was followed by saying prayers together and reading patriotic poems. From then on, the captives began to form a sort of monolith. Over time, camp organisations began to emerge, with initiatives such as mutual aid or cultural and educational activities, counteracting frustration.

Despite the prohibitions, the camps began to organise various courses (including military science, issues of general history, language learning, sanitary training), lectures and talks. The organisation of a so-called Spoken Diary and a Sung Diary in the camps was also an important initiative. Information was collected from the available Soviet press, radio announcements and private letters. In the Kozelsk camp, set up in a former Orthodox monastery, news was read or sung each evening in the huge church hall. This allowed almost all captives to overcome the enforced isolation. Very often, the information heard at that occasion provoked hours of passionate discussions and debates.

After much persistence, on 20 November 1939 the Soviet authorities allowed the prisoners to send
correspondence. This, however, was not indicative of a desire to fulfil the provisions of the Geneva Convention. The purpose of the letters was mainly to obtain additional information about the captives and their families. The correspondence was carefully read by officers of the political department and censored. If there
was any doubt about the contents of the
letters, they were detained and the officers were subjected to hours of interrogation.

Nostalgia and concern for the lives of loved ones were the dominant theme of the letters. Lt Edward Kawecki, detained in Starobelsk, wrote to his wife Helena in January 1940: My dearest! Be kind enough to let me know what is happening with Haluśka and the boys. To date, I have not had any news. Please write to me what they do, what their lives are like and where they live? [...].

The Soviets did not manage to break the spirit of resistance thus revived, even in the course of prolonged, psychologically and sometimes physically brutal interrogations. Lt Bronisław Młynarski, one of the survivors of the captivity, has written in his memoirs: He [the NKVD officer in charge of the investigation] sat down at his desk without saying a word, opened a drawer with a key, slid it a little towards himself, took out a large nagan, placed it on the table, then looked through some papers without taking them out of the drawer. He did not pay the least attention to me. Only as he lit a new cigarette did he look at me, watch me for a moment and then, pointing to a chair opposite the table, said: "Sit down." I felt sick, I was nauseous and my legs were trembling [...].This was followed by an examination that lasted for hours, in which questions were asked about the family, a detailed curriculum vitae, military career and views on social and political issues. The interrogations were conducted to test the mood of the officers and also with a view to their 're-education'. The NKVD wanted to find people who could become useful due to the information they had, and to recruit the ones who were willing to cooperate. The latter, however, were few in number.

The uncompromising attitude of the majority of Poles infuriated officers of the NKVD's Main Directorate of State Security. They resorted to repression and harassment, such as the banning of mass and prayers, ever more frequently. In spite of that, religious life in the camps flourished. The anniversaries of national holidays, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1939 were particularly solemn. On 22 December 1939, one of the detained officers wrote in his diary: In today's order, our authorities banned us from singing Christmas carols. Well, may they kiss our ass. We will sing all night.

TOWARDS THE DEATH PITS

Many months of interrogations, investigations and indoctrination of the captives - as Soviet politburos reported to their superiors at NKVD headquarters - did not produce the expected results, only a few individuals were broken. The vast majority did not surrender, openly manifesting their patriotism and their belief in the imminent rebirth of Poland within its pre-war borders.

In the Soviet reality, this meant a death sentence. The decision by Stalin and others, taken on 5 March 1940, to physically eliminate the captured officers of the regular and reserve services was intended to destroy the foundations on which an independent Poland could be reborn.

Camp managers were instructed to quickly produce personal files. An information sheet was supposed to include: the prisoner's personal file number, full name, father's name, year and place of birth, social position, financial status. In the next column, the most recent function and rank in the Polish Army and police was entered. The last column, 'sentence', was not allowed to be filled in at the place of detention. Personal files with completed information sheets were sent to the Board for Prisoners of War of the NKVD, after which they were directed to the 1st Special Department of the NKVD. The central troika, consisting of: Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov, Bakhchok Zacharovich Kobulov and Leonid Fikiyevich Bashtakov, tried the convicts collectively, according to the drawn up lists (which ranged from 49 to 135 names). Afterwards, these lists were sent to the individual camps with instructions that the listed prisoners should be referred to the chiefs of the NKVD's management. According to the preserved documentation, the Central Troika sentenced to death 7305 NKVD prisoners held in prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, as well as 14 552 prisoners of war from special camps in Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov. The final decision was therefore made to murder
at least 21,856 people.

Only about 400 prisoners escaped death, most of whom were sent to the Pavlishchev Bor camp and then to Gryazovets. Some of them were saved at the firm request of German and Lithuanian diplomats. Most, however, survived for unknown reasons. It is now assumed that these were individuals who, in the opinion of NKVD officers, could be useful in serving the Soviet Union in the future. However, this did not mean that they all actually collaborated with the Soviets. The vast majority considered declaring this to be their only option to survive.

Several days before the final 'unloading' of the camps began, compulsory vaccinations against cholera and typhoid began. Special food rations were also given out. There were rumours that the officers would be transferred to one of the neutral countries. This was intended to dull their vigilance and prevent any potential resistance. However, some of the captives, as evidenced by numerous testimonies and notes found with the corpses of the murdered, anticipated a tragic end, as the situation in the camps was getting worse every day.
On 16 March 1940, a total prohibition of correspondence was introduced. The internal and external security of the camps has also been strengthened, their staff reduced to the bare minimum and officers completely isolated. The first transports of officers, taken allegedly to Poland, left: from Kozelsk on 3 April 1940, from Ostashkov on 4 April and from Starobelsk on
5 April.

The destination station for transports of the captives from Kozelsk was the small town of Gnezdovo, located several kilometres away from Smolensk. During the journey, officers wrote the names of the stations they were passing and the information about landing them past Smolensk on the walls and ceilings of the wagons. A description of the route is also found in several diaries found during the later exhumations. An extensive record of the Kozelsk - Gnezdovo route was left by Lt. Waclaw Kruk: At the station we were loaded into prison wagons, guarded by a strong convoy [...]. Just as I was optimistic before, I now conclude [...] that this journey is no good at all. [...] It is evening, we have passed Smolensk, we have reached Gnezdovo station. It looks as if we are about to get off here because there are a lot of military men hanging around. In any event, they gave us literally nothing to eat. Since yesterday's breakfast, we have been surviving on a portion of bread and a scant dose of water.

Professor Stanislaw Swianiewicz also arrived in Gnezdovo in one of the transports. He was unexpectedly separated from the other captives. On the personal order of Beria, he was taken away to an internal NKVD prison in Moscow. He was the only witness to reach "the edge of the death pits". According to his testimony, upon their arrival in Gnezdovo, the captives were offloaded into a vast square surrounded by a tight cordon of NKVD troops - the soldiers had bayonets fixed on their weapons. Every half hour trucks, commonly called black crows or black ravens, would pull up, pick up the Polish officers and drive off - as Swianiewicz wrote - into the unknown. As it later turned out - to the execution site.

Grzegorz Jasiński, a military historian, head of the Military Historical Research Office, editor-in-chief of the 'Historical and Military Overview'

Polish soldiers taken prisoner by the Soviets after 17 September 1939, photograph Institute of National Remembrance

Major Jan Okupski (1897 - 1940), prisoner of Kozelsk, murdered in Katyń. Above: his letter to his wife written in the camp on 23 November 1939, photograph. Museum of the Polish Army in Warsaw