In Russia, fundraising has begun to erect a monument to the Red Army soldiers who died in Polish concentration camps. The Russian Military Historical Society is collecting money and has published the following message on its website:
“More than 1.2 thousand Red Army prisoners of war who died in concentration camps during the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1921 in the vicinity of Krakow are buried in the military burial plot of the Krakow City Memorial Cemetery. The names of most of them are unknown. It is our descendants’ duty to bring back their memory.”
As historian Nikolai Malishevsky writes, a scandal broke out in Poland after this. The Polish side is outraged: it sees this as an attempt by Russia to “distort history” and “divert attention from Katyn.” The stupidity and wretchedness of such reasoning is obvious, because in fact the Poles remained true to their “best traditions” - portraying themselves as an “eternal victim” on the part of either the Russian or German aggressors, while completely ignoring their own crimes. And they really have something to hide!
Let us cite an article on this subject by the same Nikolai Malishevsky, who knows the history of the Polish Gulag very well. I think that the Poles have absolutely nothing to object to the facts presented in this material...
The Red Army soldiers found themselves near Warsaw not as a result of an attack on Europe, as Polish propagandists lie, but as a result of a counterattack by the Red Army. This counterattack was a response to the attempt of the Polish blitzkrieg in the spring of 1920 with the aim of securing Vilna, Kiev, Minsk, Smolensk and (if possible) Moscow, where Pilsudski dreamed of inscribing with his own hand on the walls of the Kremlin: “It is forbidden to speak Russian!”
Unfortunately, in the countries of the former USSR, the topic of mass death in Polish concentration camps of tens of thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Baltic states, Jews, and Germans has not yet been sufficiently covered.
As a result of the war launched by Poland against Soviet Russia, the Poles captured over 150 thousand Red Army soldiers. In total, together with political prisoners and internees, more than 200 thousand Red Army soldiers, civilians, White Guards, fighters of anti-Bolshevik and nationalist (Ukrainian and Belarusian) formations ended up in Polish captivity and concentration camps...
Planned genocide
The military Gulag of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is more than a dozen concentration camps, prisons, marshalling stations, concentration points and various military facilities like Brest Fortress(there were four camps here) and Modlin. Strzałkowo (in western Poland between Poznan and Warsaw), Pikulice (in the south, near Przemysl), Dombie (near Krakow), Wadowice (in southern Poland), Tuchole, Shipturno, Bialystok, Baranovichi, Molodechino, Vilno, Pinsk, Bobruisk...
And also - Grodno, Minsk, Pulawy, Powązki, Lancut, Kovel, Stryi (in the western part of Ukraine), Shchelkovo... Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who found themselves in Polish captivity after the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 found a terrible, painful death here .
The attitude of the Polish side towards them was very clearly expressed by the commandant of the camp in Brest, who stated in 1919: “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.” Words did not diverge from deeds. According to the memoirs of one of those who arrived from Polish captivity in March 1920, “For 13 days we did not receive bread, on the 14th day, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but very rotten, moldy... The sick were not treated, and they died in dozens...”
From a report on a visit to the camps in Brest-Litovsk by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the presence of a doctor of the French military mission in October 1919:
“A sickening smell emanates from the guardhouses, as well as from the former stables in which prisoners of war are housed. The prisoners are chillingly huddled around a makeshift stove where several logs are burning - the only way to warm themselves. At night, sheltering from the first cold weather, they lie in close rows in groups of 300 people in poorly lit and poorly ventilated barracks, on planks, without mattresses or blankets. The prisoners are mostly dressed in rags... Complaints. They are the same and boil down to the following: we are starving, we are freezing, when will we be freed? ...Conclusions. This summer, due to overcrowding of premises unsuitable for habitation; close cohabitation of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom died immediately; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; swelling, hunger during three months stay in Brest - the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis... Two severe epidemics devastated this camp in August and September - dysentery and typhus. The consequences were aggravated by close living together of sick and healthy, lack of medical care, food and clothing... The mortality record was set in early August, when 180 people died from dysentery in one day... Between July 27 and September 4, t .e. In 34 days, 770 Ukrainian prisoners of war and internees died in the Brest camp. It should be recalled that the number of prisoners imprisoned in the fortress gradually reached, if there is no mistake, 10,000 people in August, and on October 10 it was 3,861 people.”
Later, “due to unsuitable conditions,” the camp in the Brest Fortress was closed. However, in other camps the situation was often even worse. In particular, a member of the League of Nations commission, Professor Thorwald Madsen, who visited the “ordinary” Polish camp for captured Red Army soldiers in Wadowice at the end of November 1920, called it “one of the most terrible things he saw in his life.” In this camp, as former prisoner Kozerovsky recalled, prisoners were “beaten around the clock.” An eyewitness recalls: “Long bars were always at the ready... I was spotted with two soldiers caught in a neighboring village... Suspicious people were often transferred to a special punishment barracks, and almost no one came out from there. They fed 8 people once a day with a decoction of dried vegetables and a kilogram of bread. There were cases when starving Red Army soldiers ate carrion, garbage and even hay. 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).
Conditions in transit and in prisons, where political prisoners were also kept, were not the best. The head of the distribution station in Pulawy, Major Khlebowski, very eloquently described the position of the Red Army soldiers: “obnoxious prisoners, in order to spread disorder and ferment in Poland, constantly eat potato peelings from the dung heap.” In just 6 months of the autumn-winter period of 1920-1921, 900 out of 1,100 prisoners of war died in Pulawy. The deputy head of the front sanitary service, Major Hakbeil, most eloquently said what the Polish concentration camp at the collection station in Belarusian Molodechno was like: “The prisoner camp at the collection station for prisoners was 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.” In Bobruisk “there were up to 1,600 captured Red Army soldiers(as well as the Belarusian peasants of Bobruisk district sentenced to death. - Auto.), most of whom are completely naked»...
According to the testimony of the Soviet writer, an employee of the Cheka in the 20s, Nikolai Ravich, who was arrested by the Poles in 1919 and visited the prisons of Minsk, Grodno, Powązki and the Dombe camp, the cells were so crowded that only the lucky ones slept on bunks. In the Minsk prison there were lice everywhere in the cell, and it was especially cold because outer clothing had been taken away. “In addition to an ounce of bread (50 grams), hot water was provided in the morning and evening, and at 12 o’clock the same water, seasoned with flour and salt.” Transit point in Powązki "was filled with Russian prisoners of war, most of whom were cripples with artificial arms and legs." The German revolution, writes Ravich, freed them from the camps and they spontaneously went through Poland to their homeland. But in Poland they were detained by special barriers and driven into camps, and some were forced into forced labor.
The Poles themselves were horrified
Most of the Polish concentration camps were built in a very short period of time, some were built by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. They were completely unsuited for long-term detention of prisoners. For example, the camp in Dąba near Krakow was an entire city with numerous streets and squares. Instead of houses there are barracks with loose wooden walls, many without wooden floors. All this is surrounded by rows of barbed wire. Conditions for keeping prisoners in winter: “The majority are without shoes - completely barefoot... There are almost no beds and bunks... There is no straw or hay at all. They sleep on the ground or boards. There are very few blankets.” From a letter from the chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation at peace negotiations with Poland, Adolf Joffe, to the chairman of the Polish delegation, Jan Dombski, dated January 9, 1921: “In Dombe, most of the prisoners are barefoot, and in the camp at the headquarters of the 18th division, most of them do not have any clothes.”
The situation in Bialystok is evidenced by letters preserved in the Central Military Archive from a military medic and the head of the sanitary department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Zdzislaw Gordynski-Yukhnovich. In December 1919, he reported in despair to the chief doctor of the Polish Army about his visit to marshalling yard in Bialystok:
“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 the eyes of everyone who ends up in the camp... Again the same criminal neglect of one’s duties all the bodies operating in the camp brought shame on our name, on the Polish army, just as happened in Brest-Litovsk... There is unimaginable dirt and disorder in the camp. At the doors of the barracks there are piles of human waste, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The patients are so weakened that they are unable to reach the latrines. Those, in turn, are in such a state that it is impossible to get closer to the seats, since the entire floor is covered with a thick layer of human feces. The barracks are overcrowded, and there are many sick people among the healthy. According to my data, among the 1,400 prisoners there are no healthy people at all. Covered in rags, they hug each other, trying to keep warm. The stench reigns, emanating from patients with dysentery and gangrene, legs swollen from hunger. Two particularly seriously ill patients lay in their own excrement, leaking from their torn pants. They did not have the strength to move to a dry place. What a terrible picture.”
Former prisoner of the Polish camp in Bialystok Andrei Matskevich later recalled that a prisoner who was lucky received a day “a small portion of black bread weighing about ½ pound (200 grams), one shard of soup, more like slop, and boiling water.”
Concentration camp in Strzałkowo, located between Poznan and Warsaw, was considered the worst. It appeared at the turn of 1914-1915 as a German camp for prisoners from the fronts of the First World War on the border between Germany and the Russian Empire - near the road connecting two border areas - Strzalkowo on the Prussian side and Sluptsy on the Russian side. After the end of World War I, it was decided to liquidate the camp. However, instead it passed from the Germans to the Poles and began to be used as a concentration camp for Red Army prisoners of war. As soon as the camp became Polish (from May 12, 1919), the mortality rate of prisoners of war in it increased more than 16 times during the year. On July 11, 1919, by order of the Ministry of Defense of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was given the name “prisoner of war camp No. 1 near Strzałkowo” (Obóz Jeniecki Nr 1 pod Strzałkowem).
After the conclusion of the Riga Peace Treaty, the concentration camp in Strzalkowo was also used to hold internees, including Russian White Guards, military personnel of the so-called Ukrainian People's Army and the formations of the Belarusian “father”-ataman Stanislav Bulak-Bulakhovich. What happened in this concentration camp is evidenced not only by documents, but also by publications in the press of that time.
In particular, the New Courier of January 4, 1921 described in a then sensational article the shocking fate of a detachment of several hundred Latvians. These soldiers, led by their commanders, deserted from the Red Army and went over to the Polish side in order to return to their homeland. They were received very cordially by the Polish military. Before they were sent to the camp, they were given a certificate that they voluntarily went over to the side of the Poles. The robbery began already on the way to the camp. The Latvians were stripped of all their clothes, with the exception of underwear. And those who managed to hide at least part of their belongings had everything taken away from them in Strzałkowo. They were left in rags, without shoes. But this is a small thing compared to the systematic abuse to which they were subjected in the concentration camp. It all started with 50 blows with barbed wire whips, while the Latvians were told that they were Jewish mercenaries and would not leave the camp alive. More than 10 people died from blood poisoning. After this, the prisoners were left for three days without food, forbidden to go out for water on pain of death. Two were shot without any reason. Most likely, the threat would have been carried out, and not a single Latvian would have left the camp alive if its commanders - Captain Wagner and Lieutenant Malinovsky - had not been arrested and put on trial by the investigative commission.
During the investigation, among other things, it turned out that walking around the camp, accompanied by corporals with wire whips and beating prisoners, was Malinovsky’s favorite pastime. If the beaten person moaned or asked for mercy, he was shot. For the murder of a prisoner, Malinovsky rewarded the sentries with 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks. The Polish authorities tried to quickly hush up the scandal and the case...
In November 1919, the military authorities reported to the Polish Sejm commission that the largest Polish prisoner camp No. 1 in Strzałkow was “very well equipped.” In reality, at that time the roofs of the camp barracks were full of holes, and they were not equipped with bunks. It was probably believed that this was good for the Bolsheviks. Red Cross spokeswoman Stefania Sempolowska wrote from the camp: “The communist barracks were so crowded that the squashed prisoners were unable to lie down and stood propping up one another.” The situation in Strzalkow did not change in October 1920: “Clothing and shoes are very scanty, most go barefoot... There are no beds - they sleep on straw... Due to lack of food, prisoners, busy peeling potatoes, secretly eat them raw.”
The report of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation states: “By keeping prisoners in their underwear, the Poles treated them not as people of an equal race, but as slaves. The beating of prisoners was practiced at every step...” Eyewitnesses say: “Every day, those arrested are driven out into the street and, instead of walking, are forced to run, ordered to fall into the mud... If a prisoner refuses to fall or, having fallen, cannot rise, exhausted, he is beaten with blows from rifle butts.”
Polish Russophobes did not spare either the Reds or the Whites
As the largest of the camps, Strzałkowo was designed for 25 thousand prisoners. In reality, the number of prisoners sometimes exceeded 37 thousand. The numbers changed quickly as people died like flies in the cold. Russian and Polish compilers of the collection “Red Army Men in Polish Captivity in 1919-1922.” Sat. documents and materials" claim that “in Strzałkowo in 1919-1920. About 8 thousand prisoners died.” At the same time, the RCP(b) committee, which operated clandestinely in the Strzalkowo camp, stated in its report to the Soviet Commission on Prisoners of War Affairs in April 1921 that: “During the last epidemic of typhoid and dysentery, 300 people each died. per day... the serial number of the list of those buried has exceeded the 12th thousand...". Such a statement about the enormous mortality rate in Strzałkowo is not the only one.
Despite claims by Polish historians that the situation in Polish concentration camps had once again improved by 1921, documents indicate otherwise. The minutes of the meeting of the Mixed (Polish-Russian-Ukrainian) Commission on Repatriation dated July 28, 1921 noted that in Strzalkow “the command, as if in retaliation, after the first arrival of our delegation sharply intensified its repressions... Red Army soldiers are beaten and tortured for any reason and for no reason... the beatings took the form of an epidemic.” In November 1921, when, according to Polish historians, “the situation in the camps had radically improved,” RUD employees described the living quarters for prisoners in Strzalkow: “Most of the barracks are underground, damp, dark, cold, with broken glass, broken floors and a thin roof. Openings in the roofs allow for free views starry sky. Those placed in them get wet and cold day and night... There is no lighting.”
The fact that the Polish authorities did not consider “Russian Bolshevik prisoners” to be people is also evidenced by the following fact: in the largest Polish prisoner of war camp in Strzałkowo, for 3 (three) years they were unable to resolve the issue of prisoners of war taking care of their natural needs at night. There were no toilets in the barracks, and the camp administration, under pain of execution, forbade leaving the barracks after 6 pm. Therefore, prisoners “We were forced to send natural needs into pots, from which we then had to eat.”
The second largest Polish concentration camp, located in the area of the city of Tuchola (Tucheln, Tuchola, Tuchola, Tuchol, Tuchola, Tuchol), can rightfully challenge Strzałkowo for the title of the most terrible. Or, at least, the most disastrous for people. It was built by the Germans during the First World War, in 1914. Initially, the camp held mainly Russians, later they were joined by Romanian, French, English and Italian prisoners of war. Since 1919, the camp began to be used by the Poles to concentrate there soldiers and commanders of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian formations and civilians who sympathized with Soviet power. In December 1920, a representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Natalia Krejc-Wieleżyńska, wrote: “The camp in Tukholi is the so-called. dugouts, which are entered by steps going down. On both sides there are bunks on which the prisoners sleep. There are no hay fields, straw, or blankets. No heat due to irregular fuel supply. Lack of linen and clothing in all departments. The most tragic are the conditions of the new arrivals, who are transported in unheated carriages, without appropriate clothing, cold, hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker ones die.”
From a letter from a White Guard: “...The internees are housed in barracks and dugouts. They are completely unsuited for winter. The barracks were made of thick corrugated iron, covered on the inside with thin wooden panels, which were torn in many places. The door and partly the windows are fitted very poorly, there is a desperate draft from them... The internees are not even given bedding under the pretext of “malnutrition of the horses.” We are thinking with extreme anxiety about the coming winter."(Letter from Tukholi, October 22, 1921).
In the State Archives Russian Federation there are memoirs of Lieutenant Kalikin, who passed through the concentration camp in Tukholi. The lieutenant who was lucky enough to survive writes: “Even in Thorn, all sorts of horrors were told about Tuchol, but the reality exceeded all expectations. Imagine a sandy plain not far from the river, fenced with two rows of barbed wire, inside which dilapidated dugouts are located in regular rows. Not a tree, not a blade of grass anywhere, just sand. Not far from the main gate are corrugated iron barracks. When you pass by them at night, you hear some strange, soul-aching sound, as if someone is quietly sobbing. During the day the sun in the barracks is unbearably hot, at night it is cold... When our army was interned, the Polish minister Sapieha was asked what would happen to it. “She will be dealt with as required by the honor and dignity of Poland,” he answered proudly. Was Tuchol really necessary for this “honor”? So, we arrived in Tukhol and settled in iron barracks. The cold weather set in, but the stoves were not lit for lack of firewood. A year later, 50% of the women and 40% of the men who were here fell ill, mainly from tuberculosis. Many of them died. Most of my friends died, and there were also people who hanged themselves.”
Red Army soldier Valuev said that at the end of August 1920 he and other prisoners: “They were sent to the Tukholi 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. The wounded lay in cold barracks without food or medicine.”
In frosty November 1920, the Tuchola hospital resembled a conveyor belt of death: “Hospital buildings are huge barracks, in most cases made of iron, like hangars. All the buildings are dilapidated and damaged, there are holes in the walls through which you can stick your hand... The cold is usually terrible. They say that during frosty nights the walls become covered with ice. The patients lie on terrible beds... All are on dirty mattresses without bed linen, only ¼ have some blankets, all are covered with dirty rags or a paper blanket.”
Representative of the Russian Red Cross Society Stefania Sempolovskaya about the November (1920) inspection in Tuchol: “The patients lie in terrible beds, without bed linen, only a quarter have blankets. The wounded complain of terrible cold, which not only interferes with the healing of wounds, but, according to doctors, increases the pain during healing. Sanitary personnel complain about the complete lack of dressings, cotton wool and bandages. I saw bandages drying in the forest. Typhus and dysentery were widespread in the camp and spread to prisoners working in the area. The number of sick people in the camp is so great that one of the barracks in the communist section has been turned into an infirmary. On November 16, more than seventy patients lay there. A significant part is on the ground."
The mortality rate from wounds, disease and frostbite was such that, according to the conclusion of American representatives, after 5-6 months there should have been no one left in the camp. Stefania Sempolovskaya, commissioner of the Russian Red Cross Society, assessed the mortality rate among prisoners in a similar way: “...Tukholya: The mortality rate in the camp is so high that, according to calculations made by me with one of the officers, with the mortality rate that was in October (1920), the entire camp would have died out in 4-5 months.”
The emigrant Russian press, published in Poland and, to put it mildly, had no sympathy for the Bolsheviks, directly wrote about Tukholi as a “death camp” for Red Army soldiers. In particular, the emigrant newspaper Svoboda, published in Warsaw and completely dependent on the Polish authorities, reported in October 1921 that at that time a total of 22 thousand people had died in the Tuchol camp. The head of the II department also gives a similar number of deaths. General Staff Polish troops (military intelligence and counterintelligence) Lieutenant Colonel Ignacy Matuszewski.
In his report dated February 1, 1922 to the office of the Polish Minister of War to General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Ignacy Matuszewski states: “From the materials available to the II Department... it should be concluded that these facts of escapes from the camps are not limited only to Strzałkow, but also occur in all other camps, both for communists and for interned whites. These escapes were caused by the conditions in which the communists and internees were (lack of fuel, linen and clothing, poor food, and long waits to leave for Russia). The camp in Tukholi became especially famous, which internees call the “death camp” (about 22,000 captured Red Army soldiers died in this camp."
Analyzing the contents of the document signed by Matuszewski, Russian researchers, first of all, emphasize that it “was not a personal message from a private person, but an official response to the order of the Minister of War of Poland No. 65/22 of January 12, 1922, with a categorical instruction to the head of the II Department of the General Staff: “... provide an explanation under what conditions the escape of 33 communists from the camp took place prisoners of Strzałkowo and who is responsible for this.” Such orders are usually given to special services when it is necessary to establish with absolute certainty the true picture of what happened. It was no coincidence that the minister instructed Matuszewski to investigate the circumstances of the escape of communists from Strzałkowo. The head of the II Department of the General Staff in 1920-1923 was the most informed person in Poland on the real state of affairs in the prisoner of war and internment camps. The officers of the II Department subordinate to him were not only involved in “sorting” arriving prisoners of war, but also controlled the political situation in the camps. Due to his official position, Matushevsky was simply obliged to know the real state of affairs in the camp in Tukholi.
Therefore, there can be no doubt that long before writing his letter of February 1, 1922, Matuszewski had comprehensive, documented and verified information about the death of 22 thousand captured Red Army soldiers in the Tucholi camp. Otherwise, you have to be a political suicide to, on your own initiative, report unverified facts of this level to the country's leadership, especially on an issue that is at the center of a high-profile diplomatic scandal! Indeed, at that time in Poland passions had not yet had time to cool down after the famous note of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR Georgy Chicherin dated September 9, 1921, in which he, in the harshest terms, accused the Polish authorities of the deaths of 60,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
In addition to Matuszewski’s report, reports from the Russian émigré press about the huge number of deaths in Tukholi are actually confirmed by reports from hospital services. In particular, regarding “a clear picture regarding the death of Russian prisoners of war can be observed in the “death camp” in Tukholi, in which there were official statistics, but even then only during certain periods of the prisoners’ stay there. According to these, although not complete, statistics, from the opening of the infirmary in February 1921 (and the most difficult winter months for prisoners of war were the winter months of 1920-1921) and until May 11 of the same year, there were 6,491 epidemic diseases in the camp, 17,294 non-epidemic ones. In total – 23785 diseases. The number of prisoners in the camp during this period did not exceed 10-11 thousand, so more than half of the prisoners there suffered from epidemic diseases, and each of the prisoners had to get sick at least twice in 3 months. Officially, 2,561 deaths were registered during this period, i.e. in 3 months at least 25% of the population died total number prisoners of war."
About mortality in Tukholi in the most terrible months of 1920/1921 (November, December, January and February), according to Russian researchers, “One can only guess. We must assume that it was no less than 2,000 people per month.” When assessing the mortality rate in Tuchola, it must also be remembered that the representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Krejc-Wieleżyńska, noted in her report on visiting the camp in December 1920 that: “The most tragic are the conditions of the new arrivals, who are transported in unheated carriages, without adequate clothing, cold, hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to hospital, and the weaker ones die.” The mortality rate in such echelons reached 40%. Those who died on the trains, although they were considered sent to the camp and were buried in camp burial grounds, were not officially recorded anywhere in general camp statistics. Their number could only be taken into account by the officers of the II Department, who supervised the reception and “sorting” of prisoners of war. Also, apparently, the mortality rate of newly arrived prisoners of war who died in quarantine was not reflected in the final camp reports.
In this context, of particular interest is not only the above-cited testimony of the head of the II Department of the Polish General Staff, Matuszewski, about mortality in the concentration camp, but also the recollections of local residents of Tucholy. According to them, back in the 1930s there were many plots here, “on which the ground collapsed underfoot, and human remains protruded from it”…
...The military Gulag of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lasted a relatively short time - about three years. But during this time he managed to destroy tens of thousands human lives. The Polish side still admits the death of “16-18 thousand”. According to Russian and Ukrainian scientists, researchers and politicians, in reality this figure may be about five times higher...
Nikolai Malishevsky, “Eye of the Planet”
Next, we suggest going to virtual tour in a scary place - to the German camp death of Majdanek, which was built on Polish territory during the Second World War. Currently, there is a museum on the camp grounds.
From Warsaw to the museum at the site of the “death camp” (outskirts of Lublin) it takes two and a half hours by car. Admission is free, but few people want to visit. Only in the crematorium building, where five ovens turned prisoners into ashes every day, is a school field trip crowded with a Catholic priest. Preparing to celebrate Mass in memory of the Poles martyred in Majdanek, the priest lays a tablecloth on the prepared table, takes out the Bible and candles. Teenagers are clearly not interested here - they joke, smile, and go out to smoke. “Do you know who liberated this camp?” - I ask. There is confusion among young Poles. "English?" – the blonde girl says hesitantly. "No, Americans!" - a thin guy interrupts her. - “It seems there was a landing party here!” “Russians,” the priest says quietly. The schoolchildren are amazed - the news is like thunder among them clear skies. On July 22, 1944, the Red Army was greeted in Lublin with flowers and tears of joy. Now we cannot wait for the liberation of the concentration camps, not even gratitude - just basic respect.
Almost everything has been preserved in Majdanek. Double fencing with barbed wire, SS guard towers and blackened crematorium ovens. On the barracks with the gas chamber there is a sign screwed on - “Washing and disinfection.” Fifty people were brought here at a time, supposedly “to go to the bathhouse” - they were given soap and asked to fold their clothes carefully. Victims entered the cement shower room, the door was locked and gas was leaking from holes in the ceiling. The peephole in the door is amazing - some bastard from the SS calmly watched people die in agony. Rare visitors speak quietly, as if in a cemetery. A girl from Israel cries, burying her face in her boyfriend's shoulder. A museum employee reports: 80,000 people died in the camp. "Like this? – I’m surprised. “After all, at the Nuremberg trials the figure of 300 thousand appeared, a third of them were Poles.” It turns out that after 1991, the number of victims has been constantly decreasing - at first it was decided that 200 thousand people were tortured in Majdanek, and recently they “knocked it down” to eighty: they say, more precisely, they recounted it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten years the Polish authorities begin to claim with such standards that no one died in Majdanek at all, the concentration camp was an exemplary sanatorium-resort where prisoners underwent health procedures,” says Maciej Wisniewski, editor-in-chief of the Strajk Internet portal, indignantly. - My father, who was a partisan during the war, said: “Yes, the Russians brought us a regime that we did not want. But the main thing is that the gas chambers and ovens stopped working in the SS concentration camps.” In Poland, state propaganda at all levels is trying to silence the merits of Soviet soldiers in saving tens of millions of lives. After all, if it were not for the Red Army, the Majdanek crematorium would continue to smoke every day.
It only takes a minute to walk from the gas chamber - you find yourself in a barracks filled to the brim with old, half-rotten shoes. I look at her for a long time. Expensive shoes of fashionistas (one even made of snakeskin), men's boots, children's boots. There are more of them - but in 2010, one museum barrack burned down for unknown reasons (possibly from arson): 7,000 pairs of shoes were lost in the fire. On November 3, 1943, as part of the so-called “Operation Erntedankfest” (harvest festival), the SS shot 18,400 Jews in Majdanek, including many citizens of the USSR. People were forced to lie down in ditches on top of each other, “in a layer,” and then were shot in the back of the head. 611 people then spent a week sorting the property of the executed, including these very shoes. The sorters were also destroyed - the men were shot, the women were sent to the gas chamber. In the room nearby there is a memorial to nameless prisoners whose identities could not be established: rows of light bulbs shrouded in balls of barbed wire are burning. An audio recording is played - in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, people ask God to save their lives.
The current museum occupies only a quarter of the actual territory of Majdanek: founded on October 1, 1941, it was a concentration camp city with “districts” where women, Jews, and Polish rebels were kept separately. The first inhabitants of the “SS special zone” were 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war; after just a month and a half (!), three quarters of them died from unbearable conditions of detention. The museum's exhibition does not focus on this fact. By January 1942, all the remaining prisoners had died - the camp stood empty until March, when 50,000 new prisoners were brought in. They were destroyed so quickly that one crematorium could not cope with the burning of bodies - a second one had to be built.
The towers above the camp darkened with time, the wood became coal black. 73 years ago, two SS guards stood on each one, watching Majdanek - often, in despair, the prisoners themselves walked into the bullets just to end their torment. The ashes of thousands of prisoners were buried in a huge mausoleum built next to the crematorium - the Red Army soldiers who liberated Majdanek discovered boxes of ashes, which the guards prepared for disposal. The crematorium ovens are smoked by fire; they cannot be cleaned of the remains of hundreds of thousands of people soaked into the metal. One of the prisoners who ended up in Majdanek at the age of six (!), a native of the Vitebsk region, Alexander Petrov, told - Jewish children preschool age they were burned alive in these ovens. Survivors in the camp testify that the Germans did not show much hatred towards them. They boringly tried to kill as much as possible more people, doing your job. Of all the trees in the camp, only one survived. On the rest, the prisoners, dying of terrible hunger, ate the bark and chewed off the roots.
Looking at this camp even now makes me feel uneasy. And people lived there for almost 3 years. In the photo - Majdanek itself, the gas chamber, barracks, crematorium.
Just hearing this name alone brings a lump to your throat. Auschwitz on long years remains in people's minds as an example of genocide that resulted in the death of an incredible number of people. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people come to Auschwitz, a city whose name is inextricably associated with the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, to learn its history and honor the memory of those killed.
The Auschwitz concentration camp became one of the most effective elements of this conveyor belt of death. An excursion here and to the neighboring Birkenau camp leaves an unforgettable impression.
Auschwitz
Open: daily 8.00-19.00, free admission, www.auschwitz.org.pl
Above the camp gate are written the words: "Arbeit Macht Frei" (“Work will set you free”). The camp authorities, fleeing from the advancing Soviet army, tried to destroy evidence of the genocide, but did not have time, so about 30 camp blocks were preserved, some of them became part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum.
Up to 200,000 people could be held in the camp every day. There were 300 prison barracks, 5 huge gas chambers, each of which could accommodate 2,000 people, and a crematorium. It is impossible to forget this terrible place.
Auschwitz was originally a barracks for the Polish army. Jews from countries such as Norway, Greece, etc., were herded onto freight trains, where there was no water, no food, no toilets and almost no air to breathe, and were taken to concentration camps in Poland. The first 728 “prisoners of war,” most Poles and all from the city of Tarnow, were brought here in June 1940. Then whole streams of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war were sent to the camps. They turned into slaves; some died of starvation, others were executed, and many were sent to gas chambers, where mass murder was carried out using the poisonous gas "Cyclone-B".
Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the retreating Nazis, so many buildings that bear witness to the atrocities that took place have been preserved. The ten surviving barracks housed State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (Tel.: 33 844 8100; www.auschwitz.org.pl; admission free; 08.00-19.00 June-August, 08.00-18.00 May and September, 08.00-17.00 April and October, 08.00-16.00 March and November, 08.00-15.00 December - February).In 2007, UNESCO, when adding the complex to the World Heritage List, gave it the name “Auschwitz-Birkenau - Nazi German Concentration Camp” (1940-45)”, to focus attention on Poland’s non-involvement in its creation and functioning.
Every half hour, a 15-minute film is shown in the visitor center cinema located at the entrance to the camp. documentary (ticket for adults/discount 3.50/2.50zt) about the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. It is shown in English, German and French during the whole day. Check the information desk for the schedule as soon as you arrive. The film is not recommended for viewing by children under 14 years of age. Documentary footage filmed after the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945 will provide a useful introduction to those trying to comprehend what they are about to see. The visitor center also has a cafeteria, bookstores, and a currency exchange office. (kantor) and a storage room.
At the end of the war, the Nazis tried to destroy the camp during their flight, but about 30 barracks survived, as well as guard towers and barbed wire. You can freely walk between barracks and enter those that are open. In one of them, glass cases contain piles of shoes, crooked glasses, piles of human hair and suitcases with the names and addresses of prisoners who were told they were simply being relocated to another city. Photographs of prisoners are hung in the corridors, some of which are decorated with flowers brought by surviving relatives. Next to block No. 11, the so-called “death block,” there is an execution wall, where prisoners were shot. Here the Nazis conducted their first experiments using the Zyklon-B. The barrack next door is dedicated to the “Trials of the Jewish People.” At the end of the exposition historical documents and photographs, to the piercing, sad melody of “Merciful God,” the names of people killed in concentration camps are listed.
General information is provided in Polish, English and Hebrew, but to better understand everything, purchase the small guide to Auschwitz-Birkenau (translated into 15 languages), available at the visitor center. From May to October, visitors arriving between 10.00 and 15.00 can explore the museum only as part of a guided tour. English-language excursions (price for adults/discounted 39/30zl, 3.5 hours) start daily at 10.00, 11.00, 13.00, 15.00, and they can also organize a tour for you if there is a group of ten people. Excursions in other languages, including Russian, must be booked in advance.
Auschwitz can be easily reached from Krakow. If you want to stay nearby, the Center for Dialogue and Prayer is 700 meters from the complex (Centrum Dialogu i Modlitwy w Oswiecimiu; Tel.: 33 843 1000; www. centrum-dialogu.oswiecim.pl; Kolbego street (ul. Kolbego), 1; camping place 25zl, single/double room 104/208zl). It is cozy and quiet, the price includes breakfast, and you can also be offered full board. Most rooms have private bathrooms.
Birkenau
Admission to Birkenau is free, open from 08.00-19.00 June - August; 08.00-18.00 May and September; 08.00-17.00 April and October; 08.00-16.00 March and November; 08.00-15.00 December - February.
Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, is located 3 km from Auschwitz. A short inscription in Birkenau reads: “Let this place be forever a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis exterminated about one and a half million men, women and children, mostly Jews, from different countries Europe".
Birkenau was built in 1941, when Hitler moved from isolating political prisoners to a program of mass extermination. Three hundred long barracks on an area of 175 hectares served as storage for the most brutal machine of Hitler’s “solution” Jewish question. Approximately 3/4 of the Jews brought to Birkenau were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.
Indeed, Birkenau was the epitome of a death camp: it had its own railway station for transporting prisoners, four huge gas chambers, each of which could kill 2,000 people at once, and a crematorium equipped with elevators for loading the ovens with the bodies of prisoners.
Visitors are given the opportunity to climb to the second floor of the main guard tower at the entrance, which offers views of the entire huge camp. Seemingly endless rows of barracks, towers and barbed wire - all this could accommodate up to 200 thousand prisoners at a time. At the back of the camp, behind a terrible pond where the ashes of the murdered people were poured, there is an unusual monument to the victims of the Holocaust with an inscription in 20 languages of those prisoners who were killed in Auschwitz and Birkenau.
While retreating, the Germans, although they destroyed most structures, just look at the area fenced with barbed wire to understand the scale of the crimes committed by the Nazis. A viewing platform at the entrance to the camp will allow you to look around a large area. In some ways, Birkenau is even more shocking than Auschwitz, and there are generally fewer tourists here. It is not necessary to visit the memorial as part of a tour group.
Road there and back
Typically, a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau takes place as a day trip from Krakow.
There are 12 daily flights from Krakow Main Station to Auschwitz (13zt, 1.5 hours) Even more trains depart from the Krakow-Plaszow station. A more convenient way to travel is the hourly bus service to Auschwitz from the bus station. (11zt, 1.5 hours) who are either passing by the museum or it is their final stop. Bus schedule going to reverse direction, see the information board at the Birkenau Visitor Center. From a stop near the street. Pavia near Galeria Krakowska, numerous minibuses go in this direction.
From April 15 to October 31, from 11.30 to 16.30, buses run between Auschwitz and Birkenau every half hour. (from May to September traffic stops at 17.30, from June to August - at 18.30). You can also walk the 3 km between camps or take a taxi. There are buses from Auschwitz to the local railway station (movement interval 30-40 minutes). Many Krakow travel agencies organize excursions to Auschwitz and Birkenau (from 90zt to 120zt per person). Find out in advance how much time you will be given to stay at museums, as some of them have a very busy schedule and you may not have time to see everything that interests you.
August 28th, 2017
Whether the Nazis took experience in dealing with prisoners from the Poles, or from someone else, the Poles in any case were a couple of decades ahead of them.
***
Today Poles are destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers who saved their grandfathers from the Nazi gas chamber. In such a situation, keep silent about the Red Army soldiers who perished in Polish death camps and other people from the territory of the former Russian Empire unacceptable, says member of the Zinoviev Club, doctor historical sciences Oleg Nazarov.
In October 1920, the Soviet-Polish war ended. One of the consequences of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth War was the mass death of Soviet prisoners of war and other immigrants from the territory of the former Russian Empire in Polish camps.
Cynical statements of the provocateur Schetyna
If the question of who was responsible for the execution of Poles in Katyn and Medny still causes heated debate among historians, and they are still far from being resolved, then the Polish side is definitely to blame for the deaths of 60 to 83.5 thousand Red Army soldiers (according to various estimates).
Official Warsaw, being unable to refute the mass death of people in the camps and dungeons of Poland, firstly, tries in every possible way to downplay the number of victims, and secondly, shifts responsibility for the tragedy from the Polish military and officials to objective circumstances. Although there was no famine or crop failure in Poland in those years.
- At the same time, Warsaw reacts extremely nervously to any proposals to perpetuate the memory of people who died in the camps of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The initiative of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) to begin collecting funds for the opening of a monument to fallen prisoners of war in Krakow aroused the anger of Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna. He called it a provocation aimed at splitting Polish society.
Schetyna’s cynical nonsense can be quoted without commenting.
How the Polish authorities took care of prisoners
In those days when the USSR and the Polish People's Republic were building socialism together, they tried not to remember the Red Army soldiers and other people from the territory of the former Russian Empire who perished in Polish camps. In the 21st century, when Poles are destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers who saved their grandfathers from the Nazi gas chamber, and Poland is pursuing an anti-Russian policy, it is unacceptable to remain silent about this.
The system of Polish camps arose immediately after the appearance of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the political map of Europe- long before the emergence of Stalin's Gulag and the Nazis' rise to power in Germany.
The “islands” of the Polish, figuratively speaking, “Gulag” were camps in Dąba, Wadowice, Lancut, Strzałkowo, Szczyperno, Tuchola, Brest-Litovsk, Pikulica, Aleksandrów-Kujawski, Kalisz, Płock, Łuków, Siedlce, Zduńska-Wola, Doroguska, Piotrkow, Ostrow Lomzynski and other places.
When Russian historians and publicists call the places of detention of captured Red Army soldiers “Polish death camps,” this causes protests in Warsaw.
To figure out who is right here, let's turn to the collection of documents " Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity in 1919 - 1922. "
The reliability of his materials is not questioned by the Polish side - the main Polish specialist on this topic, a professor at the University. Nicolaus Copernicus Zbigniew Karpus and other Polish historians.- When you look at the documents, the word “inhumane” catches your eye. It is often found when describing the situation in which Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Tatars, Latvians and other prisoners of war were located.As stated in one of the documents, in a country that called itself a bastion of Christian civilization, the prisoners were treated "not as people of an equal race, but as slaves. The beating of prisoners of war was practiced at every turn."
- “The prisoners are in a casemate, quite damp; when asked about food, they answered that they were getting everything they were supposed to and had no complaints. But the hospital doctors unanimously stated that all the prisoners gave the impression of being extremely hungry, since they rake raw potatoes straight out of the ground and eat them, and collect in garbage dumps and eat all kinds of waste, such as bones, cabbage leaves, etc."
About the reason for Polish slowness
In December 1920, the Supreme Extraordinary Commissioner for Epidemic Control, Emil Godlewski, in a letter to Polish Minister of War Kazimierz Sosnkowski, described the situation in prisoner-of-war camps as “simply inhuman and contrary not only to all the needs of hygiene, but to culture in general.”
Meanwhile, the Minister of War received similar information a year earlier. In December 1919, in a memo to the minister, the head of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland, Lieutenant General Zdzislaw Gordynsky, quoted a letter he received from military doctor K. Habicht dated November 24, 1919. About the situation in the prisoner of war camp in Bialystok it said:
“In the camp at every step there is dirt, untidiness that cannot be described, neglect and human need, crying out to heaven for retribution. In front of the doors of the barracks there are heaps of human excrement, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The sick are so weakened that they cannot can reach the latrines, on the other hand, the latrines 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 there are many sick people among the healthy. In my opinion, among the 1,400 prisoners there are simply no healthy ones. Covered only with rags, they huddle together, warming each other. The stench from dysentery patients and gangrene-stricken legs 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 upper trousers; they no longer had the strength to get up to lie down on a dry place on the bunks.”
However, even a year after writing the heartbreaking letter, the situation has not changed for the better. According to the fair conclusion of Vladislav Shved, who many times caught Polish falsifiers of history “by the hand,” the reluctance of the Polish authorities to improve the situation in the camps indicates “a deliberate policy to create and maintain conditions unbearable for the life of Red Army soldiers.”
Trying to refute this conclusion, Polish historians, journalists and politicians refer to numerous orders and instructions that formulate tasks for improving the conditions of detention of prisoners of war. But the conditions of detention in the camps, as stated in the book “Polish Captivity” by Gennady and Victoria Matveev, “were never brought into line with the requirements of the instructions and orders issued by the Ministry of Military Affairs. The horrific conditions of accommodation and sanitation that reigned in them with the complete indifference of the camp superiors caused the death of a huge number of captured Red Army soldiers. And the periodically issued formidable orders of the Ministry of Military Affairs were not supported by equally strict control over their implementation, remaining in fact only a fixation of inhuman treatment of captured opponents both during the war and after its end. And if in In relation to cases of execution of prisoners at the front, one can still try to refer to the state of passion in which Polish soldiers were, having just emerged from a battle in which their comrades may have died, but such an argument cannot be applied to the unmotivated killings of prisoners in the camps."
It is also significant that there was a catastrophic shortage of straw in the camps. Due to its lack, the prisoners were constantly freezing, more often getting sick and dying. Even Pan Karpus does not try to claim that there was no straw in Poland. They were just in no hurry to bring her to the camps.
One of the consequences of the deliberate “sluggishness” of Polish officials was the autumn 1920 outbreak of dysentery, cholera and typhoid, from which thousands of prisoners of war died.
- In total, in 1919 - 1921. in the Polish death camps, this very death in agony was met, according to various estimates, from 60 to 83.5 thousand Red Army soldiers. And this is not counting those wounded whom the God-fearing Polish soldiers, after praying, left to die in the field.
The number of victims did not include the Red Army soldiers who died from hunger, cold and bullying of Polish fanatics on the way from the place of captivity to one of the “islands” of the Polish “Gulag”. In December 1920, the chairman of the Polish Red Cross Society, Natalia Krejc-Welezhinska, stated that prisoners “are transported in unheated carriages, without appropriate clothing, cold, hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker ones die.”
The time has come to say frankly that the authorities of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are pioneers in creating a system of camps, the conditions of detention in which guaranteed the mass death of their prisoners. Poland must be held accountable for this crime
.October 2015.
*
Let me add: we need to stop currying favor with the Poles on the Katyn issue. Of course, you will have to spit on the State Duma deputies of the 2010 model - but the loss is small.
=Arctus=
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Poland must answer for its crimes
. *"For 500 years Poland has been causing constant headaches for Europe. It’s time to finally put an end to this topic" -
F.D. Roosevelt, 1945
.
So, Russia the day before witnessed with its own eyes a humiliating act of repentance for unproven, falsified and refuted (and, therefore, de jure non-existent) sins.
Now we need:
1. Repent before the Swedes - for Poltava;
2. Before the Germans - for Lake Peipsi;
3. Before the French - for Borodino;
4. Before the Mongols - Tatars - beyond the Kulikovo field;
And also before the Finns, Turks and Japanese... we must repent before everyone. To do this, it will be necessary to create a State Federal Agency for Repentance - there is a lot of work...
But, as for WHO we repented to this time, it is absolutely necessary to understand what political role played
during these five hundred years mentioned by Roosevelt - Poland.
And this role, it must be said frankly, was unenviable, although the Polish rulers themselves were never particularly embarrassed about this. Numerous historians have repeatedly described this feature of the mentality of the Polish elite as exceptional greed and corruption.
Poland as a state has always behaved this way.
During the period of troubles and during the war between Russia and Swedes, during Suvorov’s campaigns and Napoleonic wars(the Poles, together with the French, entered Moscow in 1812), the year before, in the past, and now in the present century.
How can one not remember what else? Frederick the Great in the 18th century named Poland "prostitute of Europe
".
And it seems that it sounds insulting, and it’s already the 21st century, but you can’t erase the word from the song... and the Germans for their Friedrich
(as well as the Americans for their Roosevelt, and the British for their Churchill) - the Poles are not offended.
But the Russians, come on - they fight in hysterics, kick their legs in accusatory ecstasy
…
But today I’m not talking about repentance that happened the day before. Today is about something else.
******
About Polish death camps
(this way, and not otherwise), since they reflect in the clearest and most concentrated form the entire essence of interwar Poland.
Let's start with the fact that after the departure of the German army (meaning after the First World War), Poland "inherited" a large number of Russian prisoners of war ( about 30,000 people, but this figure is inaccurate, since no one specifically dealt with this issue, especially since the delegation of the Russian Red Cross sent to solve this problem was highly humanely shot by the Poles), captured by the Kaiser’s army during the First World War, whom the new government was in no hurry to release.
Then, during the fighting that began between Poland and Soviet Russia, new prisoners appeared, captured by the Polish army.
In November 1919, in Polish camps there were 40,000 prisoners of war
(they were placed in camps
Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Dombe, Grodno, Kovel, Lancut, Pikulicy, Strzalkovo, Szczyperno, Stry, Wadowice),
of which, according to a Polish historian from the University of Torun. Nicolaus Copernicus, Dr. Zbigniew Karpus,
by February 1920, 20,667 people remained.
Karpus himself explains this by saying that some of the captured Galicians were allegedly released before the attack on Kyiv as part of the agreement Pilsudski and Petliura
(with the immediate mobilization of these to strengthen the Petliura army), but since only two Petliura “divisions” operated in the Polish army and, according to the Ukrainian historian Savchenko, one of them had only 2300 fighters, the other - 2000. Thus, loss of 15,000 people cannot be explained in any way based on Karpus’s statement.
One can, of course, attribute them to the high mortality rate during the typhus pandemic that then swept across Russia and Eastern Europe, but this is also the wrong decision, since the Polish leadership itself made its own active efforts to reduce the number of prisoners.
Thus, a survivor of the camp in Brest-Litovsk recalled:
"The commandant addressed us with a 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.”
For 13 days we did not receive bread, on the 14th day, it was at the end of August (1919), we received about 4 pounds of bread, but very rotten, moldy... The sick were not treated, and they died in dozens... In September 1919, 180 died people per day."
...add: The Germans in the concentration camps fed the Jews as best they could and treated them (!). Meticulous barn books were kept about this by the pedantic Germans. Hitler turned to his “masters” with a request to allocate funds for the maintenance of their fellow tribesmen. But the “owners” refused.
Otherwise, after the war there would have been no reason to put a collar around the neck of the German people!
Unparalleled Jesuit gesheft. In Jewish...
So, in just one winter 1919/1920
gg. the Poles died in their camps 15,000 people(and this is based on Polish data, which, as happens in such cases, to put it mildly, suffers from some incompleteness).
And at the end of February 1920, these camps received an influx of new contingents. These were not Red Army soldiers,
but quite the opposite - whites: a detachment of General Bredov crossed the Polish border (20,000 bayonets and 7,000 refugees),
forced out of the Odessa region by the Red Army.
It would seem that both the Whites and Pilsudski had a common enemy, but Bredow’s people were not at all welcome in Poland and, moreover,
They saw them as “centuries-old oppressors of the Polish people.”
(those. and these Russians were accused, but of crimes of tsarist oppression!
)
Therefore, the arriving whites were thrown into the already existing camps - Dombe, Pikulitsy and Strzhalkovo, where their situation was not much different from the position of the Red Army soldiers:
they received the bread with lumps of salt the size of nuts, pieces of rope and just dirt, so they had to beg
food from the local population and switch to pasture, cooking food over fires, and everything that could be found in the camps, including mattresses, was used for firewood.
After the Soviet-Polish war entered its active phase in the spring of 1920, a new flow of prisoners poured into the camps.
According to daily reports from the II Department of the Polish General Staff to the Polish military attache in Vienna from January 1 to November 25, 1920, 146,813 people were taken prisoner, and this does not count those who were recorded as “many prisoners,” “a significant number,”
"two divisional headquarters."
Their situation was no better than described above.
According to the data of the II Department of the Polish General Staff, published in 1921 in Boris Savinkov’s newspaper “Svoboda”, 22,000 people died in the Tuchola (Tukhol) camp alone from the autumn of 1920 to the spring of 1921.
I emphasize: - This is data from the Polish General Staff, published a long time ago and recognized as a fact a long time ago!
In contrast to the supposed “evidence”, but in fact - falsifications, on the basis of which the well-known repentance took place the day before, about which a State Duma deputy angrily, but factually and convincingly spoke with an open letter to the President Victor Ilyukhin.
But prisoners died not only in Tuchola: the representative of the Soviet side A. Ioffe, having examined the camp in Strzalkowo,
reported on December 14, 1920 to the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin, that according to the calculations of the representative of the Russian Red Cross in Poland, Stefania Sempolowska, confirmed by the Polish official authorities, the mortality rate there is so high that if it does not decrease, the prisoners of war will die out within six months.
Well, the fact that the situation of prisoners in Polish camps is monstrous was agreed upon by such different, and often simply antagonistic in their political convictions, parties as representatives of the joint Soviet-Polish commission, representatives of the Polish and Russian Red Cross, the French military mission in Paris, emigrant press ("Freedom" by Savinkov, the Parisian "Common Cause", the Berlin "Rul") and international organizations(including
American Christian Youth Union and American Relief Administration (ARA)).
After the signing of the Treaty of Riga, Poland transferred Soviet side 75,699 prisoners of war(according to the mobilization department of the Red Army Headquarters); before 25.000
decided to stay in Poland.
Total: 40,000 in November 1919, plus 150,000 captured in 1920 (rounded up due to vague reports about a “significant number” of prisoners) and minus 4,300 Petliurists and 25,000 “defectors” give at least 85,000 died in Polish captivity!!
This is the result of the activities of the Polish death camps (and this does not take into account the people of General Bredov who died of starvation!) -
almost 20 times more than the “4,421 executed in Katyn”, for which we (but not the Germans who shot them!!) have been forced to repent and beat our heads on the paving stones until exhaustion since the times of the spotted perestroika.
And Russia has long been designated as the main and only culprit for all sins by the Poles.
By the way, to inflate one of the main reproaches of Russia Poland diligently cultivates the myth of the “two golden decades” of Polish history in the 20s and 30s of the last century. And that, they say, the bad Hitler, and then the bad Stalin, destroyed this whole pristine, immaculate idyll.
It's time to dispel this myth.
So, the First World War ended. Taking advantage of the post-war weakness of its neighbors, who were also torn apart by civil wars and conflicts, Poland immediately seized territory from them beyond the borders determined by the Entente.
I grabbed it from almost everyone and didn’t forget anyone. For example, it seized the Vilna region along with the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, from bourgeois Lithuania. And when the Entente demanded that this region be returned to Lithuania, the Poles declared that the Polish troops that had captured the Vilna region had rebelled and did not want to leave, and the Polish government, well, was unable to do anything with these troops!
For a whole year they tried to persuade their troops to leave Lithuania, they tried to persuade them, but they were not able to persuade them.
AND Entente in 1923 year agreed with this Polish position. For this reason, Lithuania, of course, did not establish diplomatic relations with Poland.
Poland also seized a piece of territory assigned by the Entente to Czechoslovakia, seized the territories of Germany that were not due to it, but especially profited from the RSFSR, torn apart by the civil war.
Ukraine and Belarus were cut off a little by half. Before concluding a non-aggression pact with Poland, Ukraine even moved its capital to Kharkov, since Kyiv was almost a border city.
That is, at that time when Hitler had not even written his “Mein Kamf” with theses about the need to expand its territories, Poland was already actively
SH A K A L I L A.
Naturally, for this, all of Poland’s neighbors, to put it mildly, disliked Poland and, to be honest, the USSR also did not like it.
And not so much for the capture and enslavement of peoples of the same blood, but for the fact that Poland, having declared itself a bulwark of the West against Bolshevism, contained on its territory gangs that invaded the USSR and killed Soviet people, and then ran back.
So, Poland, in relation to all its neighbors, immediately after the First World War behaved like an aggressor state, to be honest, like a racketeer, like a bandit with high road. Or, if you want, a jackal at the same time.
But the USSR, weakened to the limit by the world and civil wars, was more important than anyone to have peaceful neighbors on its borders. Therefore, he sought friendship even with such a gangster Poland.
As a result, the more the USSR “crept” under Poland, the more it tried to establish friendly relations with it, the more impudently the Poles behaved.
The ruling circles of Poland, naturally, have repeatedly made demands for the provision of colonies to Poland.
Let us remember that it was Polish diplomacy that voluntarily took upon itself the defense of the interests of Hitler’s Germany in the League of Nations, which Germany defiantly left in 1933!
From the rostrum of the League of Nations, Polish diplomats justified Hitler's brazen violations of the Versailles and Locarno treaties: the introduction of universal conscription in Germany, the abolition of military restrictions, the entry of Hitler's troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, and so on.
The elite of Poland then really set themselves the goal of having Poland within its borders 1772, providing, respectively, the seizure of Ukraine and the creation of Poland from “sea to sea”, i.e. from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
The Polish elite was not embarrassed by the fact that already at that time there were only about 60% of Poles in Poland, nor was it stopped by the fact that nowhere in Ukraine were crowds of Ukrainians walking around with posters “We want to join Poland!”
Well, the nobility of Ukraine wanted it, and that’s it!
And within Poland, Polish racism was established, and in its meanest form - unofficial.
The Germans were much more honest in this regard: they openly declared that Aryans are everything, and non-Aryans are nothing.
Rough, but straight!
In Poland, there was officially equality of all peoples. But look how things actually stood
with the national question.
Summary of the national composition of Polish army officers who were in the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps of the USSR,
and it was not gendarmes or police officers who were kept there, but simple army and naval officers.
The sample is very large - 8394 people. Let's compare the percentage of different nationalities among officers
with the percentage of these nationalities in the population of pre-war Poland.
Nationality Percentage composition
Population Officers
Poles 60.0 97.4
Ukrainians 21.0 0.1
Jews 9.0 1.9
Belarusians 6.0 0.3
Germans 3.0 0.1
Others 1.0 0.2
So, what comments can there be on this table?
And therefore, in the Poland of that time, the non-Polish population was subjected to discriminatory segregation primarily on the basis of nationality in almost all spheres of life.
And is it, ultimately, worth surprising at these memories of the captured Polish officer Henryk Gorzechowski about the time when, in September 1939, Soviet soldiers escorted him in a column of other prisoners to the camp:
“Then they drove us on foot to Rivne. I remember now: when we walked through the city, in many places, mainly on Jewish shops, narrow red flags hung.
It was clearly visible that these were Polish flags, from which the top part. Jewish and Ukrainian women threw filth at us, shouting: “The end of your Polish state!”
It got to the point that in Bursztyn, Polish officers, sent by the corps to school and guarded by a small guard, asked to increase the number of soldiers guarding them as captives in order to avoid possible reprisals against them by the population.
You also can’t imagine it on purpose - being captured by the enemy to escape from your own citizens.
Well, where there is forced segregation, concentration camps for “white blacks” and other untermensch should automatically and immediately appear. Of course, they immediately appeared in Poland.
As an example: in June 1934 in the city of Bereza-Kartuzskaya (now the city of Bereza, Brest region, Belarus) in the buildings of former barracks Russian army a concentration camp was created for opponents of the ruling regime - just 15 months after the appearance of Dachau in Germany (and three years earlier than the opening of Buchenwald).
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Poland concentration camp
The isolation camp (later called the “isolation camp”) consisted of three main buildings, one of which remained behind the outer fence (it housed the camp commandant, his assistants and their families).
The second building contained a guardhouse, police barracks, a bakery, and warehouses for food, weapons and ammunition.
The third building housed prisoners. The first floor was converted into a kitchen and dining room.
There were cells on the second and third floors, separated along their entire length by a corridor. In addition to these premises, on the territory of the camp there were warehouses, a bathhouse, a room for storing fuel and lubricants and a punishment cell - eight damp stone bags in a cellar in the middle of a field.
The camp was fenced with a high plank fence, and barbed wire was stretched over the fence. At each corner of the fence there were guard towers with machine guns. From the outside, the camp was guarded by a patrol that did not have an exact movement schedule.
The building in which the prisoners were kept had additional barbed wire fencing. In addition, the camp yard was divided into separate sections using wire fences.
By order of the Polesie voivode Vaclav Kostek-Bernacki dated July 2, 1934, it was prohibited:
- be close to the camp, that is, cross the line marked by the wire fence in front of the concentration camp fence;
- take photographs of the camp and the persons contained in it;
- have any form of contact with prisoners.
Violators were subject to a fine of up to 500 zlotys or imprisonment for up to 14 days, or both.
On July 12, 1934, the Polesie voivode toughened the punishment for contacting and helping prisoners - now the perpetrators themselves could be imprisoned in a concentration camp, as persons posing a threat to public safety and order. This fate, for example, befell Dr. Zelinsky and his son, who in July 1934 photographed the premises of the concentration camp.
The concentration camp was specially located in a fairly remote place - away from unpleasant foreign correspondents and League of Nations officials. Entry into the town itself without special permission was prohibited; permission to enter was given only by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Warsaw. The police, “precipitators” and various agents monitored the roads to prevent strangers from appearing, and local residents were obliged to report them to the nearest police station; Every passerby had their documents checked.
The first commandant of the concentration camp (until December 1934) was Boleslav Greffner. Greffner characterized the camp practice: " From Bereza you can go to your own funeral or to a mental hospital."
According to the decree, the concentration camp was created for people opposed to the existing regime. At first, more than half of the prisoners were Ukrainian nationalists, members of the National Democratic Party and communists, members Communist Party Poland, right-wing Polish extremists from "ONR" (Polish: Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny - National Radical Camp - Polish nationalist organization).
Over time, people who committed economic crimes, mostly Jews, also began to end up in the camp.
Unmarried police officers aged 25 to 35 served in the camp. Since the organization of the concentration camp, the police contingent was about 60 people. At the end of 1937, due to the increase in the number of prisoners, their number increased to 162, and in April 1939 there were 126 people alone among the rank and file.
At the same time, the camp commandant constantly sent reports to the Polesie Voivodeship with requests to increase the number of police officers to the full strength of the infantry company, that is, to 141 privates. Later their number exceeded this figure.
The concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzskaya was supervised by the Polesie voivode Kostek-Bernacki, who was the highest representative of the Polish government in this territory. He often came to the camp and not only got acquainted with the general conditions that existed there, but also delved into the small details of the treatment of prisoners and gave orders to tighten conditions. The relations developing in Bereza were also known to the central political bodies.
This is evidenced by the presence in the camp of the director of the political department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Kovetsky, who threatened those released from the camp with repeated imprisonment if they talked about what they experienced in Bereza.
But the prisoners in Bereza-Kartuzskaya had a lot to endure. Let's start with arriving at the camp - this is how he describes it
Stepan Ivanovich Burak, member of the Communist Party of Western Belarus since 1934, who was in the camp from April 1937 to March 1938 and in September 1939. (camp number - 1079):
- “The distance from the camp gate to the barracks is about 150-200 meters. If two prisoners were handcuffed with the same handcuffs, then these received much more blows than those who were handcuffed alone.
Those who arrived were given a number, which each had to sew on the back and right sleeve.
In a cell where 30 people were imprisoned, the same numbers were attached across the top of the bunks.
The new arrival was placed in a single isolated room, where he was beaten for six to seven days in a row. In this case, the prisoner had to stand facing the wall and not move, not fall to the floor without a command.
This was done in order to immediately stun the prisoner, exhaust him, and demoralize him. And indeed: whoever was unstable in character, weak in health, he could falter and sign a declaration of renunciation of his beliefs.
When the newcomers were left half-dead on the floor, the “old men” tried to support them with these words:
“Comrades, take heart. You need to endure no more than seven days. Then it will be easier, you will remain human.”
Prisoners remember the camp order this way: “The prisoner’s surname was abolished, he appeared only under a number. The special policeman appointed for the “training” first of all forced him to repeat the words:
- “Mr. Commandant, prisoner such and such asks you to humbly go there.” If the prisoner made a mistake, he received sticks.
For failure to comply with orders, the commandant (as the guards are called here) has the right to punish the arrested person physically (with a baton). If the order is not carried out when repeated, the arrested person is subject to punishment in a punishment cell for seven days, and if, after taking these measures, the arrested person still does not comply with the same order, then the commandant has the right to shoot “from armor” (from a firearm) or “kill him with a bagnet” (stab with a bayonet) "...
.and what, in fact, is the difference between a typical Nazi concentration camp and a typical Polish one?! Nothing!
However, let's continue with the quote:
- “No conversation was allowed between the prisoners, nothing could be conveyed even with a glance. Any movement was only on the command “Run and march.” For the slightest violation - beating with rubber truncheons until you were half to death.
In the dining room, whoever received the food first, in a hurry, could somehow consume it, and whoever received the last had to throw the food into the ditch, because very little time was given, the command sounded to finish dinner and run to the washbasin to wash the pots. The entire cell, 20-30 people, was allowed into the restroom at once for five minutes, and since there were only 4 glasses, people fell straight onto the floor. The police hit them on the head with batons and pushed them into the feces, and then forced them to remove the feces from the floor of the restroom with their bare hands.
It was forbidden to receive food parcels in the camp. If anyone received parcels, the guards threw them out to the pigs. You could only get a needle, thread and some clothes."
The original idea of the camp's founders was to carry out a brief but very intense physical and psychological terror in order to frighten the prisoner for the rest of his life and wean him from opposing
Great Poland.
Therefore, if someone decided to publicly (through newspapers) repent and renounce their previous beliefs, then they were released early - the camp had done its job.
But other measures were applied to the “unrepentant” - in 1934, the Prime Minister of Poland Kozlovsky stated that persons who were not corrected by a one-time three-month sentence could be detained in the camp for a long period, therefore, although formally the term of imprisonment was set at three months, the camp administration and judges often extended this period for the next three months, and those isolated in Bereza no one knows by whose decision, usually secretly, they never knew the end of their isolation.
This same methodology - extrajudicial imprisonment in a concentration camp for an unlimited period and unlimited abuse of prisoners - was also used in those years in Nazi concentration camps, and in our time in numerous secret US prisons around the world, including in the territory of independent and democratic Poland.
In addition, for the same reasons, the concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzskaya did not carry out any production functions
(except for a little self-care) - the prison labor used there was intended solely for suppression and exhaustion. Prisoners also testify to this:
- “The work often consisted of putting so many stones on the stretcher that it was difficult to lift, and forcing them to carry it from one place to another and back. If with a loaded stretcher you had to walk at a fast pace, then with an empty one you had to run. At a measured pace It was forbidden to walk here at all.
Often prisoners were harnessed to a cart, filled with sand, and forced to be driven to a designated place or to a road construction site. Every day several people went with barrels to fetch water. One prisoner was harnessed to the shafts of a gig with a barrel, the other was pushing from behind.
The Ukrainian Kazachuk and I were harnessed to a harrow. The harrow was a large wooden one with iron teeth, on which two large stones were placed. We harrowed the rye sown in the potato field. We were harnessed like horses to a harness and belted across our chests.
We thought they would do a short test on us. It turned out that we harrowed the entire first day. Our arms and legs were shaking, and then we began to fall. A policeman who was following the harrow, armed with a machine gun and a rubber truncheon, began beating us.”
In the history of “landings” at Bereza-Kartuzskaya, three stages can be distinguished:
1. Summer 1934 - 1935- A period of mass arrests, isolation of political figures of various political forces.
2. 1935-1936 - reducing the number of arrests; liberation from the concentration camp of all members of the National Democratic Party and OUN members (the latter - in connection with the emerging rapprochement of the OUN and the Polish authorities, who saw in it a possible ally in future war against the USSR).
3. From spring 1936 to autumn 1939- a massive influx of prisoners in connection with the “restoration of order” in preparation for war (in June 1939, the state-political department informed the Ministry of the Interior: “The work is currently in full swing, after its completion it will be possible to house and thousand people"), and from the summer of 1939 Polish Germans joined this flow.
September 18, 1939 g. due to the appearance in the vicinity of Brest German troops the concentration camp guards fled, and the prisoners dispersed (having carried out lynchings over the unwary guards - and after everything described, they are very easy to understand).
The concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzska was not the only weapon of Pilsudski and his associates in the fight against political opponents. In 1931, military courts were officially introduced in the country.
In the same year, 16,000 people were arrested for political reasons, and in the next year - 48,000.
And for this atrocity, Poland must also bear responsibility before all the peoples who suffered from the bloody Polish regime.
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Patriotism in Polish is anti-Russian!
what convenient terms the enemies of humanity have given us: Nazism, nationalism, patriotism... - a play on words, by manipulating which, you can accuse entire peoples of something that they do not even suspect about themselves, you can pit them against each other,
and destroy!
Anti-Russian attacks in Poland are not only popular today, but anti-Russianism in modern Poland is practically necessary condition"Polish patriotism". Russia is now viewed by the Poles as a barbaric Asian country, for which nothing good is recognized. Look through the Polish central publications: political newspapers that consider themselves liberal, in fact, turn out to be extremely chauvinistic towards Russia.
And leading Polish politicians not only do nothing to stop this wave of Russophobia, but, on the contrary, they themselves actively participate in it. And all the “repentances” of the Russian authorities only strengthen the Polish imperious arrogance and arrogance. It seems that if the entire Russian parliament crawls to the Polish border on its knees, then Polish politicians will be dissatisfied: “You’re not bowing so low, you idiot! There’s not enough remorse on their faces!”
It is Poland that must repent!
But on the eve we should not have repented, but remembered the Red Army soldiers and simply Russian soldiers who were tortured, abused, executed, and also deliberately killed by hunger and disease in Polish captivity in 1921-1922.
Why the day before?
Yes, because the official date of commemoration of the soldiers brutally exterminated by Poland in 1921-1922 has not yet been established, and the only date that can be considered significant is December 4, 2000, when a bilateral agreement appeared between Russia and Poland, when the Russian State The Military Archive and the Polish General Directorate of State Archives made an attempt to find the truth based on a detailed study of the archives, which, unfortunately, was only partially successful, since the Polish side is trying in every possible way to avoid disclosing reliable information and avoid responsibility for this crime.
But okay, if it’s not December 4, let there be another date. But let it be! We must remember our compatriots who were brutally tortured in Polish death camps and constantly remind the arrogant Poles of their monstrous crime (real, not imaginary). And Poland must repent of this crime - genocide. Officially repent!
And when will Russia demand repentance from the Poles for the genocide of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and other peoples?...
Executions 1921 - 54 Let's compare the number of prisoners
That is, for the entire period from 1921 to 1954 (for 33 years) sentenced to death penalty 642,980 people. These data were published a long time ago and have not been refuted by anyone.
It turns out - order 20 thousand executed per year. Is it a lot or a little?
First, let's take into account that in reality, Stalin came to power de facto in 1928 (1927 -?) (Lenin died in 1924, and for three or four years Trotsky and others squabbled for power).
That is, six or seven years of these statistics on the fact of repression (including against the Russian Orthodox Church - since this is the work of the Trotskyists) must be deleted from Stalin’s account - and these are not such small numbers in the conditions of the civil war, when here, then there the whites, greens and others, as well as nationalists of all stripes (the Basmachi galloped across the sands and mountains in Central Asia almost until the mid-30s) shot in the back of the new government.
And if you remember the Kronstadt uprising (21, repressively suppressed), Antonov’s and others, then from 21 to 28 a lot of things will happen. Only this, excuse me, has nothing to do with Stalin.
These are Trotsky, Tukhachevsky and others.
But all the same, from the camp of the liberals one immediately hears the familiar annoying (but essentially idiotic) howl about the notorious “tear of a child” and about the tyrant Stalin.
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In order to understand whether Stalin was really that cruel, let’s first compare these figures with today’s democratic Russia, in terms of population, which is one and a half to two times smaller than the USSR (at different times).
Reference: Number of prisoners in the USSR (at the end of the year), thousand people.
Year / ITL / ITC and prisons / Total
1935 / 725 / 240 / 965
1936 / 839 / 457 / 1296
1937 / 821 / 375 / 1196
1938 / 996 / 885 / 1881
And this despite the fact that the population of the USSR in 1938 was approximately 190 million people.
In total, in the “bloody” year of 1937, there were 629 prisoners per 100 thousand population.
Are these numbers big or small? To answer this question, you need to compare it with something.
According to the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, as of March 1, 2007, 883.5 thousand people were in custody in Russia, or 655 per 100 thousand population. This is less than in the US (710).
However, it should be taken into account that only prisoners of the GUIN institutions of the Ministry of Justice are included in official statistics. But they hold only 90% of all prisoners.
That's how it is... it turns out that in today's democratic Russia There are MORE prisoners per capita than in the “bloody-tyrannical” 1937!
By the way, liberals love to talk about the fact that all the achievements of Stalin’s five-year plans were entirely created by the forced slave labor of Gulag prisoners. But in democratic Russia today the same number are in prisons and camps. So, where are today’s “miracles” built by “democratic prisoners”?
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