Auschwitz is a city that has become a symbol of the mercilessness of the fascist regime; the city where one of the most senseless dramas in human history unfolded; a city where hundreds of thousands of people were brutally murdered. In the concentration camps located here, the Nazis built the most terrible conveyor belts of death, exterminating up to 20 thousand people every day... Today I begin to talk about one of the most terrible places on earth - the concentration camps at Auschwitz. I warn you, the photographs and descriptions left below may leave a heavy mark on the soul. Although I personally believe that every person should touch and let through these terrible pages of our history...
There will be very few of my comments on the photographs in this post - this is too sensitive a topic, on which, it seems to me, I do not have the moral right to express my point of view. I honestly admit that visiting the museum left a heavy scar on my heart that still refuses to heal...
Most of the comments on the photos are based on the guidebook (
The concentration camp at Auschwitz was Hitler's largest concentration camp for Poles and prisoners of other nationalities, whom Hitler's fascism doomed to isolation and gradual destruction by hunger, hard work, experimentation, and immediate death through mass and individual executions. Since 1942, the camp has become the largest center for the extermination of European Jews. Most of the Jews deported to Auschwitz died in gas chambers immediately after arrival, without registration or identification with camp numbers. That is why it is very difficult to establish the exact number of those killed - historians agree on a figure of about one and a half million people.
But let's return to the history of the camp. In 1939, Auschwitz and its surroundings became part of the Third Reich. The city was renamed Auschwitz. In the same year, the fascist command came up with the idea of creating a concentration camp. The deserted pre-war barracks near Auschwitz were chosen as the site for the creation of the first camp. The concentration camp is named Auschwitz I.
The education order dates back to April 1940. Rudolf Hoess is appointed camp commandant. On June 14, 1940, the Gestapo sent the first prisoners to Auschwitz I - 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow.
The gate leading to the camp is with the cynical inscription: “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes you free), through which the prisoners went to work every day and returned ten hours later. In a small square next to the kitchen, the camp orchestra played marches that were supposed to speed up the movement of prisoners and make it easier for the Nazis to count them.
At the time of its founding, the camp consisted of 20 buildings: 14 one-story and 6 two-story. In 1941-1942, with the help of prisoners, one floor was added to all one-story buildings and eight more buildings were built. The total number of multi-story buildings in the camp was 28 (except for the kitchen and utility buildings). The average number of prisoners fluctuated between 13-16 thousand prisoners, and in 1942 reached over 20 thousand. Prisoners were placed in blocks, also using attics and basements for this purpose.
Along with the increase in the number of prisoners, the territorial volume of the camp increased, which gradually turned into a huge plant for exterminating people. Auschwitz I became the base for a whole network of new camps.
In October 1941, after there was no longer enough space for the newly arrived prisoners at Auschwitz I, work began on the construction of another concentration camp, called Auschwitz II (also known as Bireknau and Brzezinka). This camp was destined to become the largest in the system of Nazi death camps. I .
In 1943, in Monowice near Auschwitz, another camp was built on the territory of the IG Ferbenindustrie plant - Auschwitz III. In addition, in 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, which were subordinate to Auschwitz III and were located mainly near metallurgical plants, mines and factories that used prisoners as cheap labor.
Arriving prisoners were taken away from their clothes and all personal items, they were cut, disinfected and washed, and then they were given numbers and registered. Initially, each of the prisoners was photographed in three positions. Since 1943, prisoners began to be tattooed - Auschwitz became the only Nazi camp in which prisoners received tattoos with their number.
Depending on the reasons for their arrest, prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, along with their numbers, were sewn onto their camp clothes. Political prisoners were given a red triangle; Jews wore a six-pointed star consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for their arrest. Black triangles were given to gypsies and those prisoners whom the Nazis considered antisocial elements. Jehovah's Witnesses received purple triangles, homosexuals received pink triangles, and criminals received green triangles.
The scanty striped camp clothing did not protect the prisoners from the cold. Linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even at monthly intervals, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics of various diseases, especially typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies.
The hands of the camp clock mercilessly and monotonously measured the life of the prisoner. From the morning to the evening gong, from one bowl of soup to the next, from the first count until the moment when the prisoner's corpse was counted for the last time.
One of the disasters of camp life was the inspections at which the number of prisoners was checked. They lasted for several, and sometimes over ten hours. Camp authorities very often announced penalty checks, during which prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were also cases when they were ordered to hold their hands up for several hours.
Along with executions and gas chambers, grueling labor was an effective means of exterminating prisoners. Prisoners were employed in various sectors of the economy. At first they worked during the construction of the camp: they built new buildings and barracks, roads and drainage ditches. A little later, the industrial enterprises of the Third Reich began to increasingly use the cheap labor of prisoners. The prisoner was ordered to do the work at a run, without a second of rest. The pace of work, the meager portions of food, as well as constant beatings and abuse increased the mortality rate. During the return of prisoners to the camp, the dead or wounded were dragged or carried on wheelbarrows or carts.
The prisoner's daily caloric intake was 1300-1700 calories. For breakfast, the prisoner received about a liter of “coffee” or a decoction of herbs, for lunch - about 1 liter of lean soup, often made from rotten vegetables. Dinner consisted of 300-350 grams of black clay bread and a small amount of other additives (for example, 30 g of sausage or 30 g of margarine or cheese) and a herbal drink or “coffee.”
At Auschwitz I, most prisoners lived in two-story brick buildings. Living conditions throughout the camp's existence were catastrophic. The prisoners brought in by the first trains slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor. Later, hay bedding was introduced. About 200 prisoners slept in a room that barely accommodated 40-50 people. The three-tier bunks installed later did not improve living conditions at all. Most often there were 2 prisoners on one tier of bunks.
The malarial climate of Auschwitz, poor living conditions, hunger, scanty clothing that was not changed for a long time, unwashed and unprotected from the cold, rats and insects led to mass epidemics that sharply reduced the ranks of prisoners. A large number of patients who came to the hospital were not admitted due to overcrowding. In this regard, SS doctors periodically carried out selections both among patients and among prisoners in other buildings. Those who were weakened and had no hope of a quick recovery were sent to death in gas chambers or killed in a hospital by injecting a dose of phenol directly into their hearts.
That is why the prisoners called the hospital “the threshold of the crematorium.” At Auschwitz, prisoners were subjected to numerous criminal experiments carried out by SS doctors. For example, Professor Karl Clauberg, in order to develop a quick method of biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted criminal sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10 of the main camp. Dr. Josef Mengele, as part of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities.
In addition, various kinds of experiments were carried out in Auschwitz using new drugs and preparations: toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin transplants were carried out... During these experiments, hundreds of prisoners died.
Despite the difficult living conditions, constant terror and danger, the camp prisoners carried out secret underground activities against the Nazis. It took different forms. Establishing contacts with the Polish population living in the area around the camp made possible the illegal transfer of food and medicine. Information was transmitted from the camp about crimes committed by the SS, lists of names of prisoners, SS men and material evidence of crimes. All parcels were hidden in various objects, often specially intended for this purpose, and correspondence between the camp and the centers of the resistance movement was encrypted.
In the camp, work was carried out to provide assistance to prisoners and explanatory work in the field of international solidarity against Hitlerism. Cultural activities were also carried out, which consisted of organizing discussions and meetings at which prisoners recited the best works of Russian literature, as well as secretly holding religious services.
Check area - here the SS men checked the number of prisoners.
Public executions were also carried out here on a portable or common gallows.
In July 1943, the SS hanged 12 Polish prisoners on it because they maintained relations with the civilian population and helped 3 comrades escape.
The yard between buildings No. 10 and No. 11 is fenced with a high wall. Wooden shutters placed on the windows in block No. 10 were supposed to make it impossible to observe the executions carried out here. In front of the “Wall of Death,” the SS shot several thousand prisoners, mostly Poles.
In the dungeons of building No. 11 there was a camp prison. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the military court, which came to Auschwitz from Katowice and, during a meeting that lasted 2-3 hours, imposed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.
Before execution, everyone had to undress in the washrooms, and if the number of those sentenced to death was too small, the sentence was carried out right there. If the number of those sentenced was sufficient, they were taken out through a small door to be shot at the “Wall of Death.”
The system of punishment that the SS administered in Hitler's concentration camps was part of a well-planned, deliberate extermination of prisoners. A prisoner could be punished for anything: for picking an apple, relieving himself while working, or for pulling out his own tooth to exchange it for bread, even for working too slowly, in the opinion of the SS man.
Prisoners were punished with whips. They were hung by their twisted arms on special poles, placed in the dungeons of a camp prison, forced to perform penalty exercises, stances, or sent to penalty teams.
In September 1941, an attempt was made here to mass exterminate people using the poisonous gas Zyklon B. About 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital died then.
The cells located in the basements housed prisoners and civilians who were suspected of having connections with prisoners or assisting in escapes, prisoners sentenced to starvation for the escape of a cellmate, and those whom the SS considered guilty of violating camp rules or against whom an investigation was underway. .
All the property that the people deported to the camp brought with them was taken away by the SS. It was sorted and stored in huge barracks in Auszewiec II. These warehouses were called “Canada”. I will tell you more about them in the next report.
The property located in the warehouses of the concentration camps was then transported to the Third Reich for the needs of the Wehrmacht.Gold teeth that were removed from the corpses of murdered people were melted down into ingots and sent to the SS Central Sanitary Administration. The ashes of the burned prisoners were used as manure or they were used to fill nearby ponds and river beds.
Items that previously belonged to people who died in gas chambers were used by SS men who were part of the camp staff. For example, they appealed to the commandant with a request to issue strollers, things for babies and other items. Despite the fact that looted property was constantly being transported by trainloads, the warehouses were overcrowded, and the space between them was often filled with piles of unsorted luggage.
As the Soviet Army approached Auschwitz, the most valuable things were urgently removed from warehouses. A few days before the liberation, the SS men set fire to warehouses, erasing traces of the crime. 30 barracks burned down, and in those that remained, after liberation, many thousands of pairs of shoes, clothes, toothbrushes, shaving brushes, glasses, dentures were found...
While liberating the camp at Auschwitz, the Soviet Army discovered about 7 tons of hair packed in bags in warehouses. These were the remains that the camp authorities did not manage to sell and send to the factories of the Third Reich. The analysis showed that they contain traces of hydrogen cyanide, a special toxic component of drugs called “Cyclone B”. German companies, among other products, produced hair tailor's beads from human hair. Rolls of beading found in one of the cities, located in a display case, were submitted for analysis, the results of which showed that it was made from human hair, most likely women's hair.
It is very difficult to imagine the tragic scenes that played out every day in the camp. Former prisoners - artists - tried to convey the atmosphere of those days in their work.
Hard work and hunger led to complete exhaustion of the body. From hunger, prisoners fell ill with dystrophy, which very often ended in death. These photographs were taken after liberation; they show adult prisoners weighing from 23 to 35 kg.
In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp along with their parents. First of all, these were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most Jewish children died in gas chambers immediately after arriving at the camp. A few of them, after careful selection, were sent to a camp where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults. Some of the children, such as twins, were subjected to criminal experiments.
One of the most terrible exhibits is a model of one of the crematoria in the Auschwitz II camp. On average, about 3 thousand people were killed and burned in such a building per day...
And this is the crematorium in Auschwitz I. It was located behind the camp fence.
The largest room in the crematorium was the morgue, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber. Here in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners and Jews from the ghetto organized by the Germans in Upper Silesia were killed.
The second part contains two of the three ovens, reconstructed from preserved original metal elements, in which about 350 bodies were burned during the day. Each retort housed 2-3 corpses at a time.
Just hearing this name alone brings a lump to your throat. Auschwitz remains in people's minds for many years 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 the advancing Soviet army, tried to destroy evidence of the genocide, but did not have time, so that 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 Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is located in the ten surviving barracks (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.
A 15-minute documentary is shown every half hour in the visitor center cinema located at the entrance to the camp. (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 throughout the 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 exhibition of historical documents and photographs, the names of people killed in the concentration camps are listed to the piercing, sad melody of “Merciful God.”
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 various countries of 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” to the 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 of the 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. For bus schedules in the opposite 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 train 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.
Concentration camps in Poland existed 20 years before the German “death factories”
The hell of Polish concentration camps and captivity destroyed tens of thousands of our compatriots. Two decades before Khatyn and Auschwitz.
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 such as the 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, Powazki, 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, “We did not receive bread for 13 days, on the 14th day, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but it was very rotten, 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 huddling 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? It should be noted, however, as an exception that proves the rule: the Bolsheviks assured one of us that they would prefer their present fate to the fate of soldiers in the war. 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 the three months of 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.”
This is how the Soviets came to Poland in 1920
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 rods were always lying 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 “once a day a decoction of dried vegetables and a kilogram of bread for 8 people.” 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 situation of the Red Army soldiers: “obnoxious prisoners in order to spread unrest and ferments in Poland” constantly eat potato peelings from the dung heap. In just 6 months of the autumn-winter period of 1920-1921, 900 prisoners of war out of 1,100 died in Pulawy. The deputy head of the front sanitary service, Major Hakbeil, most eloquently said about what the Polish concentration camp at the collection station in the Belarusian Molodechino was like: “The prisoner camp at collection station for prisoners - it 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 Belarusian peasants of the Bobruisk district sentenced to death - Author), most of whom were 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, Powonzki and the Dombe camp, the cells were so crowded that only the lucky ones slept on planks. 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.” The 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.”
And such a “reception” awaited them in captivity...
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 of detention of prisoners in winter: “most of them 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 Domb, most of the prisoners are barefoot, and in the camp at the headquarters of the 18th division, most 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 the marshalling station 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 that terrible picture , which appears before the eyes of everyone who ends up in the camp... Once again, the same criminal neglect of their duties by all authorities operating in the camp brought shame on our name, on the Polish army, just as happened in Brest-Litovsk... In The camp is in unimaginable dirt and disorder. 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.” A 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 1/2 pound (200 grams), one shard of soup, which looked more like slop, and boiling water.”
The concentration camp at Strzałkowo, located between Poznań 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).
One could only dream of such a dinner...
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 matter.
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 each other up.” The situation in Strzałkow did not change in October 1920: “Clothes and shoes are very scanty, most walk 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: “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.”
The victory of the Poles and their inspirer Jozef Pilsudski
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: “in 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 thin roof. Openings in the roofs allow you to freely admire the 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, the prisoners “were forced to send their natural needs into the pots, from which they 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 soldiers and commanders of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian formations and civilians who sympathized with the Soviet regime. In December 1920, a representative of the Polish Red Cross Society, Natalia Krejc-Welezhinska, wrote: “The camp in Tuchola is the so-called. dugouts, which are entered via 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 fit 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 think with extreme anxiety about the coming winter” (Letter from Tukholi, October 22, 1921).
Camp in Tukholi then and now...
The State Archive of the Russian Federation contains 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 the frosty November of 1920, the Tuchola hospital resembled a conveyor belt of death: “The hospital buildings are huge barracks, in most cases 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 1/4 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 are lying in terrible beds, without bed linen, only a fourth of them 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.”
Tombstones of Soviet prisoners of war in dirt and oblivion
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. A similar figure of deaths is given by the head of the II Department of the General Staff of the Polish Army (military intelligence and counterintelligence), Lieutenant Colonel Ignacy Matuszewski.
In his report dated February 1, 1922 to the office of the Minister of War of Poland, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Ignacy Matuszewski states: “From the materials available to the II Department ... it should be concluded that these facts of escapes from camps are not limited only to Strzałkow, but also occur in all other camps, both for communists and for white internment. 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 Polish Minister of War No. 65/22 of January 12, 1922, with a categorical instruction to the head of the II Department of the General Staff : “...to provide an explanation under what conditions the escape of 33 communists from the Strzalkowo prisoner camp took place 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 in the Russian émigré press about the huge number of deaths in Tukholi are actually confirmed by reports from hospital services. In particular, a relatively “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 only for 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 total number of prisoners of war died.”
A modern monument on the site of a Polish concentration camp for Soviet
According to Russian researchers, the mortality rate in Tukholi during the most terrible months of 1920/1921 (November, December, January and February) “can only be guessed at. 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, in her report on visiting the camp in December 1920, noted that: “The most tragic of all 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.” 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 areas here “where the ground collapsed under your feet, and human remains protruded from it”...
...The military Gulag of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lasted relatively short time - about three years. But during this time he managed to destroy tens of thousands of 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...
Nikolay MALISHEVSKY, “Eye of the Planet”
In the city of Auschwitz, 60 km from Krakow, there is the State Museum of Poland, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, - Auschwitz-Birkenau. During World War II, the largest complex of German concentration camps in Poland was located here. The complex included 3 concentration and death camps: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz).
The city of Auschwitz in German sounds like Auschwitz, in September 1939 it was occupied by Hitler's troops and became part of the Third Reich. In 1940, a concentration camp was erected in the buildings of former barracks in Auschwitz Auschwitz I. It subsequently became the administrative center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex. All one-story buildings were built up to two-story ones, and the former vegetable storehouse became a crematorium and morgue. The first builders of the camp were members of the Jewish community of Auschwitz, and here they would 
whether destroyed.
The gate leading to the Auschwitz I concentration camp is above which there is still a cast-iron cynical inscription in German “Arbeit macht Frei” - “Work makes you free” or “Work sets you free.” The buildings in Auschwitz I were called blocks and there were 24 of them in total. In the basements of block No. 11 in 1941, the first test of mass poisoning of people with Zyklon B gas was carried out. Since the experiment was considered successful, the morgue in Crematorium I was converted into a gas chamber. The ovens and chambers exist to this day as a kind of monument to the cruelty of the Nazis. In the yard 
Between blocks 10 and 11, prisoners were tortured and shot, now there are wreaths and candles burning here.
The perimeter of the concentration camp was surrounded by a double barbed wire fence, through which a high voltage current was passed, and in 1942, Auschwitz I was additionally surrounded by a high reinforced concrete wall.
Construction Auschwitz II known as Birkenau(or in Polish Brzezinka, from the name of a nearby village), began in October 1941. Usually it is this part of the concentration camp that is meant when talking about the death camp at Auschwitz, since Birkenau was created specifically for mass extermination 
The area of the Jews was much larger than Auschwitz I. Here, in one-story barracks, which in reality were ordinary stables, hundreds of thousands of people were kept. The composition of the prisoners was constantly changing: new prisoners from all over occupied Europe poured in a constant stream to replace those destroyed.
A railway was built to the Auschwitz II camp, along which new prisoners were brought in trains every day 
V. They were divided into 4 groups:
Prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were tattooed on their bodies with an assigned number, and also had triangle stripes attached to their camp clothes. The color of the patch depended on the reasons for the arrest: red was worn by political prisoners, green by criminals, black by gypsies and antisocial persons, pink by homosexuals, 
purple - Jehovah's Witnesses. In addition to this, Jews also wore a yellow patch, which together looked like the Star of David.
The prisoners wore thin clothing that did not protect them from the cold, practically did not wash, and very rarely ate food made from rotten waste. All this, combined with exhausting labor, led to rapid deaths from various diseases.
Auschwitz III (Monsheep) was a group of approximately 40 small labor camps that were created around a common complex to serve the needs of mines and factories. Here were prisoners who worked for the needs of the German concern I. G. Farben, for example, produced synthetic rubber at the Buna plant. There are no excursions here.
In November 1944, before the offensive of the USSR army, some of the able-bodied prisoners were transported deep into Germany. On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops entered Auschwitz and freed the prisoners remaining there. The exact number of victims who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp is still unknown; according to various sources, it ranges from 1.2 to 4 million people.
In the modern Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum you can see the barracks in which prisoners lived, the “medical” room where people were killed by injection, gas chambers, crematorium ovens, an execution wall and many evidence of the horror of those times: photographs, lists of the dead, historical 
certificates, belongings and letters of prisoners. About a million people visit the Auschwitz concentration camp museum complex, which is in fact the “largest cemetery”, every year. The site of the former concentration camp makes a depressing impression and makes you think that humanity should never allow such Nazi atrocities to happen again.
We all know the word "Katyn". But how many of us know about the Strzałków concentration camp? But many more Soviet citizens were killed there than Poles were shot in Katyn. Russia has recognized the destruction of the Polish military as a crime. But has anyone heard words of repentance from the Poles for the death of our great-grandfathers?Strzałkow was not the only concentration camp where the killing of Soviet soldiers was carried out en masse - there were at least four more camps in Dombier, Pikulice, Wadowice and Tuchola.
The Young Guard of United Russia came to the Polish Embassy demanding access to Polish archives for Russian historians. We have no right to allow Poland to speculate on history. Access to archives is critical so that not only Russian society, but also the Poles themselves know what country they live in. What happened to their homeland less than 100 years ago. What crimes did the Polish state commit at that time?
First of all, of course, an impartial assessment must be given to the atrocities of the Polish regime, which mercilessly destroyed Soviet prisoners of war. According to various estimates, during the Soviet-Polish clashes in 1919-1921, from 140 to 200 thousand Soviet soldiers were captured. About 80 thousand of them died in Poland from hunger, disease, torture, execution and abuse. The Poles put the figure at 85 thousand prisoners and 20 thousand dead, but it does not stand up to criticism, since in the Battle of Warsaw alone the number of Red Army soldiers captured was about 60 thousand people. This crime has no statute of limitations. And Poland has not yet made any apology for a historical atrocity, the scale of which corresponds to the massacres in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski claims that the soldiers died of typhus. I just want to look him in the eyes and ask: did all 80 thousand die of typhus? We know from the testimonies of those who were in Polish captivity that our soldiers were starved, kept in barracks in terrible cramped conditions, and were not given medical care. In addition to their use in hard work, torture and executions, all of the above together, of course, could not but lead to the fact that the prisoners died. In fact, the concentration camps where they were kept turned into huge necropolises.
The truth about the atrocities of the Polish authorities, which led to the death of our ancestors, is in the archives of Poland. Obviously, it will become available to researchers sooner or later. And much here will depend on the Polish leadership - either it will provide access to the archives and bring repentance for the actions of its predecessors in the 20s - 30s, or it will fall in line with the chauvinistic Polish regime, which ended its existence in 1939 together with Poland.
By the way, one of the arguments of the defenders of Poland and the Polish version of history, concerning the fact that the Poles destroyed Soviet prisoners of war who invaded Poland, and therefore had the “right,” should be rejected outright. Not only because of inhumanity, but also because of obvious anti-historicism.
Back in March 1917, immediately after the overthrow of Nicholas II, Russia recognized the right of the Polish state to sovereign existence. It was confirmed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks, on the eve of the end of the First World War. But it was the new Polish leadership, led by Józef Pilsudski, guided by the concept of “Intermarium” (restoration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the territory before the partitions) that began a war of conquest along the borders of the former Russian Empire, Germany and Austria-Hungary. The details of the atrocities of the Polish military, especially Haller’s army, as well as Stanislav Balachovich’s gang, controlled by Warsaw, are widely known.
During this war, which even unscrupulous historians would not call aggressive on the part of the USSR, the Poles captured from 140 to 200 thousand Soviet soldiers. Only 65 thousand people returned from captivity after the conclusion of the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921. The truth about tens of thousands of victims must be established. Just as the exact number of Red Army soldiers killed in Poland must be established.
The question of Poland’s destruction of the Belarusian education system also awaits its researchers. It is known that from 1920 to 1939 the number of schools where teaching was conducted in the Belarusian language was reduced from 400 to... 0 (in words - to zero). Also, Poland’s practice of carrying out punitive expeditions against Ukrainians, called “pacification,” should also await its researcher. The actions of the Poles against the Ukrainians were so flagrant that in 1932 the League of Nations even adopted a special resolution stating that Poland was oppressing the Ukrainian nation. In turn, in 1934, Warsaw notified the League of Nations of the unilateral termination of the treaty for the protection of national minorities.
The existence in Poland of concentration camps for opponents of the Polish chauvinistic state with its one-party system, uncontrolled punitive bodies, authoritarian central government and Nazi policies towards the non-Polish population should not go unnoticed. Yes Yes. Poland in the 30s was just such an undemocratic state! Yes Yes. Poland in the 30s built concentration camps for dissidents! The most famous is Bereza-Kartuzskaya: five protective rows of barbed wire, a ditch with water, several more rows of energized barbs, watchtowers with machine gunners and guards with German shepherds. The Nazis in Germany had someone to learn from!
Even the most fully outlined issue of Polish anti-Semitism is still waiting for its meticulous researcher. The archives will add much to how the oppression of Jews was carried out at the state level. The shameful "Jewish" benches in universities are only the most obvious signs of Poland's anti-Semitic policy. Much more important is the ban on Jews (as well as Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians) from holding public office. Jews had difficulty accessing credit and were prevented from engaging in commerce. Jews were almost completely excluded from education - for example, in the whole of Poland there were only 11 Jewish professors working at universities. “Days without Jews” were organized for students, when Jews were expelled from universities. Since access to the civil service was closed to Jews, Jews who received a legal education often went to the bar. The Poles solved this problem simply by closing Jews' access to the bar in 1937.
At the end of the 1930s, anti-Semitism reached a new level of almost official segregation. In Kalisz, in 1937, the market square was divided into non-Jewish and Jewish parts. In some cities there was a growing social movement for the expulsion of Jews and even for the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, following the example of Germany. The most authoritative researcher on the problem of anti-Semitism in Poland, Doctor of Science at Columbia University Celia Stopnicka-Heller, sadly stated about this: “The Germans have only just finished, and then with the help of the Poles themselves, the work begun by Polish anti-Semites.” It must be said that the researcher knew what she was saying, since she herself was born in Poland in 1927.
Poland's foreign policy cannot be ignored. Who, if not Warsaw, concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany on January 26, 1934? Russian intelligence has every reason to believe that this agreement was also accompanied by the signing of secret protocols or secret agreements directed against the USSR. And, although the Poles deny this in every possible way, it is clear that evidence confirming or refuting the fact of concluding a secret protocol is in the archives of Poland. They are also waiting for their discoverer.
Poland's participation in the partition of Czechoslovakia is a historical fact. Like a jackal that eats scraps, Warsaw licked up the handouts that France, Germany and Britain threw at it as a result of the Munich Agreement of 1938. The only country that was ready to send troops to help Czechoslovakia was the USSR. But Soviet troops were not allowed through their territory...Poland.
The secret activities of the Polish leadership directed against the USSR are also known. Operation Prometheus, which included subversive actions against the Soviet Union, organizing ethnic unrest, sabotage and espionage, is described by Polish intelligence officers themselves, who refer to documents. These documents are again kept in Polish archives, as well as many other evidence of the tragic events of that time.
It is clear why Poland does not give historians access to its archives. Another thing is not clear - why, with such skeletons in your own closet, try to look for a speck in someone else's eye?
