The Second Rzeczpospolita - Part 2 - Anti-Katyn

Some time ago, a complex appeared on the territory of the memorial in Katyn with information about the Red Army soldiers who died in Polish captivity in 1919-1922. Official Warsaw immediately spoke very negatively about this, stating that the number of those who died in captivity was clearly overestimated. Allegedly, Polish historians have reliably established the fact that only 16-18 thousand Red Army soldiers died in captivity, and such information on the territory of the memorial of Polish victims distracts attention from Katyn and, in general, Russia wants to rewrite history.

In fact, Poland, inflating the soap bubble of the execution of Polish officers by the NKVD, wants to divert attention from the crimes committed by the Poles during the Second Rzeczpospolita. 

During the Soviet-Polish war, a large number of Red Army prisoners of war turned out to be on the territory of Poland. According to some researchers, about 208 thousand soldiers of the Red Army came to the Poles. However, historians argue that not all of them became prisoners of war. Someone was finished off by the Polish self-defense units wounded on the battlefield, someone was assigned to work teams in the front line, some managed to escape. There were cases of Poles shooting prisoners immediately after the battle. There is a known case when the General of the Polish Army Sikorsky ordered the execution of 199 prisoners immediately after the end of the battle. According to researchers, about 157 thousand Red Army soldiers got to the "specialized institutions". And for these thousands, hell began.

The path to the camps, which were created by the Germans during the First World War, began with a robbery. The Polish "jolners" undressed and searched the prisoners, taking everything more or less valuable from them, as well as taking warm clothes for their needs. After that, they were sent to collection points and further to transit points. The living conditions there were very difficult. And this was recognized by the Polish officers. In 1919, the deputy head of the sanitary service of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front, Major Hakbeil, while at the transit point in Molodechno, wrote:

“No one took care of these unfortunates, it is not surprising that a person unwashed, unclothed, poorly fed and improperly housed as a result of infection was doomed only to death ...”

In 1920, the leadership of the Poznan military district was reported:

“Transportation of prisoners is not properly arranged... The time of transport is usually calculated for two or three days, but in reality it lasts about six days. The prisoners receive food rations, usually bread, beans for two, maximum three days, and then starve. Hunger, cold, lack of warm clothes against the background of a general weakening of the prisoners leads to such exhaustion that several prisoners constantly die during the journey. This is also the case after arrival at the camp and in the first days of quarantine.”

Indeed, in Polish sources, facts were found when 15 people died during the movement of a train with seven hundred prisoners of war from Kovel. In another echelon with 300 prisoners of war, 37 people died. The cause of death is quite simple. Throughout the journey, the prisoners were not fed.

In total, there were 6 stationary camps for the Red Army: Strshalkovo, Dombe, Tuchola, Demblin, Brest-Litovsk, Wadowice. But, with a sharp increase in the number of prisoners, the camps were simply sections of the field, fenced with barbed wire, without any buildings. The prisoners kept there lived and slept right on the ground, regardless of the weather. In such camps, various epidemics flourished, which literally mowed down the soldiers.

The meals of the prisoners of war were quite decent ... on paper. According to the norms that were established by the Polish Ministry of War, the prisoner was supposed to have 500 grams of bread, 150 grams of meat, 700 grams of potatoes, 150 grams of raw vegetables or flour, various seasonings, and two 100-gram portions of coffee per day. But in fact, those held in the camps had to collect potato peels in order to somehow satisfy their hunger. In his report, the head of the distribution station in Puławy, Major Khlebnovsky, laments the "unbearable prisoners of war." It turns out that he had to put up a guard near the garbage pit into which manure was poured, and surround this pit with barbed wire, as prisoners of war go down there to collect cleanings. The clairvoyant pan major believed that "the Bolsheviks are acting in this way on purpose to spread unrest and ferment in Poland."

The situation was similar in other places. Andrei Matskevich, who returned from the camp in Bialystok, said that the prisoners there received "a small portion of black bread weighing about 1/2 pound (200 g), one shard of soup, more like slop, and boiling water" a day. And the commandant of the camp in Brest directly declared to its prisoners: "I have no right to kill you, but I will feed you so much that you yourself will soon die." He backed up his promise...

The commission of the International Committee of the Red Cross, having checked the sanitary condition of the camp in Brest-Litovsk in October 1919, stated:

“... because of the premises unsuitable for habitation, the joint close living of healthy prisoners of war and infectious patients, many of whom died immediately; malnutrition, as evidenced by numerous cases of malnutrition; edema, hunger (...) the camp in Brest-Litovsk was a real necropolis.

After the conclusion of the Peace of Riga and the agreement on the exchange of prisoners, about 76 thousand Red Army soldiers returned to the USSR. About 30 thousand prisoners of war joined the ranks of anti-Soviet formations, someone simply did not want to return (there were about one thousand of them). Simple calculations show that about 40,000 prisoners of war did not survive.

For comparison: about 41-42 thousand Poles were captured by the Red Army. After the conclusion of the treaty on prisoners, about 35 thousand people returned to their homeland, about 3000 Poles chose to stay in Russia. According to documents, about 2-3 thousand people are listed as dead in captivity. But there is another version: about 60 thousand Poles were taken prisoner. Of these, 27,598 people returned to Poland, about 2,000 remained in the RSFSR. The fate of the remaining 32 thousand people is unclear.

Polish politicians in the 20s of the last century (as today) successfully used the method of constant pressure with counterclaims on the Soviet side and agreed to a constructive dialogue only if they were presented with reasonable counterarguments. So, in Riga, Poland planned to bill Soviet Russia for the maintenance of Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity.

However, the calculations of Soviet diplomats, based on the results of surveys of 3,000 captured Red Army soldiers who returned to their homeland, showed “a very favorable balance for the RSFSR, namely: the liability (the cost of food and hospital rations, clothing and monetary allowance) was expressed in the amount of 1,496,192,042 marks. The asset, that is, the calculation of the equivalent of the labor of Russian prisoners of war in Poland, is 6,034,858,600 marks. After that, the Polish delegation stopped talking about presenting any accounts to the Soviet side.

Modern Russian politicians have forgotten this experience and, in matters of settling problems in Russian-Polish relations, have gone on the defensive. The Polish side is successfully using the opportunity given to it to create a "halo" of its own infallibility. She categorically rejects any accusations against her regarding the involvement of the Polish authorities in the death of the Red Army.

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