As early as
April 15 the Germans were advising Bern that:
…By April 11th, 160 corpses had been
taken out of the graves and identified. Among
these were two Polish generals, Brigadier-General Smorawinsky, Mecyslaw (Sic) of
Lublin PI, Litwenski (Sic) and General Bronislaw Bogaterewitsch (Sic). Until now
all ranks of officers from lieutenant to general have been identified. A strikingly
large section of the officers are wearing the traditional braid of the Pilsudski
Regiments. Of the corpses in the Polish mass graves it is estimated that 90% are
officers,… The total number of buried Polish corpses in the said woodland is estimated
(on the grounds of statements made by civilian persons about the constant unloading
in March and April 1940) at about 10,000. The corpses were examined by forensic
pathologists of Army Group Mitte…
Clearly, the
Nazis were attempting to place what they believed to be all the missing men in
one location and so they presented this tally of 10,000 and even stated it was
as high as 12,000. One would wonder -how
were they made aware of the tally of the missing?
When they had first
occupied Poland, the Germans had incorporated parts of Poland into the Reich
and each of these areas now carried various
Germanic names including one purely consisting of purely Polish
territory - Reichsgau Wartheland
originally Reichsgau Posen, also
called Warthegau, while the remainder of what remained
had been named the General Gouvernement with the capital in Krakau (Kraków)
under General Hans Frank. The USSR did
not act any better, in fact they simply annexed the territories in the East claiming
they were Belarusian or Ukrainian and by fiat all Polish citizens residing in
these areas were now Soviet citizens – this despite the Treaty of Riga which
clearly defined the borders. The Soviets then removed the families of any of
the men whom they held as prisoner (easy enough to locate them once they were
allowed to mail letters to them) as well
as any member of the educated classes who had not previously fallen into their
nets.
The ancient
borders of Poland had been much more expansive and there were large numbers of
ethnic Poles residing within the confines of a pre-1939 USSR. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Stalin ordered
and the NKVD completed a number of purges directed solely at the Polish
population. It included executions, arrests
for political crimes, or expulsions from their homes and resettlement thousands
of miles away. The victims were men,
women and children. A specific subset
was the clergy which was either executed, sent to forced labor camps or to
GULAGs, where living conditions were such that execution might have been
easier. These victims included priests
of the Roman Catholic and Byzantine Rites, and in the camps they were often
comingled with priests of the Orthodox Rite.
Current analysis of statistical data proves
empirically that the Poles were not randomly selected, or that the groups were comingled
– specific orders were given concerning the Polish population, and the
percentages of those killed or exiled, exceeded their actual proportions by enormous
multiples. Stalin’s plan for the Polish
population, both those residing on ancient lands and those residing within the
borders of interwar Poland were clear – this was an enemy population and was to
be eliminated. The issue of religion,
i.e. whether one espoused Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism or any faith was
irrelevant – once one identified oneself as Polish one was necessarily the
enemy. This was clearly proved in the Katyn Massacre, where all faiths were
represented – which proved to be a problem for the Nazis, since their
propaganda referred to Jewish Bolsheviks organizing the crime.
For six years
there was no Polish nation on the maps of either the Reich or the Soviet Union.
There was a Polish Underground State which reported to London, and the military
structure which came to be known as the Armia Krajowa reported into that
structure and was the main organized armed resistance, thus the ŻZW reported
into it. It was only after the start of
Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, that the USSR began to send in its operatives to organize
any semblance of a resistance, but that structure reported into the Soviet government
and not a Polish one, and was already construed to serve as a Soviet lackey.
During this
period, for both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, any semblance of local Polish organization
was precluded from existing, and all educational activities were banned,
although in German occupied areas the Church had some autonomy. Even so, for the Reich, before the Polish Christians
were eliminated, they were to serve as slave underclass, only somewhat better
than the Jews or the Roma who were to be immediately liquidated. Thus the Polish Red Cross was not allowed to
operate.
Nonetheless,
the Germans found themselves in a quandary, since, unlike the Bolshevik Soviets
whom they so condemned, and who had severed all manner of international
agreements, or had not signed new accords, the Germans had consistently signed
and supported them.
One of them
dealt with the Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross in
Switzerland, which recognized the Polish Red Cross. As a result, the Reich had
been forced to acknowledge that these untermenschen
did have the right to have their Red Cross continue operating, albeit in a
limited fashion. The war had however,
already caused losses in personnel, including those who were abroad at the
start of the war, and so the position of
Secretary General was made available, which was how Kazimierz Skarzyński, who
had worked in manufacturing and had lost that job once the Germans seized the
company, came to occupy that post.
The Polish Red
Cross, as did many national Red Cross units, began to collect information on
the various injured, imprisoned and missing in action. They compiled lists and became aware of the
large number of men missing. Their list
was not complete, since it (necessarily) could not include the names of the men
who had lived and served in various capacities in eastern Poland, now
incorporated into the Soviet Union, for the families of these men had been
taken by the NKVD and forcibly resettled into the depths of the Soviet Union –
to the various ‘stans’ – but primarily Kazachstan, and there were few relatives
left to report on the missing, and certainly even if there had been – the Soviets
would not be collecting it.
Nonetheless,
as Skarzyński reported, the Germans had, at one point, ordered the Polish Red
Cross to prepare to receive a large number of military prisoners from Russia – and
in January 1940 they were preparing to do so as best they could – 14,000 men
were to arrive. Skarzyński stated
We waited at
this camp ready to receive the officers for several months. I don’t remember if
it was April or May 1940 that the German authorities told us to close the
camps, telling us that the officers won’t come back.
The spring of
1940 was a period when the German Gestapo and the NKVD were still holding
organizational meetings, one of which had occurred in Brześć nad Bugiem
(September 27, 1939), a second in Przemyśl in mid-Galicia (November [?] 1939),
a third in Zakopane (February 20, 1940) and there were rumors that a fourth had
occurred In Krakau (March 1940). In this
period of cooperation, it was perhaps possible that the Germans had been informed
by the Soviets of the executions, but no documentation has been found to
confirm this.
But the number
of 14,000 prisoners – now, executed victims, resonated throughout the
partitioned land.
NB – for cities
in German occupied Poland, German names will be used.
©Krystyna Piórkowska
