Among the soldiers of our army in the East concern is growing about the fate of our officers and regular soldiers who were held in Starobielsk, Kozielsk, and Ostashkov immediately after the September campaign. According to the latest reports, this concern is turning into a tragic certainty. Wishing to gain the fullest possible picture of what we know so far about this drama, we addressed ourselves to the former Starobielsk prisoner Captain Józef Czapski with the request to share the knowledge he had with the readers of the Eagle.
—What did you have to do with the camp at Starobielsk, and when?
—On September 26, 1939, I was taken prisoner by the Russians together with the cadre of the Eighth Uhlan Regiment. I was imprisoned in Starobielsk at the beginning of October, and I left it as one of the last prisoners in May 1940. I was then naturally very concerned about the fate of my colleagues from Starobielsk, Kozielsk, and Ostashkov. And so when in November 1941 I was charged with receiving the soldiers joining the Polish Army, I carried out a questionnaire among them about the fate of the missing men. I conducted this inquiry at the orders of General Anders until April 1, 1942. I questioned thousands of people in this affair. I managed to gather crumbs of information, which I communicated to Minister Kot in Kuibyshev in April 1942.
—Was the ambassador provided with lists of prisoners held in those camps?
—Among the survivors there were officers who helped the camp commanders in their administrative duties. This is how, for example, Lieutenant Bronisław Młynarski, former adjutant in the oldest camp in Starobielsk, provided valuable news. Thanks to this we managed to draw up precise registers of prisoners of war. The complete number taking the three camps together comes to more than 15,000 persons, including 8,700 officers. In Starobielsk itself they imprisoned almost exclusively officers and over a hundred cadets. In Ostashkov, on the other hand, there were mainly regular soldiers from the KOP1 and the state police.
They were all prisoners of war, captured in September 1939. Of all of them, barely three or four hundred are now free. About three hundred of the survivors later passed through the camp of Griazoviets, and several dozen through prisons to which they were transferred individually from Kozielsk, Starobielsk, and Ostashkov. After the prisoners were moved out, Starobielsk was turned into a camp for political exiles, which is however a completely different matter.
—How was the state of mind of the prisoners in Starobielsk?
—At the beginning morale was terrible. Contributing factors were the dejection following our defeat, the lack of any news from Poland, and appalling living conditions. A few of my companions in misfortune couldn’t keep themselves from fighting brutally among themselves. If you add the behavior of the guards, you get a pretty grim picture of life in the camp.
One of the most affecting events for me was the return of that dirty, lice-ridden, desperate human mass to humanity and intellectual life. The first shock was November 11, 1939. I was present at one of the collective religious services, when Father Aleksandrowicz read from a happily preserved Latin breviary the Gospel story of a girl who was resurrected by Christ. The words “she is not dead, but sleepeth” were received with understandable emotion. Later an academy was formed, at which a young sublieutenant recited “Letter from Siberia” by Or-Ot, and one of Lechoń’s poems.
Shortly after this the NKVD started the first nocturnal transfers of our fellow prisoners in an unknown direction. At that time Lieutenant Kwolek, Captain Kuczyński, and others were put on transports. Only of Kwolek did we receive the news that he had died of consumption in the far north.
Another great event in our spiritual life was the Christmas celebration. When we think that those people are probably no longer among the living, even the smallest details from that time take on their own tragic color. I remember as if it were today the long table hammered together from planks, some little tree stolen from somewhere, a few bread buns and candies, and all of Starobielsk resounding with carols all night. The camp authorities were aghast and didn’t know how to contain us. At that time some barracks also started having lectures, and generally the life of the mind began to revive.
—Can you mention any names in connection with this “rebirth” of Starobielsk prisoners?
—An important part was played by General Anders’s chief of staff in the September campaign, Major Sołtan. He came from a family that had fought in the uprisings, and he proudly upheld that tradition. He was one of the first to start giving lectures, on the September campaign and military history.
Father Aleksandrowicz also contributed greatly to raising our spirits; he was an extraordinarily enlightened priest, along with his fellows in misfortune, Pastor Potocki and Rabbi Steinberg. They were all taken away from Starobielsk on Christmas Eve.
I had as a bunkmate Lieutenant Skarczyński, the coeditor of Politics. He gathered economists around him and they conducted fervent discussions about the Polish Republic’s economic program. Mitera—a geologist and Rockefeller fellow with whom I also became friendly, spoke fascinatingly about cosmology. Tomasz Chęciński, a passionate federalist with a superb political intelligence, had the rare gift of winning friends and followers. How many there were, prominent people, fervent patriots, enthusiasts whose quiet work, lively companionship over several months transformed the face of camp life. Dr. Kołodziejski, the eminent Warsaw surgeon; Piotrowicz, the Kraków historian; Professor Karczewski from Rydzyna; and hundreds of others whose faces I can never forget.
—How were the living conditions in Starobielsk?
—The conditions were doubtless infinitely better than the conditions in which political exiles lived in the Gulag. We were given little to eat, but hunger was not particularly severe. As far as living quarters go, the worst was the so-called Circus. This was a former Orthodox church. Around a thousand people were housed in it. The plank beds were built up five high. Because it was very cramped, you had to have a supernatural ability not to fall from under the dome to the ground. I slept in the barracks on the corner of Lvov and Norwid Streets.
—What??
—That’s what we called the corridors between the bunks. Apart from that, there was a slender library in the camp, which contained only Russian books. It didn’t satisfy even one-hundredth part of the demand. Interrogations were conducted generally without physical abuse; at most it happened that someone was questioned for three days and nights without a break.
—What was your removal from Starobielsk like?
—At first the authorities let out persistent rumors that we would be handed over to the Germans. Later there were hints that we were to be transported via Romania and Greece to the Polish Army in France. The Soviet authorities assiduously aided in spreading such information. It came to the point that we were woken at night and asked which of us knew Balkan languages . . . One day one of the prisoners found the route claimed to be ours on a sheet of paper. It went via Bendery (Bessarabia) into Greece. Of course they’d left it lying around on purpose.
—Was there no truth at all in those rumors?
—As far as handing us to the Germans was concerned, I don’t doubt there was something to it. I know, for example, that my two sisters and Dr. Kołodziejski’s wife spent several weeks on the border under the aegis of the Red Cross, waiting for our arrival with thousands of packages. I am sure they were sent on the expedition with the understanding of the German authorities.
—Who was in the group with which you were put on a transport?
—As I said, it was one of the last groups. After our departure almost no one was left in Starobielsk. The group was made up of a dozen or so officers. This raises the question of by what criterion they were selected. I reflected a great deal on this question and I came to the conclusion that there were no obvious political or other grounds for saving the lives of the seventy officers who were transferred from Starobielsk to Griazoviets. The only principle was complete arbitrariness, which has all the appearance of accident. The group included a whole range of ranks and political persuasions, from General Wołkowicki to a regular soldier, from people who had made themselves a “red corner” to extreme supporters of ONR (the right-wing Radical Populist Camp).
We were transported on “Stolypin cars” from Starobielsk to Pavlishchev Bor near Smolensk, and then to Griazoviets, where we found several hundred friends from Kozielsk and Ostashkov. From Griazoviets we were set free at the time of the “amnesty.”
—What indications as to the fate of the prisoners of those camps are provided by the information you collected after you were freed?
—It would take a long time to say, and yet there’s so little to say. The first reports indicated Franz Joseph Land. The NKVD chief in Chkalov confirmed when I asked him, for example, that the prisoners of Starobielsk were at the port of Dudinka at the mouth of the Yenisey River. That is the port of departure for Franz Joseph Land.
However, all of those pieces of information had an uncertain character. What argues against this notion is also the circumstance that when I visited the chief of the Gulag system across the USSR, General Nasetkin, he did not want to tell me anything, but behind his back hung an enormous map on which there were marks for all the camps across Soviet territory, and not one mark appeared on Franz Joseph Land.
—What other reports reached you regarding the prisoners of Starobielsk, Kozielsk, and Ostashkov?
—Between my release from the camp and the departure of our army from the USSR, I traveled to every possible state office that might conceivably know something of the fate of my fellow men. I managed to get to see General Raikhman, one of the highest NKVD dignitaries in Moscow. He first received me with cool courtesy and promised to get to the bottom of the matter. Within a few days he phoned to tell me he was leaving the city and wouldn’t be able to meet me. He advised me to address myself to Vyshinsky (Soviet vice-commissar of foreign affairs), who had the files related to the affair. But Ambassador Kot had already made eight appeals to Vyshinsky without any result.
—What was Stalin’s position on the affair?
—When the Polish ambassador plied him with questions, Stalin was outraged at the news that there were still Poles who hadn’t been released. He later added that the “amnesty” applied to absolutely all Poles and he phoned the NKVD with orders to carry out his decision immediately. Another interpolation was made to Stalin on the matter at the Kremlin by General Anders, at the time of General Sikorski’s visit. The highest Russian official expressed the assumption that our officers had fled to Manchuria. To this General Anders replied that he knew the NKVD as an organization too well to take such a suggestion seriously. Stalin smiled at that compliment and assured them that if there were still some people keeping Poles in camps illegally, then he would “break” those people. (“My budiem ikh lomat'.”) The matter was left there.
—What are your final conclusions?
—We must take all items of German propaganda with proper caution. However, the detailed nature of the information, the consent of the German authorities to an investigation by a Red Cross delegation, the vague denials of the Soviets, and above all the lack of news of the lost men for three whole years do not permit optimism. We must wait with our final judgment for the results of the investigation by the Red Cross commission I already mentioned. In any case they must not serve as a justification for German terror, just as barbaric acts by the Germans must not mitigate our judgment on the tragedy of Kozielsk, Starobielsk, and Ostashkov.
White Eagle2
1943