Calendar card: Augustów's Anniversary – the biggest crime in Poles after planet War II
date:12 July 2018 Editor: Anna
The Augustine SiegeNKWDTeresa KaczorowskaGiby
Between 12 and 19 July 1945, branches of the Red Army with the aid of the Polish Army and officers and co-workers of the safety Office conducted a wide-ranging pacification action in the Augustowska Forest and its surroundings, called the Augustowska Oława. The intent of this operation was to break up troops of the independency guerrilla operating on the Polish-Lithuanian border.
GK
On July 12th we celebrate - by a bill passed by the Sejm – the Day of Memory of Victims of Augustów's Siege. As we read in the Act of 9 July 2015, this day was established "in tribute to the Victims of the Augustów Oblast of July 1945 – heroes of the anti-communist independency underground who did not reconcile with the fresh russian occupation, murdered by Stalin's order in the north-eastern Poland during peace after Nazi surrender".
To this day, the exact number of victims of this genocide is unknown. Historians talk of a scope of 592 to even about 2,000 victims. To this day, there is besides no known place of death, where for 74 years remains of the murdered.
Soviet troops searched the forests and villages looking for suspects of contact with the Polish independency guerrilla. In total, respective 1000 people were arrested, both with partisan contacts and bystanders. any of them were imprisoned and brutally investigated. About 600 people have never returned home, and to this day their destiny is unknown. Most likely, they were all deprived of their lives on the basis of the same decision and should be considered victims of the Augustowska Siege. It is certain that they were murdered while accepting the highest russian political authorities.
Although shootings during akin check-and-military operations were average practice, the number of people exterminated makes Augustowska the largest mass crime committed on civilians in Europe between the end of planet War II and the war in the erstwhile Yugoslavia in the 1990s. To this day, the resting place of the victims of this crime has not been established.
We remind of the crucial book by Teresa Kaczorowska "Oława Augustowska".
At a book presentation gathering at Ronina Club in August 2015, the author said:
The book “Oława Augustowska” brings closer to the not-known, and the largest “in liberated Poland” and the completely unexplained Stalinist crime of July 1945, called Oława Augustowska, Oława Lipcowa, or “little Katyn” or “another Katyn”. It was made by about 45 1000 regular Red Army troops and 62 units. Divisions of NKVD interior Army, assisted by UB, MO and 160 Polish soldiers of the 1st Prague Infantry Regiment. These forces entered Augustów Forest in July 1945 and its periphery and conducted a wide-ranging pacification action. More than 7,000 people suspected of being active in the independency underground were detained, who were imprisoned in respective twelve places in Augustov district, Suwałki district, Sejneński district, as well as Sokólski district. The Soviets created alleged filter camps for them: in barns, pigs, warehouses and sheds of local hosts. They were interrogated, beaten and tortured - by methods produced in Stalinist apparatus of cruelty and terror.[...]
To this day it is unknown what happened to a large number of missing Poles without the news - how they were liquidated, where, in which places the corpse was buried. Until now, it has been reported that the number of victims of the Augustine Siege is 592 The IPN branch in Białystok is besides investigating in this direction. However, in the light of fresh research, and especially since the discovery of secret cryptograms - by Nikita Petrov of the Memorial Association in Moscow - it is known that there have been more victims, even about 2,000.
It was only now that I tried to approximate this crime with documentary reports of 7 people from Augustovian, Suwalski and Sejneński districts. They all live, I have met them personally, sometimes repeatedly. Among them is an underground soldier of independency from Augustowska Forest, erstwhile juvenile guerrilla Marian Tananis of Sejn (Year 1929), sentenced after the war to 15 years of communist prisons, but saved from Oława. The remainder of my heroes are members of the families of the victims of the Oblast – daughters and sons and siblings of the murdered. [...]
Seven documentary reports, bearing photographs, archival documents, as well as contemporary photographs, based on facts and authentic experiences of circumstantial people - checked besides in historical sources, local archives, household materials - have extraordinary pronunciation. [...] The book makes us aware of the unification that the people of the region affected by the crime inactive remember, endure and wait for its explanation and to uncover the pits of death of their loved ones. [...]
Fragments of texts of celebrated historians from this book:
Nikita Petrov, "Memorial", Moscow.
[...] In the early 1990s, Russia's Chief Military Prosecutor's Office collected materials and conducted its own investigation into this Stalinist crime, but unfortunately it did not decide to announce the truth. In the authoritative reply, which was given to Poland in January 1995, the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office shamefully withheld this execution without any court-martial of parts detained during the Siege, despite confirming the arrest by the authorities of counterintelligence of 592 Polish citizens. So far, Russian leaders have not officially confessed to the execution and have not called the manhunt a crime. There was no reliable investigation, with clear and clear answers where Poles were arrested. This crime was decided to stay silent. To the Polish side, and to the families of the victims of the Augustów Siege, Russia did not supply a complete list of those who “disappeared” and did not give any information about the place of the execution. [...]
Danuta and Zbigniew Kashlelow, historians from Augustov:
[...] The memory of the Augustowska circular must be carried further, made nationwide. We believe that Teresa Kaczorowska's coverage will contribute to this. Literary talent, the desire to benefit from the findings of historians, the sense of a sharp observer, connected with intellectual sense and, above all, with sensitivity, allowed the author to make interesting portraits of witnesses of past and give the stories an interesting form. [...]
Source: ipn.gov.pl, oblawaaugustowska.pl, Solidarne archive2010
Photo: net
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