In recent years, a lot has been said about the allegedly deliberate mistreatment of Red Army soldiers who were captured in Poland in the years 1919-1920. The Russians even claim that the Poles committed genocide against them. However, they themselves “forget” about the fate of Polish prisoners of war from that period. It was not enviable…
Although it is hard to believe, the exact number of Polish soldiers captured by the Bolsheviks ninety years ago is still unknown.
The treaty of February 24, 1921 - signed by Poland, Soviet Russia and the Ukrainian People's Republic - on the exchange of prisoners and hostages obliged the Russian side to hand over over 40,000 Polish soldiers ( only slightly over 25,000 were returned ). It is difficult to draw any specific conclusions as to the total number of Poles taken prisoner on this basis.
Firstly, the Red Army repeatedly murdered captured soldiers of the Polish Army (especially officers and non-commissioned officers). The worst situation in this respect was in the operational sections of Budyonny's Cavalry Army and the 2nd (from July 1920, 3rd) Cavalry Corps, commanded by Ga-Khan.
Red Army soldiers taken prisoner during the Battle of Warsaw. Russians often claim that they later fell victim to alleged genocide in Polish POW camps. However, they themselves prefer not to remember what fate they gave to our captive soldiers.
Secondly, even those who managed to survive and found themselves in POW camps were in danger of imminent death. Their conditions were worse than deplorable…
Dirt, stench and epidemics
Before the prisoners of war ended up in one of the many - scattered throughout the endless empire - destination camps, they often went through several stage outposts. One of them was the prison in Żytomierz where, as reported by fire-master Włodzimierz Garbowiak:
Conditions […] was impossible: a loaf of bread weighing less than 4 pounds was spent on twenty-five [Russian pound is 409.511 grams - ed. author of the article] , besides, a little disgusting soup was served once a day, so we suffered cruel hunger. In spite of this miserable resource, they were rushed to work unloading the wagons and a lot of work was required regardless of the lack of strength .
The only salvation for us were the local people, who from time to time, out of pity, brought us a piece of bread and some hot food.
The issue of the room was much less miserable here, the cells were dirty, damp, overcrowded with people, steamy fumes of stinks, and, moreover, the lack of underwear, were the best breeding grounds for infectious diseases that in the absence of medical help, they prowled terribly, taking several victims a day from among the prisoners .
After reaching the destination camp, the situation did not look any better. First, the prisoners were subjected to a detailed search. Second lieutenant Antoni Gługiewicz, who managed to escape from the camp in Omsk in the summer of 1920, remembered it as follows:
We were completely stripped of our belongings, leaving only 1 clothes, 1-2 pairs of underwear, 1 blanket or 1 coat .
Polish soldiers who were captured by the Bolshevik could not count on good treatment. They would be beaten, overworked and, in many cases, killed.
Received all personal documents, photographs, money of all kinds, leaving only 250 rb. Soviet, [taken - ed. author of the art.] rings (even wedding rings), watches, medallions, clothes, underwear, razors, pocket knives, and even pieces of soap, matches and some coffee, which we received during the journey as the so-called Pajek from internationalists .
Then the captives were quartered, mostly in conditions that offended all human dignity. Most often they ended up in unheated, old and decaying wooden barracks or devastated former monastery buildings. As it was written in one of the Communiqués of the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the end of August 1921:
The prisoners do not have bedding, they sleep on bunks on their own clothes. Dirty, primitive outhouses; contaminated floors there. Bedbugs in significant numbers, lingering, disinfector out of service. Bath 2 times a month, instead of soap, they get a wrong brand of washing powder.
Laundry washing on your own or against payment at the camp washers. They only take a change of underwear after bathing in a very poor quality.
Attention! You are not on the first page of the article. If you want to read from the beginning click here.
It should be emphasized here that it was a report from one of the Moscow officers' show camps, into which the Polish delegation was admitted. In other institutions of this type, the situation must have been much worse…
Polish POWs murdered by the Bolsheviks.
Apart from the poor accommodation conditions, Polish prisoners of war had to deal with another pain, i.e. camp food, which, to put it simply, did not look encouraging. Second Lieutenant Czesław Przyborowski - another fugitive from Bolshevik captivity - reported this to the officers of Division II who interrogated him:
The daily provisioning is:3/4 lb of bread with 50% millet chaff, 3 yl. sugar [one goldsmith equals 4.266 grams], 2 zoł. coffee and dinner consisting of a thin soup which should include 1/2 f. herring and 12 herbs. unground rye on the head. They will receive dinner irregularly once at 11 am, the second time at 4 p.m. And sometimes instead of lunch, a packed lunch or nothing at all.
The Bolsheviks took care not only of "excellent" food, but also that the prisoners would not "get bored". For this purpose, they were provided with various types of "entertainment" in the form of - often even backbreaking - physical work. The previously mentioned Second Lieutenant Gługiewicz mentioned:
we were sent every day, including Sundays and holidays to heavy forced labor under a strong escort of soldiers . We dug graves, worked in marinas, carrying loads for ships, in railway workshops and warehouses, organized an extraordinary court in the Railroad Depot for the former Kołczakowski government, building stands, benches, etc. there, then we worked cleaning the yard from rubbish and dung, even cleaning the sewers and paragraphs. Recently, before my escape, we were working at the railway bridge on the Irtysh.
As it is not difficult to guess, hard work and poor food had a terrible effect on the health of the prisoners. Infectious diseases such as typhus, dysentery or the Spanish flu that were on the move at that time took a toll. Besides, the captives were plagued by scurvy, anemia and even tuberculosis.
This state of affairs was confirmed, inter alia, by the reports of Polish intelligence about the fate of the captured soldiers of the Siberian Division (i.e. the 5th Polish Rifle Division) who ended up in Irkutsk. They estimated that 30-40% of prisoners of war are suffering from typhus epidemic, 20% of whom die, i.e. 700-1,000 of them died of typhus.
Due to the lack of access to the Russian archives, it is not yet possible to establish the exact number of Poles who did not survive the Bolshevik camps. However, we can probably speak of tens of thousands human beings.
Source:
- Polish POWs in Soviet captivity 1919-1921 , "Bulletin of the Military Archive Service", 1995, No. 18