History 10/03/20 Augustow roundup in 1945: why Poland blames Russian for “little Katyn”
in the era of Perestroika the Soviet Union officially recognized Joseph Stalin guilty of the shooting of Polish officers in 1940. However, there still remains unsolved the mystery of another tragedy – the “little Katyn”. So in Poland called a special operation of the red Army at Bialystok in 1945, which killed hundreds of people belonging to an underground anti-Soviet groups.
the war against the liberators
After the liberation from Nazi occupation, the situation in Poland was hardly peaceful. Instead of Armia Krajowa, officially disbanded emigre government in January 1945, the poles began to create a new paramilitary organization, the names of whom spoke eloquently about their political orientation – “Independence”, “Freedom and independence”, etc. to Disarm at the request of the command of the red Army underground was not going to. The forest gangs were joined by many deserters, not to obey the mobilization order to the Polish Army. Polish fighters acted the same methods as Bandera in Ukraine. They have regularly attacked the red army, the NKVD and local Communists. The attacks exposed the convoys with trophies coming from Germany to the East. Before death many of the soldiers had been tortured. The killing was done not only for ideological, but also along national-religious lines. Underground exterminated Jewish Holocaust survivors, and in may 1945 they were burned by the Orthodox of the village Flows and Miluki.
Partisans of Bialystok
One of the centers of anti-Soviet movement became the Bialystok Voivodeship. These lands, a short time included in the Byelorussian Soviet socialist Republic after 1944, was formally handed over to Poland. But more than six months in a rural area actually hosted the underground under the command of the former commander The Bialystok district of the home Army Colonel Vladislav Liderskogo. Lenarsky did not recognize the elimination of the army, and just changed the “sign” of the Army Craiova to Obywatelska (AKO). In his possession were thousands of weapons, artillery and tanks. Victims of the underground were even Russian engineers involved in the demining of the Polish territory.
Perhaps the last straw that broke the patience of the Soviet command, was the sortie of the squadron of Lieutenant Zygmunt Blazhevicha. Under his leadership, the July 7 underground workers killed in the Bialystok district 10 of the red army. At the same time, the NKVD received information about the impending capture of the bandits of the town of suwałki.
the August roundup
the Operation to eliminate AKO began on 12 July 1945 in the August County. The soldiers of the 50th army of the 3rd Belorussian front, and “SMERSH” together with the Polish police surrounded the militants in the Augustow forest, and then began a systematic combing of the area.
the Forces were unequal: subordinate to Liderskogo were 20 thousand people, they were opposed by 50 thousand alone the red army. In the area of lake Brogana Russian destroyed the 175 members of the squad Sergeant Thunder who resisted. Other members of the underground, abandoning their weapons, tried to disappear among the civilian population. However, the Soviet soldiers still detained 7 thousand people.
After sorting and interrogation, most detainees were released. However, custody was left at 592, including the Colonel himself Lenarsky. They were taken in an unknown direction. Versions of Polish and Russian historians, the victims of the August raids or shot in the woods, or killed toxic substances in some secret camp. This is also evidenced by the document in which the chief of the “SMERSH” Victor Abakumov reported Lavrenti Beria that of Troyburg arrived, a group of counterintelligence officers “to carry out the elimination of those arrested in the August woods bandits.”
the burial Place of the dead is unknown. Excavations, particularly in the area of the deReuni Kalety, Hrodna region of Belarus brought no results.
historians estimate is
Poles believe the August RAID mass murder on a national basis, or even genocide. The Prosecutor of the Polish Institute of national remembrance even called her a “crime against humanity”. Characteristic of the inscription on the monument in the village of Giby: “Died because they were poles”. In fact the NKVD had enough evidence of detainees belonging to the armed underground. In the woods were found caches of weapons, including 11 mortar shells, machine gun 31, 123 machine gun and other weapons. Although the war has ended, with prisoners actually arrived on the laws of war. In the eyes of the poles the KGB differed little from the Ukrainian or Baltic collaborators. Therefore, it is difficult not to agree with Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
“In the August RAID was nothing is linear, everything is very complex and vzaimoponimanii”.
Allow the Polish-Russian controversy surrounding the August raids may help the discovery of new documents which, as historians believe, can still be in the archives.
Timur Sagdiyev
Source:
© Russian Seven
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