In August 1945, a delegation from the communist government of Poland signed a border agreement in Moscow with the USSR, setting out the east border of our country, which we inactive have in its main course. The Russians led this border so as to humiliate Poles, frequently through the hosts' yard, cutting their homes off from their lands. The border divided families, villages and parishes. She has led to many human dramas. present it's boiling again on this border.
A border that painfully divides
World War II changed the face of Europe and the world. Poland did not return to its erstwhile areas. Decisions taken above our heads (the Tehran Conference of 1943) resulted in border movements. Nearly 300 km of pre-war East Edges were outside the Matrix.
In the summertime of 1945, a fresh border set between villages and fields divided villages and parishes, separating neighbors and families from each other. The formation of the east border of the state was accompanied by feelings of uncertainty, fear and large sadness after the failure of their loved ones.
This was the state of Polish souls and hearts after the war. Although the end of the war was announced in May 1945, Polish patriots could not feel safe. The UB and NKVD underground soldiers hunted, imprisoned, abused and murdered. It was during the period erstwhile the Soviets set on the fresh east border of our country the alleged border cordon, densely cast soldiers of the Red Army, on both sides of this cordon continued raids on soldiers of the underground of independence. Including the most celebrated 1 – the Augustów Oblast, during which the Russians, present we already know, murdered at least 2,000 people.
The border where it never was
Created by the Soviets in 1945, the border cordon, i.e. a makeshift boundary line heavy guarded by the military, cut Polish farms, villages, parishes.
–I was a small boy at the time, but I remember the Soviets walking in our backyard. 30 meters from our house, they were measuring something, they were sticking sticks on the border line. Most of our lands stayed on the Belarusian side. We had nothing to live for a fewer years. Only after the correction of the border in 1948, we were given the east land of our farm – said PCh24.pl inż. Bogdan Garkowski, a resident of Kuźnica Białostocka.– People surviving in the towns at the fresh border line could not realize what a border line was. There's never been a border here before. At first, they underestimated her. They went across the border to see their cousins, friends, friends. But it went off fast due to the fact that the Russians started shooting or arresting – says Bogdan Garkowski.
Repressions
The older inhabitants of the Belarusian Kuźnica, whom I spoke to, told me that shortly after the Soviets set the east border, local people wanted to visit neighbors or cousins crossed it. – When individual crossed the line erstwhile or twice, he was only reproved. However, erstwhile it happened to him the 3rd time, he landed on Siberia— This is Bogdan Garkowski. erstwhile trying to escape Russian borderers, they fired without warning. Russian soldiers zealously pursued Poles who crossed the border due to the fact that they received prizes for it. People were drawn to the another side due to the fact that the border separated them from their loved ones.
Divided Parishes
Stalin's border line with Poland frequently separated parishioners from their parish church. A dramatic example is the neo-Gothic church in Jałówka, located in the confederate part of the present Podlaskie Voivodeship. This temple, under St. Anthony's call, was established in 1910–15. It was the second church in Jałówka, which was a large village before the war (there are fewer people surviving there today). The parishioners of St. Anthony lived mainly in the towns east of Helówka. As German troops withdrew from these areas in 1944, they blew up the tower of St. Anthony’s Church, which was a good reflection point. In addition, the Russians led the border line so that they cut off almost all parishioners who were in the Belarusian SRS (Socialist russian Republic). The border goes right behind the church. The temple had no 1 to rebuild and it fell into ruin. present it is simply a very picturesque but besides symbolic ruin, it makes the hatred of Nazis and communists to the Church clear. erstwhile it becomes among the Gothic walls of the temple, rising to heaven, there is besides the thought that the Church can be fought, but it cannot be destroyed. all year on the day of St. Anthony's memory, the solemn Mass is celebrated here.
Church in Helówka Fig. A.BialousThey were real dramas. Part of the village belonging to the parish of Divine Providence in Kuźnica Białostocka, after the border was drawn, was on the side of Belarusian SRS– The parishioners whose homes and farms were in the SRS could not come to the Mass on Sunday. They stood on the border hill, the priest turned on the outside speakers, and they participated in the Eucharists. Looking at them, the heart fell. Later the Soviets even banned them— This is Bogdan Garkowski.
How many pits of Poles' death in the border strip?
The case of unknown burial sites of Poles, who died immediately after the end of the war, at the time of return to household homes, located on both sides of Stalin's east border, is almost unknown. Mainly due to the fact that the bodies of these people remainder in the border strip, where it is impossible to carry out search work now. Due to the deficiency of consent of Alexander Lukashenka to carry out search and exhumation work by the IPN for the victims of the Augustowska Oblast, in the Belarusian border strip (it has a width of about a kilometer) in the area of Kaleta, it is besides impossible to bury the victims of this post-war genocide. Their death pits are practically known. During this year's anniversary celebration in Gibach, Marek Jednak, president of the Institute of National Memory in Białystok, said that the IPN knows almost 100 percent where the victims are buried. “Unburied, not buried, they are buried, squeezed in russian shoes into the ground, and I hope that we will see the minute erstwhile we can resume the suspended investigation into the Augustov Oblast as shortly as fresh evidence appears... to find graves and reconstruct loved ones to their families, so that each of them can lay light on their graves,” said Shenak.
The case of Poles shot by Russian soldiers on the border cordon, among others, is known by social workers who care about Polish memorial sites in Kresach. 1 of them is Robert Pawłowski, who heard about Poles killed in the summertime and autumn of 1945 from the mouth of Poles surviving in Belarus. – Along the full of our present east border, in the border region with Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, there are many burials of our countrymen who died after the war erstwhile they returned, among others, from German camps or forced labour in Germany to their homes in the Borderlands or from exports to the East. They did not know of the existence, or the exact course, of the fresh east border, the alleged east border cordon. They went consecutive to that cordon, and the Red Army shot them without warning. – said Robert Pawłowski, the head of the Association of Poles from Niemna. – These are possibly the most forgotten of our countrymen to whom we should present a monument as shortly as possible. – noted Robert Pawłowski.
The fact that Poles died passing through the border cordon, designated by the Soviets, besides confirms the accounts communicated to the Association of Memory of Victims of the Augustów Oblast. 1 of them was Mirosław Grzyb, a retired forester, who in the second half of the 1990s marked the tourist way – the natural “Bocianisko” leading, among others, in the vicinity of the village of Rudawka, located just off the Polish-Belarusian border. – On the Polish border border of the “Rudawka” lock of the Augustów Canal, we found a fragment of the human skull. A resident of Rudawka village told us that these could be the remains of 1 of the very many people who died, from russian missiles, while escaping through the canal (through the Kurzyniec lock led the border cordon) from the russian Union to Poland, which was to happen in the summertime of 1945 – reports Mirosław Grzyb.
On the another hand, the late Lieutenant Marian Tananis, a soldier of the AKO branch commanded by Stefanowski, Ps. Grom, broken down during the Augustowska Oblast, saw the russian border cordon with his own eyes and found out how dangerous he was. He participated in a four-man expedition of soldiers of the AK, which in September 1945 followed the tracks of cars which the Soviets carried the victims of the Augustowska Siege for execution. This expedition, following the forest road to Kaleta, reached the border cordon. “There was quite a few russian troops on the cordon. Trying to pass it – it was like suicide," Marian Tananis told me.
Adam Białous
Before the genocide in Buczy there was a Polish operation NKVD, Katyń and Ogław Augustowska [ OPINION]
