|
|
 |
 |
Background history
The postcard presented on the exhibition is exceptionally precious. It was sent from the special camp run by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Interior Affairs of the USSR) based in Starobilsk, where after 17 September 1939, about 3.6 thousand officers of the Polish Army were kept in isolation. Eventually, almost all of them were murdered in Kharkiv in the period from April to May 1940. Before that tragedy ensued, the POWs in Starobilsk had been allowed to send out one letter a month on the average. The officers who were taken captive by the Soviets endeavored to make contacts with their nearest ones and let them know of their plight straight after being registered in the camp. Second Lieutenant Henryk Lange did exactly the same. Born in 1909, he graduated from the State School of Surveying and Forest Industry in Łomża and was inducted into the army in 1939. During the Polish September Campaign he served in the 81st Infantry Regiment as a platoon leader. As soon as the camp authorities granted the permission to start correspondence, Second Lieutenant Lange informed his mother, Paulina Lange, living in Stawiski – a place located in the then Łomżyński County – about his situation. The message was passed in a few words written by hand on a standard form of a Soviet postcard. Apparently, the postcard mailed by Second Lieutenant Lange reached the destination at the time of Christmas, bringing a lot of joy to his family. The relatives at home were aware of the fact that the scanty information about the conditions in the camp or the few details relating to the personal situation of the young lieutenant were the result of the specific regime of the Soviet captivity. However, to the mother the postcard handwritten by her son himself was a proof that he was alive. Officers who were staying in the Soviet captivity had their contacts with their families hampered, their correspondence being irregular or detained in the camp by NKVD functionaries. The card sent successfully by Second Lieutenant Lang to his mother in December 1939 was the only material trace of her son’s eight-month stay in the NKVD-run special camp in Starobilsk. Since April 1940, that is from the moment when the extermination action was begun, not one letter that would be a direct sign of the officers’ being alive reached their families or friends in the mother country. When in April 1943, the corpses of Polish officers were found in the Katyn forest, Paulina Lange turned to Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (German Red Cross), which dealt with looking for the lost during the war, with the request to be sent information whether her son had also been identified among the remains of the Polish officers. In order to document Second Lieutenant Lange’s stay in the Soviet captivity, she attached the postcard sent by her son from Starobilsk on 1 December 1939 to her letter – the only one she had received from him and – at the same time – the only memento of her son. In response, the German Red Cross informed her that Second Lieutenant Lange was not among the officers found in the graves in Katyn. Despite the fact that all of the Polish officers from the three NKVD-run special camps in Kozelsk, Starobilsk and Ostashkov were murdered at the same time on the power of the order of 5 March 1940, for half a century nobody got to know the truth concerning the burial of the POWs from the Starobilsk camp, whose remains were hidden in the forest near Kharkov. There has been very little correspondence (postcards or letters) preserved up to our times, which was sent from the NKVD special camps in the years 1939-1940, especially from Starobilsk. The postcard displayed on the exhibition is therefore exceptionally valuable, since it is the only trace of Henryk Lange’s stay in the USSR, and – simultaneously – offers genuine evidence of the gruesome crime, whose inner history still has not been explained ultimately until today.
Prepared by: Bartosz Janczak
|
|
|
Postcard from Starobilsk – a mute witness to crime
Source of acquisition
The materials were given over by the Chief Commission for Investigation of the Nazi Crimes in Poland.
Description of the item
A postcard on a standard form of 10cm x 15cm; in the left top corner, a characteristic emblem of the red star, the symbol of the USSR; on the back, the heading “Post-card” printed in the Russian and French languages and a post stamp of 20 kopecks’ worth. At the very bottom, two columns for writing the address of the sender, in the Russian and French languages; on the reverse side (no ruled lines), a message written by hand by the POW. The card is cancelled with a hardly legible stamp, dated December 1939.
|
