Soviet Atrocity Alleged : Polish Grave Site Reopens War Wound

Stefan Myszczynski still sticks by his story that the location of the graves came to him in a dream, but it is not a point he chooses to belabor. Myszczynski, 56, has spent his life farming, and with his calloused workingman’s hands and steel-colored eyes, he does not seem the sort of man who is susceptible to mystical visions.

But pass over the business of the dream and consider the result: On June 29, Myszczynski took a shovel and walked into the great, dim forest that adjoins his land and stretches for 20 miles along the border of the Soviet Union.

When he got to a certain point in the woods, a point that looks much like any other in this 600-square-mile forest with towering pine trees and whispery silences, he started digging. Under about three feet of earth, he found three human skeletons.

Tiny Towns, Villages

Myszczynski’s neighbors are hard-pressed to remember a piece of news that traveled faster through the tiny towns and villages in this quarter of northeastern Poland. For his digging exposed not just a grave but a wound still raw after more than 40 years.

The villagers were convinced then, and remain convinced now, that the bones Myszczynski uncovered represent a portion of a mass grave--possibly one of three--containing the remains of several hundred Polish peasants who were rounded up by Soviet soldiers in the final days of World War II and executed somewhere in the forest.

On this last point--the alleged mass execution in the forest--no evidence has been found to prove that such an atrocity actually occurred.

Partisans Hunted

There is no dispute, however, that the Red Army soldiers, who occupied the region after the Germans withdrew in 1944, came through the Giby area in the summer of 1945, looking for remnants of the Polish Home Army, an underground force that fought the Germans all through the war and resisted what they regarded as Russian occupation as the war ended. There is no doubt that the Soviets arrested scores of people--some say hundreds--mostly but not exclusively young men, and that those prisoners were never seen again.

Myszczynski’s memory of these events, and their conclusion, is typical. The Soviet soldiers came to the Myszczynski farm on July 14, 1945, and took Stefan’s three older brothers and his stepfather. Myszczynski was 14 at the time. He remembers that for two days he and his mother took food to the prisoners, who were being held in a forest clearing not far from the farmhouse. Then the prisoners were loaded onto trucks, which were driven away into the forest. The stepfather and the brothers never came back.

For 42 years, the mystery of what happened to these prisoners has remained unsolved. Of the two possible answers--that they were deported to the Soviet Union or executed in the forest--the preponderance of local opinion long ago settled on the likelihood of execution. It was for this reason that Myszczynski’s discovery resounded with such force through the area.

As the news spread, people flocked to the forest, on foot, by bicycle and car, bringing with them votive candles and crosses and armloads of flowers and wreaths. They stood back in a wide circle as children held up bones and skulls. The old memories were awakened.

Then all digging was stopped, and with an unmistakable air of triumph and defiance (for this would not be a comfortable subject for the Polish government) an official call was put forth to the Polish War Crimes Commission to investigate the graves. The final proof, the villagers thought, was at hand.

It was not to be. The War Crimes Commission, responding speedily, arrived on the scene and, with the help of local people, began to dig. First, they unearthed nine bodies, laid in a neat, evenly spaced row.

A week later, Waldemar Monkiewicz, head of the Regional War Crimes Investigation Commission, provided a summary of his findings at the weekly press conference conducted by Jerzy Urban, the Polish government’s official spokesman.

German Objects

“When we removed several layers of earth,” Monkiewicz said, “we discovered numerous objects which indicated that the people buried there were Nazi soldiers. The things we found in the graves included identification signs, uniform buttons, a ‘death’s head’ of the type worn on SS field caps, a cigarette case with German writing engraved inside it, parts of a military tent and braces worn by German soldiers. A large group of the local residents took part in the exhumation and identification of the grave’s contents.”

Monkiewicz went on to say that these and two more graves that were opened demonstrated to him that this was a graveyard for German soldiers, possibly once located near a Wehrmacht field hospital, and that further digging would be a pointless exercise.

He declared the investigation closed.

The village of Giby, with a population of 170, can be passed through, on the main blacktop road, in about 10 seconds. The farms around Giby, set on gentle, rolling land, are mostly small and well-tended, but by no means prosperous; farming rarely brings prosperity anywhere in Poland. Most farmers raise barley and oats, a few milk cows and hogs, but most also work at other jobs for cash income, some on road crews or as woodcutters in the forest.

A Forest Treasure

The forest seems as old as Poland itself, and, indeed, there are stretches of it, to the south, that comprise the last virgin forests in Europe. Around Giby, the forest has all been cut before, but it is tended as a sort of national treasure, and huge sections of it have not been cut for 60 or 80 years.

Father Tadeusz Rynkiewicz, a young priest who resides in the nearby town of Suwalki, conducts Sunday Mass in Giby and is new enough in the region to see it from an outsider’s viewpoint, describes the people here as “a little like the weather--harsh and tough--and they keep their distance.”

Nevertheless, after five years here, Rynkiewicz’s sympathies with the people run deep. When asked if he believes that the War Crimes Commission investigation was conducted thoroughly, he hesitates, sighs, and says quietly, “No, not really.”

And why is it so important, the priest was asked, that a 40-year-old tragedy be reawakened now?

“Because,” he said, “the people need to have it not in the form of a wound but in the form of a memory about their relatives. They want to know what happened to these people. They want to know where they are. They want to know the truth.”

Doubtful Villagers

His words are an echo of the even more forceful expressions of the villagers. Of the dozens of area residents interviewed, not one believed that the investigation was adequately conducted. What occurred, they believe, was a cover-up, a whitewash that reflects the cautiousness with which the government of Poland deals with its domineering neighbor, the Soviet Union.

But there are some who believe that the Polish government’s caution is excessive, particularly in view of liberalizing trends brought about by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. After a meeting in Moscow last April, a statement by Gorbachev and the Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, resolved that “blank spots” in the history of Soviet-Polish relations should be filled in and be given “an objective and clear interpretation.”

Thousands Massacred

Most Poles took the statement as an allusion to the massacre of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn, in the Soviet Union, sometime after their capture by the Soviets in 1939. For many years, the Soviets blamed the Germans for the deaths.

Polish histories still hold to that view, even though various underground studies and even the Soviets themselves have abandoned the view that the Germans were responsible. Polish history has also dealt gingerly with the Soviet Union’s 1939 nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany, a treaty that left Poland vulnerable to two huge armies.

“The propaganda speaks of doing away with blank spots,” said Miroslaw Basiewicz, a local farmer, “but this tells you what is really happening.”

Basiewicz is a member of a committee of villagers formed in the aftermath of the commission’s investigation. Its goal, he said, “is to find out what happened.” But already he had been notified by local officials that the citizens’ committee had been declared an illegal organization.

“We want to be able to tell the next generation that these people died in the war,” Basiewicz said. “And it should not matter whether it is convenient or not. It has to be explained. It is a pity that these issues have to be researched by society and not by the officials of the state. It would be better for both countries to explain this matter because it would do away with bitter emotions.”

The Polish government’s view, as expressed by spokesman Urban and the official press, is that the grave sites near Giby simply provide the foreign press with an opportunity to “instigate and embitter” and “to poison Polish-Soviet relations.”

Eyewitnesses in 1945

But the real bitterness exists among the people of Giby and the surrounding villages, many of whom recall the events of July, 1945, as eyewitnesses.

The vividness of their recollections seems to accentuate the suffering of Poland during the war, a conflict that brought the deaths of 6 million Poles, more than 18% of the population. Probably nowhere in Europe are the reminders of World War II as vivid as they are in Poland, a country described by historian Norman Davies as “the killing ground of Europe, the New Golgotha.”

Jozef Kucharzewski, 58, still lives 50 yards from the house in the center of Giby where he watched through a window as villagers, including his 18-year-old sister, Zyta, were herded into a pigsty by Soviet soldiers. Kucharzewski, a blacksmith like his father before him, pointed out the window and then led his visitors around to the old stone out-buildings, which seem to have haunted him for 42 years.

‘My Sister’

“They put my sister in here,” he said. “By herself. I saw all this, with my own eyes.”

Like Myszczynski, he remembers the Soviet trucks.

“They took everyone,” he said. “The prisoners were very weak. There must have been 100 of them. The trucks went toward the forest.”

To Kucharzewski, the search for the graves in the forest is not a new undertaking. He says he has been looking for years, by himself. Twice before, most recently about 10 years ago, he was arrested and held for several days for talking to local authorities and agitating about the case. He was also called to the police station recently.

“They said, ‘What do you know?’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘The Russians took them and the Russians killed them.’ They said, ‘It is better to say nothing.’ I said, ‘It is not allowed to talk?’ They said, ‘Better not do it, it is not nice.’ ”

Kucharzewski shrugged, his face set, determined.

“It is not Germans in that grave,” he said.

Kucharzewski was at the grave site, as might be expected, when the commission was doing its investigation. In fact, he was helping to dig. He is not convinced by German uniform buttons.

Last Two Graves

“Many people here wore old German uniforms,” he said.

It was wartime and people did not have adequate clothing; they wore what they could find. As to medals and other artifacts, he said, they could have been planted by the Soviets. But most important, he believes, were the last two graves, which he dug himself.

The bones in these, he said, were not resting in an orderly fashion. He found wire cable wrapped around some of the bones, and when he pulled on the wire, he found it was attached to other bones.

“When they saw that,” he said, “they said to cover it up. They said they had seen enough.”

When the commission finished its work, the police gave instructions that no more digging was to be allowed at the site. And despite the contempt with which many people here regard the authorities, no one has defied the order, for no one doubts the power of the police to make arrests. The graves have remained unguarded, although certainly they are watched.

The graves are in a slight clearing in the forest, surrounded by pines. No attempt has been made to smooth over the sandy earth disturbed by the digging. Four crosses, chest high and formed from birch logs, stand behind them. There are a few flowers, wilted now.

Sticks and Branches

It is impossible to tell how many people have visited the site, but a faint path has been worn from the car track that passes some distance away. Clearly, visitors have come, for all over the ground are crosses, formed from sticks and branches. Some are made from bits of fallen wood two or three feet long. Others are as small as a hand, formed of twigs, as if set out by children. The effect, like the effect of many spontaneous Polish memorials, is eerie and powerful.

As Kucharzewski points out, the area explored by the digging is only a small portion, perhaps 20%, of the area covered by the suspected graves. The rest is untouched.

Stefan Myszczynski’s dream, or whatever it was, remains a source of curiosity and speculation, not least on the part of the police, who questioned him at some length about how he found the grave site. He told them what he now tells others who presume to ask. He says, “I dreamed it.”

And yet there are stories--a mystery within a mystery. There were three Polish secret policemen with the Soviets in 1945, according to the accounts. They had been assigned to search out, along with the Soviets, the Polish Home Army partisans who were active in the forest region even after the conclusion of the war. The secret policemen carried with them lists of names. They would have been with the Soviets when--or if--the executions in the forest were carried out.

A Clue Before Death?

They would be old men now, these Polish secret policemen, into their 70s. One of them, according to the accounts, died early this summer. Perhaps, before he died, he said something, or gave some clue, to someone.

Myszczynski says he has heard this story, too, and he believes it to be true. But like the other people in the area who have heard the tale, he says he has no idea who any of these men might be, or where they might have been living all these years. The story, therefore, is just that--a story, unfounded speculation.

And yet Myszczynski seems strangely confident that the end of this story is yet to come. There are, he says with assurance, two more mass graves.

“They are in the forest,” he said. “They are large graves. And I will keep looking until I find them.”