Bereza Kartuska Prison

Coordinates: 52°33′N 24°58′E / 52.550°N 24.967°E / 52.550; 24.967
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52°33′N 24°58′E / 52.550°N 24.967°E / 52.550; 24.967

Bereza Kartuska
Bereza Kartuska, Polesie Voivodeship
Built bySecond Polish Republic
Operated byPolish police force
Original usePolitical and criminal prison
Operational1934—1939
InmatesNational Democrats, communists, members of the Polish People's Party, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists
Number of inmatesMore than 3000
Liberated byAbandoned, 17 September 1939

Bereza Kartuska Prison (Miejsce Odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej, "Place of Isolation at Bereza Kartuska")

concentration camp.[7][8][9]

Bereza Kartuska Prison was established on 17 June 1934 by order of President

formal charges, judicial sanction, or trial, and without the possibility of appeal.[11] Prisoners were detained for a period of three months, with the possibility of indefinite extension.[12]

Detainees were expected to perform penal labour. Often prisoners were tortured, and at least 13 prisoners died.[11]

Besides political prisoners, starting in October 1937 recidivists and financial criminals were also sent to the camp.

German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the camp guards fled on news of the German advance, and the prisoners were freed.[13]

History

Former building of the prison in 2010

It was created on July 12, 1934, in former Russian barracks and prison at

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).[14] It was intended to accommodate persons "whose activities or conduct give reason to believe that they threaten the public security, peace or order."[10]

The Bereza Kartuska prison was organized by the director of the Political Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,

police inspectors Bolesław Greffner (whose given name is sometimes stated as "Jan"), of Poznań, and Józef Kamala-Kurhański.[16]
Officially, Bereza Kartuska was not a part of Poland's penitentiary system, and the staff was composed of policemen, sent there as a punishment, rather than professional prison guards.

September Campaign of 1939, Polish authorities started mass arrests of people suspected of such sympathies.[19] Some members of the German minority in Poland were detained in whole families, including women (previously never detained in the camp).[19]

The camp de facto ceased to exist on the night of September 17–18, 1939 when, after learning about the Soviet invasion of Poland, the staff had abandoned it.[20] According to two reports, the departing policemen murdered some prisoners.[21]

Inmates

Prison building in 2010

According to the surviving documentation of the camp, more than 3000 people were overall detained in Bereza Kartuska from July 1934 until August 29, 1939.[22] However, the camp's authorities stopped formally registering detainees in September 1939, after mass arrests began.[23] According to incomplete data from Soviet sources, at least 10,000 people had gone through the prison.[24]

Reasons for arrest

Prisoners included members of the

National Radical Camp (ONR), as well as members of the People's Party (SL) and Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The detainees included Bolesław Piasecki and, for some dozen days, the journalist Stanisław Mackiewicz (the latter, paradoxically, a warm supporter of the prison's establishment). Also a number of Belarusians who had resisted Polonization found themselves in the camp.[25]

The first inmates - Polish ONR activists - arrived on July 17, 1934. A few days later, OUN activists arrived: Roman Shukhevych, Dmytro Hrytsai and Volodymyr Yaniv.[26] By August 1939, Ukrainians constituted 17 percent of prisoners.[27]

In April 1939, 38 members of Karpacka Sicz organization were detained in the camp.[28] They were ethnic Ukrainians, previously residing in the Carpathian Ruthenia region of Czechoslovakia, where they were attempting to create an independent Ukrainian state. After this region was annexed by Hungary, Hungarian authorities deported them to Poland, whey they were sent to Bereza Kartuska. Unlike other prisoners, they didn't have to perform any labours and had the right to freely talk to each other in low voice.[28]

Reason for detention by percentage of inmates:[23]

1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 I-VIII 1939 Summary
Communists 70% 66% 100% 73% 39% 50% 55%
Far-right parties' members 10% 17% - - - - 2%
Ukrainian nationalists 30% 17% - - - - 4%
Peasant parties' activists - - - - 1% - 1%
Nazism supporters - - - - 1% - 1%
"Anti-state activists" (szkodnicy) - - - - - 1% ≈0%
Karpacka Sicz members - - - - - 2% ≈0%
Criminals - - - 23% 55% 41% 35%
Financial criminals - - - 4% 4% 6% 2%

Known inmates

Conditions

From 1934 to 1937, the facility usually housed 100–500 inmates at a time. In April 1938 the number went up to 800.

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to Bereza Kartuska without the right of appeal.[26]

Conditions were exceptionally harsh, and only one inmate managed to escape.

Kobryń.[31][33] In other sources, the total number of deaths, is variously given as between 17 and 20.[34] This number is also repeated in recent sources; for example, Norman Davies in God's Playground (1979) gives the number of deaths as 17.[35] Ukrainian historian, Viktor Idzio, states that according to official statistics, 176 men – by unofficial Polish statistics, 324 Ukrainians[clarification needed] – were murdered or tortured to death during questioning, or died from disease, while escaping, or disappeared without a trace. According to Idzio, most were OUN members.[26]

OUN members who were incarcerated at Bereza Kartuska testified to the use of

otaman of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), developed epilepsy as a result of his stay in Bereza Kartuska.[26]

Prisoners were accommodated within the main compound, in a three-story brick building. A small white structure served for

well, and south of that was a bathing area. The whole compound was encircled by an electrified barbed-wire fence.[citation needed] Across a road from this compound were the commandant's house and officers' barracks.[citation needed] In the prisoners' building, each cell initially held 15 inmates. There were no benches or tables. In 1938 the number of inmates per cell was increased to up to 70. The floors were of concrete and were constantly showered with water so that inmates could not sit.[26]

Kazimierz Baran [pl] wrote that "the rigour detectable in Beraza Kartuska camp can by no means be compared with the dreadful conditions of the Nazi or Soviet-organized labour camps".[36]

Naming

The Polish government called the institution "Miejsce Odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej" ("Place of Isolation at Bereza Kartuska"). From the facility's inception, the

memorial plaque in Paris for the Bereza Kartuska inmate Aron Skrobek. Its objections were successful and the plaque instead described the facility as a seclusion camp.[43]

Modern scholarship has characterized the facility as a concentration camp,

Nobel prize-winning author Czesław Miłosz,[56] and historian Karol Modzelewski, who was political prisoner and one of the leaders of the democratic opposition in the communist Poland.[57]
Ukrainian sources such as Kubijovych and Idzio representing the Ukrainian Nationalist camp of the interpretation of history also categorize Bereza Kartuska as a concentration camp.
Polish Holocaust law, according to historian Tomasz Stryjek [pl].[60]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-349-54365-6
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  2. ISBN 9783838266848
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  7. S2CID 144394106
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  8. S2CID 144530368
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  10. ^ a b c Śleszyński 2003a, p. 16.
  11. ^ a b Śleszyński 2003a, p. 53.
  12. ^ a b c Śleszyński 2003a, p. 85.
  13. ISBN 9781498243018
    .
  14. ^ (in Polish) Andrzej Misiuk BIAŁYM ŻELAZEM Archived January 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Gazeta Wyborcza, 12/07/1994
  15. ^ a b Jerzy Jan Lerski; Piotr Wróbel; Richard J. Kozicki (1996). Historical dictionary of Poland, 966-1945. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 33.
  16. Polish Radio
    . Retrieved 2010-01-13.
  17. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 100.
  18. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 90.
  19. ^ a b Śleszyński 2003a, p. 91.
  20. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 92.
  21. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 93.
  22. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 83
  23. ^ a b Śleszyński 2003a, p. 84
  24. ^ Ladusev U.F. Communist party of Western Belarus as organizer of workers struggle for democratic rights and freedoms. Minsk, 1976, Page 24.
  25. ISBN 0-8133-1794-0
    ), p. 85
  26. ^
    ISBN 966-665-268-4
    , p. 6.
  27. ^ G. Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 1942-1960, PAN, 2006, p. 65
  28. ^ a b Śleszyński 2003a, p. 88.
  29. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 84.
  30. ^ Śleszyński 2003b, 48.
  31. ^ a b Śleszyński 2003b, 49.
  32. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 51.
  33. ^ Śleszyński gives the full names of the deceased inmates, as well as the dates of their deaths and their camp numbers.
  34. ^ Zdzisław J. Winnicki, "Bereza Kartuska – jak było naprawdę?", 2008 Archived February 26, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  35. ^
    ISBN 0-231-12819-3, Google Print, p. 316.
  36. ISBN 978-83-233-8026-9
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  37. ^ Śleszyński 2003a, p. 151.
  38. ^ The Times "Anti-Jewish Agitation in Poland". Archived from the original on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2009-12-02. March 24, 1938
  39. ^ The Times "M. Biernacki to be tried" [1][dead link] November 23, 1946
  40. ^ Lagzi 2004, 203.
  41. ^ Richard M. Watt, Poland and Its Fate, 1918 to 1939, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1979, p. 302.
  42. S2CID 242909153
    .
  43. ^ "Intervention of the Embassy of Poland in Paris against the term "Polish concentration camp" used on the memorial plaque for Aron Skrobek. December 2007, Paris". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Retrieved 2009-12-28.
  44. ISBN 978-963-7326-98-1
    .
  45. doi:10.1163/187633202X00035
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  46. S2CID 144394106
    .
  47. S2CID 144530368
    .
  48. ISBN 978-0-230-59986-4
    .
  49. S2CID 147713876
    .
  50. ISBN 978-90-5702-343-9
    .
  51. ISBN 978-0-299-29343-7
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  52. ISBN 978-0-87820-141-9
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  53. ^ Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999., 2004.[2],
  54. ^ "Collections Search - Bereza Kartuska (Concentration camp)". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  55. ^ Library of Congress Subject Headings.[3]
  56. ^ Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, New York, Macmillan, 1969, p. 383: "Pilsudski soon revealed himself as a man of whims and resentments... He founded a concentration camp, where he sent several members of the Diet." [4]
  57. ^ Kalina Błażejowska (7 November 2018). "Prof. Modzelewski: Za rodaków wstydzi się tylko patriota". Magazyn Opinii Pismo. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
  58. ISBN 966-665-268-4. [page needed
    ]
  59. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3, p.193
  60. Świętochłowice-Zgoda (in 1945, detaining mainly Germans and Silesians) and Jaworzno
    (1945-1949, from 1947 used for Ukrainians and Lemkos deported under the "Vistula" action), called "labour camps" ( Łuszczyna 2017).

Further reading

External links

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