Poland. 17.5 tonnes of human ashes unearthed in forest

The recent unearthing of 17.5 tonnes of human remains in a forest in central Poland, against the background of news from war-ravaged Ukraine, has not caused much of a stir. Yet, among the ashes of more than 8,000 bodies killed and turned into ashes  by the Nazis in 1944 to cover up the horrors of the KL Soldau concentration camp, buried up to 3 metres beneath the ground in two mass graves respectively 28 and 12 metres long, could be those of Blessed Antoni Julian Nowowiejski (1858-1941) titular Archbishop of Silio, Bishop of Płock, beatified by John Paul II in 1999, his auxiliary Msgr. Leon Wetmański, as well as several dozen other priests, religious men and women, including Blessed s. Mieczysława Kowalska Poor Clare from the Przasnysz convent.

Commenting on the unearthing of the mass graves in the Białuty forest near Działdowo, situated halfway between Warsaw and Gdańsk, Karol Nawrocki, President of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamieci Narodowej - IPN), said that the massacre “was perpetrated so that no one could be held accountable for the crimes of the German Nazis”, announcing that there would be further excavations in at least six different locations, which have already been identified and may possibly reveal more human remains. Nawrocki also assured that “IPN is firmly committed to continuing the search for the heroic victims of the Second World War, and so that not one of them will be forgotten.”

–  I was four years old when, together with my parents and four siblings, I suffered horrific violence, starvation, and a paralysing fear of beatings as well as summary executions of prisoners, hounded by dogs, tortured and brutalised in this Nazi camp. I also witnessed the brutal beating of one of the prisoners, Bishop Antoni Julian Nowowiejski, whom my mother described at the time as " a saint on earth", remembers 85-year-old Teresa Krowicka from Płock, a former KL Soldau prisoner, recently awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross by Pope Francis.

On September 1, 1939, Third Reich troops invaded the Polish territory, thereby igniting the Second World War, which ended in 1945. The conflict, sadly evoked by many images reaching us over the past few months from Russia-invaded Ukraine, resulted in the death of more than 60 million people, including at least 6 million of Jewish origin, 3% of all humanity at the time. Just a fortnight after the Nazi invasion from the west, on September 17, Poland was attacked from the east by the Soviet Union, allied with Hitler. The German-Soviet Pact was signed in August 1939 by the foreign ministers of the two powers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vjaceslav Moltov.

After the German invasion, the KL Soldau concentration camp (now known as Działdowo) was among the first detention and forced labour camps set up on Polish territory by the invader. The infamous concentration and extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kulmhof, Treblinka, Sobibór, Stutthof, Bełżec, Majdanek, Warschau and Gross-Rosen were erected only later. An estimated tens of thousands of prisoners were detained in the barracks of the KL Soldau camp, at least 30,000 of whom perished. The hovels where the prisoners were detained, men and women separated from each other, were built by the same prisoners. They lacked cots or any other furnishings, and the prisoners were forced to sleep on the ground with just a few shrubs as their beds. The KL Soldau prisoners, mostly Poles, members of the clergy and social elites as well as members of the National Army (AK - Armia Krajowa, the largest Polish resistance movement comprising approximately 400,000 members during the Second World War), were subjected to torture and humiliation, and were forced to work days on end exceeding their human limits. Those who were not killed in summary executions would die of starvation or from diseases that were easily spread in that environment with no hygienic conditions. After the German invasion, the KL Soldau concentration camp ( present-day Działdowo) was among the first detention and forced labour camps set up on Polish territory by the invader. The infamous concentration and extermination camps known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kulmhof, Treblinka, Sobibór, Stutthof, Bełżec, Majdanek, Warschau and Gross-Rosen were erected only later. An estimated tens of thousands of prisoners were detained in the barracks of the KL Soldau camp, at least 30,000 of whom perished. The hovels where the prisoners were detained, men and women separate from each other, were built by the same prisoners. They lacked cots and any other piece of furniture, and the prisoners were forced to sleep on the ground with just a few shrubs as their beds. The KL Soldau prisoners, mostly Poles, members of the clergy and social elites as well as members of the National Army (AK - Armia Krajowa, the largest Polish resistance movement comprising approximately 400,000 members during the Second World War), were subjected to torture and humiliation, and were forced to work days on end exceeding their human limits. Those who were not killed in summary executions would die of starvation or from diseases that were easily spread in that environment devoid of any form of sanitation. Between mid-1942 and 1944, the German authorities ordered Special Action 1005 ('Sonderaktion 1005') also known as ''Exhumation Action'. The aim was to hide and destroy evidence of mass murder committed by the SS and the Gestapo in the concentration and extermination camps by exhuming and then burning the bodies in large bonfires. Operation 1005 also served to deal with the inefficient disposal (with subsequent putrefaction) of corpses summarily buried in large mass graves after mass executions or killings in the gas chambers. The ashes of the KL Soldau victims were buried in the nearby pine forest where, in time, more trees sprouted, thus camouflaging the burial sites.

The KL Soldau camp was liquidated by the Germans on January 17, 1945. The prisoners were forced to form a long column that had to proceed northwards, towards the centre of Germany, despite the blizzard. At least 120 remaining survivors were shot on the way, near Zawady. As the final defeat of the Nazis drew near, similar 'death marches' were organised in many German extermination camps on Polish territory.

Following the arrival of Red Army at the end of January 1945, the vacated KL Soldau was reinstated, this time by the NKVD secret police as a Soviet concentration camp for Polish political prisoners who opposed the USSR's occupation of the country, and who continued to struggle for national sovereignty. The camp was definitively closed at the end of that year, while the inmates, subjected to atrocious torture, were either executed or transferred to various gulags in Siberia. Recent estimates suggest that approximately 300,000 prisoners were detained in the camps set up by the Soviets in Poland, 25,000 of whom perished.
Anna T. Kowalewska