Memorial near the Augustow Forest: photo - wikipedia
The work is being carried out under the auspices of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), the state-backed enterprise charged with investigating crimes against the Polish nation.
About 2000 Poles were arrested in the vicinity of the town of Augustow in July 1945, in what is known as the 'Augustow Round-up.'
The arrests were organised by the Red Army's counter-intelligence service, SMERSH, with the detainees accused of having links to, or being members of the Polish resistance. Partisans had used the local Augustow Forest as a shelter.
Some 562 of the Poles were never seen again, and the round-up has been dubbed the “Little Katyn”, as an echo of the 1940 Katyn Crime, in which over 22,000 Polish officers were executed by the Soviet secret police (NKVD).
Today's work focuses on the town itself, in a building that once housed the headquarters of the NKVD as well as their Polish communist successors (UB).
Witnesses affirm that tortures and killings were carried out at the property, and that some victims may have been buried there.
Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) will be employed in the operation.
The Polish government-in-exile in London had sanctioned the disbandment of the official resistance force, the Home Army (AK), in January 1945. However, some partisans, previously engaged in a fight against the Nazis, did not lay down their arms, out of distrust for the Soviets.
Zbigniew Kulikowski, head of the investigative division of IPN in the nearby city of Bialystok, has stressed that even if remains are found at the property in Augustow, identification will not be straightforward.
He notes that hypothetically, remains could belong to victims of the Augustow Round-up itself, but also to other victims of the Stalinist era, which ended in 1956. Kulikowski highlights that the NKVD likewise occupied the building between 1939 and 1941, during the first phase of World War II, and that victims may also have been interred at the property during that time.
Meanwhile, a nationwide campaign entitled “The search for unknown burial places of victims of communist terror in the years 1944-1956” continues.
The work is being carried out with the cooperation of two state-backed bodies, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), and the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites (ROPWiM).
The Augustow Round-up has been dubbed the “Little Katyn”, as an echo of the 1940 Katyn Crime, in which over 22,000 Polish officers were executed by the NKVD. (nh)