September 17, 1939, Eišiškės – soviet occupation

“…Unknown and not condemned public crimes against human rights are a poison, which works slowly and rather than friendship creates hatred among people. Those who live received a mandate from all those who became silent forever. They can fulfill its obligations only by an attempt to recreate exactly what happened, fighting with lies …”.

September 19th, soldiers with red stars on caps entered Eišiškės. Most of the inhabitants of the town observed in terror how alien army oncoming from the East. People were aware of what awaited them with the arrival of Bolsheviks. But it has to be admited that some of communities of our town welcomed the Red Army enthusiastically. Especially, those active in the underground revolutionaries, Soviet agents, criminals. They began to attack and loot houses of local intelligence, middle class, wealthier peasants far before the first Soviet troops reached Eišiškės. Using Bolshevik ideology they began to rob ‘Poles-Lords’, they took all clothes, food, cattle. Communists and their supporters displaced rich Poles and took their houses.

‘Cheka’ immediately began to carry out a raid on family members of Polish military men and representatives of the intelligentsia who lived in Eišiškės and its neighbourhood. The police commissioner Małecki and two policemen Piotrowski and Parczyński were arrested and deported. They were on the list of 3 870 officers and Polish officials, so called Belarusian list. They were murdered together with people arrested in Białystok, Brest, Pinsk, Baranavichy. Probably, the crime took place in Kuropaty. Besides, the documentation about this event is still kept in secret by the Russian Ministry of Public Security.

At the same time, the commander of Voluntary Fire Brigade of Eišiškės Stanisław Gotowiecki was arrested, as well as self-government employees: Antoni Bukiejko, Ambroży Walukiewicz, my mother’s brother and a number of rich Jews. Fate had severely tried also Józef Sieklucki, the owner of the Hornostaiszki estate (417 ha of land), who fought in the Polish Army, and his brother Gabriel who managed 484 ha of lands in Emilucyn. Both were put into prison in Lida, where they starved to death. ‘Red committees’ consistied of Communists were formed immediately, in Eišiškės they were led by Chaim Szuster. The head of Komsomol was Riwka Bojarski.

Located on Church Street our house was one of the most impressive. Red Guards told my family to move to the attic whereas they arranged the military unit in the apartment. As my father was an uhlan under Piłsudski command, there was a portrait of Marshal in a room hung on a dominant place, what did not escape the Soviet political commissar attention. He tore the portrait out of a frame and carrying it he said, ‘I want to see your Piłsudski burn.’ My mother snatched it from his hand shouting: ‘I will not let you do it!’. My father seized her and brought her to the shed saying ‘Stupid, this is war, they can shoot you’. Political commissar burned the portrait, broke the frame and smashed glass. My mother didn’t come down from the attic for a couple of days. Then the Soviet unit left and another one was sent in its place thus, thanks to divine providence, the conflict concerning Piłsudski’s portrait ended.

In October 1939, Soviets handed Vilnius and Vilnius Region to Lithuania to take over the entire territory of Republic of Lithuania in the end. In Eišiškės began the Lithuanian rule, but, of course, under the watchful eye of the Soviet ‘brother’. Again, the local population was oppressed. Lithuanians focused on the fight with Polishness. They introduced Lithuanian as an official language. Also in the church people had to pray in Lithuanian, what was not that difficult, because, at that time, priest Bronislovas Chodanionok was the vicar was and he spoke Lithuanian fluently. Illegal smuggling was blooming.

The Lithuanian rule in Eišiškės (October 1939 till June 1940) came to an end when the Red Army and the NKVD returned. A new Revolutionary Committee was set up. The head of Communist party cell and Soviet plenipotentiary was Luba Ginuńska, commanding officer of militia — Alter Michałowski.

July 14th,1940, elections concerning joining Lithuania to the Soviet Union took place. Who did not go or voted against, became ‘the enemy of the people’. How did they know? The number of surname from electoral register was on the ballot paper, which was released into the ballot box, allowing NKVD officers to find out who and how was voting.

Eišiškės Communist party, under the leadership of Ginuńska, prepared lists of people to be send to Siberia, so they went to vote with tears in their eyes. Propagandists and agitators photographed this and then, in newspapers, those tears served as a proof of joy and affection of the possibility to vote ‘for the one’s own authority’. Seventy nine deputies were elected. They soon went to Moscow to ask Stalin to accept Lithuania as a member of Soviet family. Among them were: Antanas Sniečkus, Justas Paleckis, Antanas Venclova, Salomea Neris, Motiejus Šumauskas etc. August 3th, 1940, The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union complied with the ‘request’ of Lithuanians and adopted Lithuania and Vilnius Region to Soviet family. Now as ‘their own, Soviet’ hundreds of thousands people were deported to the East.

There is a vivid memory of celebration of the first of May, 1941, in my mind. Activists in blue shorts and red t-shirts with portraits of Lenin, Stalin and other Soviet leaders in hands, with shouts of their honor, with banners: ‘workers of the world, unite!’ went through the streets of Eišiškės.

Two ladies lived in our house at that time, Anna and Helena Giniewiczówna from Gilwiniszek, who earned money by spinning linen and wool and sewing clothes for peasants. They went to see the parade just out of curiosity and they took me with them. They were so shocked with what they saw that they kneeled and crossed themselves and asked me to do the same. They claimed that it is Lucifer who overtook Eišiškės. They concluded it especially from the view of exposed girls, because in those days girls were rigorously required to wear mid calf skirts.

A Jewish friend of my father Pogorzelski visited us. He was touched, he cried ‘what are they doing? It will be doom. Germans will come’. As it turned out, the wise Jew was right.

Well, words of great poet Adam Mickiewicz fit like a glove here: ‘The good Jew, good Pole also, his homeland loved well’. And if so, the opinion of people about Jewish issue is very surprising. Vilnius Jews who ran the businesses had bank accounts and Polish citizenship. So they are Polish Jews and the memory of them should be well maintained.

During May and June 1941, nights were most terrifying. Drunk NKVD officers arrived in cars and gave people half an hour to gather before deportation to Siberia. I remember that I slept in my clothes, there were packets with belongings and food prepared as well. Every night my father and mother sat by the window and prayed. Nobody knew ‘the day or the hour’. Till the attack of Germans, the Soviets deported from Lithuania about 35 thousand people, including many Poles living in Vilnius Region.

Writing about the events dating back to more than 70 years ago, I think about one more story that gives the atmosphere of that horrible period. When in October 1939, the Lithuanians took power in Eišiškės, colonel Vytautas Krivickas was sent from Kaunas. He was to become the head of Lithuanian Saugumas. He lived in our house. He was, as my father said, an intelligent and ‘not that bad’ man.

He paid for an apartment and service. There was always sugar and salt in the house. Someday in the late spring of 1941, few NKVD officers appeared in the yard in front of the house. It was raining so comers told my father that they want to go inside as they wish to make some notes. They sat down at the table and asked who else is in the house. My father explained that there is a man living with us. They asked to call him. They followed my father to Krivickas’ room and stood by both sides of the door. When he appeared, he was captured and placed by the wall.

The house was immediately surrounded. We all were closed in a separate room. A soldier stood in the doorway. They made a revision and found a pistol, cartridges, a flare gun. Krivickas stood petrified in his underwear. They called for my father to help him get dressed. Then, they asked my mother to collect some food. I stood aside. When they were taking the colonel outside , he said to my father: ‘If I live, I’ll let you know’, because it is worth mentioning that the colonel spoke Polish correctly.

I saw the colonel in beautiful formal uniform only once. On the left side he had the Order of the Cross of Vytis. Every day he went to work on foot in plain clothes. A couple of times his daughter arrived from Kaunas. Sometimes my father wondered: ‘why didn’t he run away to his people?’. The last weeks before his arrest, he often sent my father to get vodka. Probably he was worried or maybe he had a sense of foreboding? He never said anything. We kept his bedding, clothes and stuff in a wicker suitcase in the attic for many years. Deportations and Soviet barbarism was stopped by Hitler’s invasion on the Soviet Union. After the Soviet terror, inhabitants of Eišiškės expected from Germans a better tomorrow but they were sorely disappointed. Fair are the words of Polish song: ‘on the one side bloody German, on the other — fierce Muscovite’.

LET REMEMBER ABOUT OUR HISTORY

September 17th, 1939, the Soviets stabbed Poland in the back by partitioning the country together with Nazi Germany for the fourth time in its history. One of the first victims of crimes dating back 74 years ago became the people of Vilnius Region. Today, we publish memories of Grzegorz Koszczuk, a former inhabitant of Eišiškės, concerning the events that took place in that town after the attack of the USSR. ‘History is a teacher and educator of the nation. It helps to understand the past and avoid making mistakes. Awareness of the fact that there is fewer and fewer living witnesses of those tragic and terrible events from years ago, forced me to write. What is more, as the son of a disabled war veteran shot up during the war with Bolsheviks in 1920, I am, in a manner of speaking, burdened by my father, who foresaw the breakdown of the Soviet Empire, with throwing light on all issues that we couldn’t even talk about at that time. My obligation is to tell stories heard in childhood and numerous facts and events that I witnessed.

I used some of the facts and materials meticulously collected by history professor Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (“Ejszyszki. Pogrom, którego nie było”).

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (born in Warsaw, 1962) is Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics in Washington and serves as an adviser in the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

In Eišiškės I was born and baptized by priest Czeslaw Kalinowski. The baptism took place in May 12, 1935, and the priest said, because he had the radio, that today died a great compatriot and beloved leader – Marshal Józef Piłsudski. He suggested that my godparents — Bolesław Niedźwiecki and Mira Walukiewiczówna – should give me Józef for a middle name, what they did eventually.

Grzegorz Koszczuk

Source: http://kurierwilenski.lt/2013/09/16/17-wrzesnia-1939-roku-ejszyszki-sowiecka-okupacja/

Tłumaczenie by Sara Howicka w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Sara Howicka within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.