Death in the forest

Our return to Poland is a lie ...

“The group I left the camp with was one of the last — writes Stanisław Swianiewicz in his memoirs.* — We were loaded into railway cars for prisoners, where we found, scratched into the walls, messages along the lines of “Out return to Poland is a lie, they're taking us to new camps.”

We passed Smoleńsk on the morning of April 30th, 1940. Our train was stopped a dozen kilometers past Smoleńsk. A rumor went around that we were to be unloaded there. Shortly after, a higher NKVD officer entered our railway car, called me over, and announced to me that I would be separated from the other prisoners, after which I was taken to another car and put into a separate prisoner compartment.

Through the window of this compartment, up near the ceiling, I managed to observe that the yard before the railway track was heavily guarded by the NKVD; my colleagues had been unloaded and put onto buses with windows painted over. The bus would take a group of prisoners away and return after approximately half an hour for the next party. I concluded that my colleagues were being taken to a camp that was relatively close[...]

Stanisław Swianiewicz

They didn't stay long in their cells...

“They were brought to Charków in special railway cars — recalls Mitrofan Vasilevich Siromyatnikov. — Cars would leave the Directorate of the NKVD to take Poles back to the Directorate. I was a senior warden at the internal prison and it often happened that I would receive Poles and put them in cells. They would stay in their cells for only a day or two usually, sometimes even just a few hours, after which they were taken to the NKVD basement and shot. I have no knowledge as to whether their executions were conducted based on sentences or other court orders ...

There was a prosecutor in the basement, I don't remember exactly who he was, and Commander Kuprij, I don't remember any other information about him (he was a Commander of the NKVD Directorate), as well as a few people from the command. Following the executions, the bodies of the Poles were loaded onto trucks and taken to the Forest Park [...] Poles were executed as they were brought into the NKVD Directorate. How many were brought — I cannot say and I cannot even estimate, because I was on sick leave for two months. I loaded the bodies onto the truck several times, and took them the burial place, [which] was about 200 meters off of the road to Byelgorod. The corpses of the Poles were put into large pits, of which there were two or three ...” *
 

Bożena Łojek, „Zeznania Syromiatnikowa w sprawie wymordowania jeńców polskich” (“Accounts of Siromyatnikov on the case of the murdered Polish P.O.W.s”) in II PÓŁWIECZE ZBRODNI, Zeszyty Katyńskie Nr 5, published by Niezależny Komitet Historyczny Badania Zbrodni Katyńskiej, Polska Fundacja Katyńska, Warszawa 1995.