Polish exhumations

In 1942, Teofil Dolata from Poznań was a worker at the forge of the “Bauzuf 2005” repair train. The train had trailed the German front for one year, and had stood on a side track in Gniezdow near Smoleńsk since January 1942. One day a woman passing by struck up a conversation in Polish, and Dolata finds out about the murdered Polish officers buried in the forest. He gets two friends to help him, Jan Wachowiak and Zygfryd Musielak, and the fruitfully dig in various parts of the forest. Asked about the graves, a local living in a nearby house takes them to the right spot. They take at it with their spades once more.

The crew of repair train nr. 2005;
The first to find the burial place of the Polish officers in Katyń.

“We dug up the corpses of a major and a captain” recalls Teofil Dolata.* “It was a horrible sight. Their faces were unrecognizable, there was nothing left of one of the head other than a shapeless piece of flesh, like an extension of the neck. Their hands were tied behind their backs...

We remain silent. We don't know what to say, because no words could express our thoughts, and that which a man feels when he sees his <i>own</i> brutally murdered. Curse the perpetrators? But which curses to choose that might express our fury and hatred... I can't say why none of broke into tears.

I still remember the silence while we re-buried the bodies and arranged the turf back on the grave [...] We went back to the Bauzug. Our coworkers question us, having seen by the looks on our faces that we had discovered a secret. The next day, on Sunday, we got together a few more men and headed back off to the forest. We didn't dug up any more graves, what would be the point, instead putting up a birch cross. The discussions in the train were different that day, and the most stubborn went back to the forest the next week to put another cross on the grave.

And so in April 1942 two crosses were put up in the Katyń forest ...”

Teofil R. *

Bearing witness in 1989, Teofil Dolata still hadn't decided to reveal his current surname: Rubasiński.

“I changed my surname after escaping from the bombed train” he tells me when we part, and asks me to sign him as Teofil R.

The account we recorded in Mr. Rubasiński's apartment in Poznań is so important — and disturbing — that we decide to verify it in order to rule out mistakes before putting it in the book. After extensive searching, we manage to find the address of Zygfryd Musielak who — as Rubasiński remembers — was with him when they revealed the secret of the Katyń massacre. Mr. Musielak had died, but his son-in-law, Jan Bronicki, agrees to answer our questions.

“My father-in-law first told me about his time in train 2005 in 1945” he recalls in extensive letter. “It wasn't until the early 60's that he revealed that in 1942, he had gone to the Katyń forest with his colleagues to dig up the bodies if the Polish officers. Those accompanying him were:Józef Boruszak, Marcin Karmoliński, Stanisław Paczkowski, Teofil Dolata, now Rubasiński, Tadeusz Oksiak, Franciszek Grodzki and Maciaszek or Maciaszczyk. There was one more person with them, but I don't recall the surname. After burying the bodies they put up a wooden cross on the grave. The cross was to mark the spot of the murder of the Polish officers.

I also heard from my father-in-law that the workers from the Bauzug found out about the officers from an old (and very frightened) Russian man who lived near Gniezdowo, and whose house was near the road leading from Smoleńsk to Minsk [...].

On August 1943, the Bauzug 2005 was bombed, and many Polish workers were killed ...”

Jan Bronicki

* Part of an account in “Powrót do Katynia” (“The Return to Katyń”) by Stanisław M. Jankowski and Edward Miszczak, published in Rzeszów, 1990.