Father Leon's Services
One of the prisoners in the Kozielsk camp was a cleric, Leon Musielak, who had been a lecturer at the Salesian Public College in Kopiec, near Częstochowa. He was taken prisoner on September 18th, along with a group of civilians and servicemen. They were taken to Kozielsk, a town 250 kilometers south of Smolensk, in what is now Belarus, near the Smolensk — Tula railway. The Kozielsk POW camp was located in a former monastery. The first groups of prisoners were brought here in November 1939.
“One day, I found out that I would be able to take part in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass”, he later wrote in his memoirs. “I can see the Mass as if it were yesterday. We lie on our bunks, our heads sticking out and our eyes fixed upon one point, where Christ's altar stood, so small and inconspicuous. The priest stands at the altar, without vestments of course, holding the chalice and a piece of prison bread instead of a wafer. Under the appearances of these gifts, Christ offers himself here to our heavenly Father for the sins of the whole world.
Darkness... We sing softly, yet feel the mysterious power when when our lips repeat “He who gives himself up to the Lord...” Finally, Holy Communion... It's just a bit of plain bread from our camp rations, but in it there is Christ, with his entire Godliness and humanity, the strongest light for the human mind [...]
Faith and prayer lightened the burden of prison conditions. Despite the punishment for prayer, the chaplains continued their mission whenever they could. Father Jan Ziółkowski, who was later murdered in Katyń, was especially committed and took the greatest risks. He carried a book about the imitation of Christ, among others. It was constantly being passed around. I know for certain that many prisoners kept their internal balance thanks to the Sacrament of Penance and Communion.
Leon Musielak
Our Lady of Katyń - linocut by Danuta Staszewska
Cleric Leon Musielak was one of the few to escape death in 1940. He became a priest, and was harassed and arrested by the communist government in post-war Poland for daring to remind people about the true perpetrators of the Katyń Massacre, among other reasons. Father Leon's memoirs were published in 1991, and three years later he went to Katyń to celebrate Holy Mass for the peace of the souls of his friends from Kozielsk. On May 28th, 1994, the 84 year old Salesian priest prayed in front of the destroyed black granite slabs, which reminded in Polish and in Russian of the Polish officers murdered in Katyń in 1940. The slabs had been hammered with rocks or heavy objects, in an attempt to render the date illegible. He prayed at the Katyń cross, brought there from Warsaw in 1989, and which bore the marks of knives and fire. He prayed in front of the smashed plaque that had read “To those who died in Katyń. The Parishioners of Holy Spirit Church in Vilnius”. He walked through the forest pock-marked with campfires, beer cans, bottles and candy wrappers and admitted that he bears no hatred nor any desire for revenge. In a forest where not even a sign had been put up to keep people from littering and destroying it. In a forest that still waits to become the location of a Polish Military Cemetery...
Father Leon Musielak talks about his internment in Kozielsk with “Return to Katyń” authors Stanisław M. Jankowski and Edward Miszczak.
* Fr. Leon Musielak, SDB, translation from “Spod Częstochowy do Kozielska”, pub. Inspektorat Towarzystwa Salezjańskiego, Kraków, 1991.
The Bath on the Banks of the Ajdar
“It wasn't until typhus and bloody diarrhea started showing up in Starobielsk that the commandants began to fear an epidemic, for which they would face punishment. Thus, one day, the prisoners were lead to the bath, twice daily in groups of 300, but they weren't allowed to wash their clothes. They were marched down the middle of Kirov street in the pouring rain, through puddles knee-high. After about a mile, they reached a sign on the banks of the Ajdar river, which read: “Public bath”.
A small, fat man appeared, wearing a cotton coat that was perfect for dry weather, but utterly useless in the rain. “The Bathkeeper” counted off 2 groups of fifty people, and sent the first to get firewood — they had to chop it themselves and then stoke the stoves, while the others went down to the river with buckets for water, because the pump was broken. The bank was steep and wet. Prisoners would slide down 30 feet on their buttocks and come back up the long way, emptying their buckets into a pipe that fed the boilers. The guards were busy the whole time shouting obscenities at them. After two hours, the bathing finally started, and after the next, the prisoners would switch.
The men undressed in a cold and muddy room, tied their clothes into bundles and threw them into a dry vat. In the next room, forced haircuts were given on benches. Prisoners were made to comply by force, despite protests. Afterwards, everyone looked identical — like criminals. Everyone was also thin. Finally, after two months, a hot shower, and the clandestine washing of laundry. Next, the search for clothes that were dirtier than before, reeking, and wrinkled...” *
Bronisław Młynarski
* Translated excerpt from “W niewoli sowieckiej”, published in London in 1974 and abridged by Ewa Gruner-Żarnoch in the book “Starobielsk w oczach ocalałych jeńców”, Szczecin, 2001.
Polish “Circus” in Starobielsk
Bronisław Młynarski's memoirs are perfectly complemented by the drawings of Józef Łukocjewski, also a POW in Starobielsk, and a soldier of the 1st Legion Cavalry Regiment during the September Campaign. He was not promoted in time to become an officer before World War II. At the exhibition held by the Katyń Association in Szczecin in 1990, he admitted that there was much he could tell about the camp in Starobielsk. His drawing skills were helpful, too...
Łukocjewski's sketches help us imagine the camp in the town of Starobielsk, on the banks of the Ajdar, to the south-east of Kharkiv, in what is now Ukraine. As in Kozielsk and Ostaszków, the Starobielsk camp was located in an Orthodox church and in the surrounding buildings that once belonged to a monastery. The church had previously been used as a warehouse, but was converted to a prison for Polish POWs in September 1939. At first, privates, NCOs, officers and generals were kept there, but in December, only officers and generals were left.
Guard tower in Starobielsk, drawn by Józek Łukocjewski
Generals, colonels and lieutenant colonels lived outside the main camp: generals stayed in a small house on Włodarska street, while the other officers were kept in a former school on Kirov street. The buildings were surrounded by high fences made of planks, topped with barbed wire. Łukojewski recalled the guard towers.
Most Polish prisoners were kept in the “small” and “big” church, which they nicknamed the “circus” and “Shanghai”, in which there were five (and even six) story bunk beds, as well as in the brick buildings of the monastery (for example, in the “captain's block”, as one was called).
The rations in Starobielsk were almost identical to the ones in Kozielsk and Ostaszków: 800 grams of bread daily, as well as a mess-tin of grits for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sometimes there was soup, occasionally a piece of fish or some tinned fish, often inedible. At the camp store — as a supplement to the daily diet — prisoners could sometimes buy 50 or 100 grams of sugar and... candy. As long as they managed to get the rubles by selling their watch to a camp employee, with whom they were forbidden to speak...
Drawings by Józef Łukocjewski from “Starobielsk w oczach ocalałych jeńców”, by Ewa Gruner-Żarnoch.
