In Poland, memory of Belarusians killed in Podlasie in 1946 was honored

Commemoration of the victims of the mass murder of Orthodox Belarusians in Zaleszany. Photo: Piotr Molęcki / Chancellery of the Sejm

The Marshal of the Sejm of Poland (speaker of the lower house of parliament), Włodzimierz Czarzasty, took part in the ceremony, reports Belsat.

"There is no explanation, there is no justification: this crime has the hallmarks of murder," said Czarzasty. "I want to tell you after 80 years as Marshal of the Polish Sejm: there is no justification for this matter."

Ihar Lukashuk, a deputy of the Podlasie Voivodeship Sejmik, spoke in the local Podlasie dialect, saying that his relatives come from the neighboring village of Hredeli. His father told him that his father told him how, after the war, relatives from Zaleszany ran to Hredeli, crying and saying that people were being killed.

Павялічыць

Marshal of the Polish Sejm Włodzimierz Czarzasty bows before the cross in Zaleszany in memory of the victims of the mass murder of Orthodox Belarusians in Podlasie. Photo: Piotr Molęcki / Chancellery of the Sejm

What happened in Podlasie in 1946

Valentina Lajewska, a journalist for Belarusian Radio Racyja and a researcher of Podlasie history, told Belsat about the crime of 1946 and the commemoration of the victims.

Lajewska met witnesses of those events and recorded conversations with them. But questions still remain.

"What happened, why it happened, honestly, no one knows," Lajewska says. "Why exactly these villages were chosen that suffered, it's either by chance, or... Only Romuald Rajs (Bury), who led this operation, which we here in Podlasie call 'Bury's bloody raid', could know that."

The operation began after Bury's partisans stopped a convoy of peasants transporting firewood for a school in Łazice, she recounts. They began dividing people: some were released, some were taken, and they went to Zaleszany. On the morning of January 29, 1946, the partisans entered the village.

Locals received them, fed them. Lajewska explains:

"As always, villagers, when someone with weapons comes to the village, they simply feed them and do everything so that everything turns out well."

Later, the fighters were invited to a meeting in the house of the Sakharchuk family (now a memorial cross stands in that place). At that meeting, Bury said that everyone in the village must die.

The fighters left, locked the house, and set it on fire. But the people managed to escape. Some say that some soldiers opened the door, others — that someone broke a window, through which people fled. The fighters did not shoot at those people.

People who did not come to that meeting died. Bury's fighters began to set all the houses on fire one by one. And old houses, thatched with straw, caught fire quickly. People — mostly mothers with small children — tried to save themselves, but they were shot by the fighters.

"In total, sixteen people died in Zaleszany then, including, probably, six small children, up to five years old."

After this, Bury's fighters went to the neighboring Wólka Wygonowska, where they shot two residents.

Belarusians had to transport the fighters from village to village at gunpoint. On January 30, the fighters decided to get rid of them, killing another 30 or 31 people from 12 villages. This happened in the village of Stare Puchały.

On February 2, Bury's fighters burned the villages of Zanie and Szpaki — in the first, 24 people were killed, in the second — 9.

People were afraid to talk about these events before. There were even cases where researchers were chased away from yards. After World War II and during communist Poland, the topic was not touched upon. The killed in Stare Puchały simply disappeared, Lajewska recalls:

"They wrote to the Red Cross and to the Polish authorities, and no one said anything. Although the people's government then knew that these people had died in Stare Puchały. They were tortured there, one might say, because they weren't even shot."

The remains of the people from Puchały were exhumed in the 1950s, moved to the Catholic cemetery in Klichy, and buried under the inscription "fighters for people's power," although they were ordinary peasants who worked the land and simply tried to survive.

Only in the 1990s were the victims' families able to find where their loved ones were buried. In new Poland, it became possible to show the truth. But people who had been forced to remain silent for 50 years were still afraid, Lajewska recalls.

"That fear remained, that some time would come again. I remember when there was a time when people were quite willing to talk. Later, these marches in Hajnówka began — and people again became afraid to speak openly about those events."

Recognition of the crime

In 2005, the Institute of National Remembrance recognized that Bury's operations were a crime against humanity with elements of genocide, did not contribute to the underground's fight for Poland's independence, and could not be considered justified under any circumstances. Bury was still tried to be whitewashed later.

In Poland, there are still defenders of Bury who say that he only killed people who supported communists. Ultraright nationalists, the "National-Radical Camp," organize marches under the slogans "Honor and Glory to Heroes" and "Down with the Commune." To this, Lajewska says:

"I hope that time will simply show that there is no need to be afraid. One must speak clearly. We are full-fledged citizens of Poland. And this crime was committed by fellow citizens against their own citizens."

"There is this research by the Institute of National Remembrance, which cannot be disputed. Perhaps time is needed for these people who believe that Romuald Rajs (Bury) was a patriot who supposedly fought for the good of Poland, to realize that he chose not entirely the right path. I understand that he himself lost his way in his life."

The researcher says that the truth must continue to be revealed so that Bury is not considered a hero and does not enter the pantheon of "cursed soldiers" who fought in the anti-communist underground — and among those soldiers were people who fought for independence and a free Poland.

"I hope that in the future, it will still be separated, by what methods one fights. Which is also important, because sometimes one can fight for high values with not very moral methods."

The Polish Orthodox Church canonized Bury's victims, as the murders occurred not only on the basis of nationality but also religious affiliation.

Polish politicians honor the memory of the killed every year. This year, the Marshal of the Sejm of Poland, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, visited the commemoration, and five years ago, the then-President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, came to the commemoration and prayed for the souls of the victims.

Czarzasty, among other things, promised that he would continue to work on a bill for compensation for the victims' families.

Lajewska notes that this matter has been dragging on for years. Bury's family received compensation from the Polish state because he was killed by the communist authorities: he was caught in 1948, tried, and hanged on December 30, 1949. The victims' families received no compensation, even though they were left on barren, burned land. Money will not fix anything, but, Lajewska believes, Poland must take such a symbolic step.

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