OLEJNIK

Wrocław, 8 April 1989

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Editorial Office of the “Zorza” weekly
Mokotowska Street 43
00-551 Warsaw

Dear Editor,

In response to your appeal to provide information concerning prisoners of war detained in camps in the USSR, I am sending my father’s data:

1. Captain Albin Olejnik

–son of Michał and Maria;

–born on 1 March 1894 in Kołodziejówka, district of Skałat, Tarnopol Voivodeship;

–Residing in Biała Podlaska until September 1939;

–interned in the camp in Kozelsk.

2. Data concerning education and employment:

–secondary general education;

–place of work: District Authority Office in Biała Podlaska (from 1934 to 1939);

–position: head of the military office.

3. Data concerning military service:

–captain, retired on 31 July 1934;

–until July 1934: service branch – armored train, 2nd Armored Train Divizion in Niepołomice;

4. As the head of the military office after the German invasion and facing the advancement of the German army, father received the order to evacuate. During the evacuation we stayed in father’s hometown, Kołodziejówka, from where father and the driver of the service car headed in the direction of the Romanian border, after receiving news about the Russian invasion. They were stopped on the way near Skałat by the Russian army, who took father prisoner and released the driver. We learned about this from the driver after we returned to Biała Podlaska in 1941. When mother and father were parting, she gave him a medal with the Virgin Mary.5. We found out about father’s internment in the camp in Kozelsk from a letter from this

camp, which we received in April 1940. The second letter was sent to father’s brothers – but none of these letters has survived to this day.

After my father’s departure we briefly stayed with father’s family, and in 1940 we made for Lwów, to my mother’s sister. There, we had to hide from the Bolsheviks, especially after mother had gone to the NKVD for a passport.

When father was taken, I was 13 and my brother Jerzy was 15 years old. Mother is currently 89 years old.

After the liberation we kept searching for father, and received various messages. In February 1947, mother was informed by the Polish Red Cross’ Office for Information and Search that Albin Olejnik was on the list of the Polish military men exhumed from the collective graves in Kozia Góra near Smoleńsk, under no. 0880, with no other details, and that from April to June 1943 the corpses of the exhumed persons were buried in a collective grave in the cemetery at Kozia Góra.

While providing father’s data, I also would like to ask – may we receive some data concerning father and information as to who was personally responsible for hiding the crime, not reporting it to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, and hiding the Katyń Massacre? This applies to our historians and other people responsible for such state of affairs. I would like to know who is going to name the perpetrators, nationality, and country of origin of the persons responsible for this crime, and most importantly, how is the issue of the Katyń Massacre going to be treated and resolved.

Yours very sincerely,
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