Editorial Board of the “Zorza” weekly
00-551 Warsaw
Mokotowska Street 43
“The list of the missing”
Provided below are the personal data of my brother, Henryk Kołodziej:
| – | son of Jan and Agnieszka; |
| – | born on 8 April 1914 in Porąbka near Sosnowiec; |
| – | last place of residence: Radlin, Rybnik district; Starobilsk camp, Schliessfach 15, |
Soviet Union;
| – | mining technician, shift foreman at the “Ema” mine in Radlin; |
| – | infantry second lieutenant in the reserve; |
| – | a postcard from the camp in Starobilsk, dated 29 November 1939; another postcard from Starobilsk sent on 6 January 1940. |
I received a message through a released soldier. This soldier escaped from a transport headed for Germany to be exchanged for Russian prisoners of war. He said very little. He was apparently scared – I learned neither his surname nor the place he came from. They went on a goods train and he jumped out of a small window into a ditch with cold snow water (it was during winter). He suffered a long illness and came to me in one of the summer months of 1940. He told me that there were three camps in Shepetivka – one for policemen, one for officers, and one for soldiers. The Russians examined each prisoner’s hands: if they were delicate, he was deemed a “bourgeois”. My God, my brother – a bourgeois! He, the son of the poorest, prematurely deceased laborer. But he was very accomplished – a genius. God blessed him with all sorts of talents. I helped him a lot, but obviously not in his studies. These soldiers know a lot, please try to reach them through TV or radio broadcasts; now, they will certainly tell everything they know.
This message [passed on to me by that soldier] is a scrap of paper with no date or place, there is just the address and the following words: “Stay in good health and good spirits. With God’s help we will see each other soon, and until that moment comes, be perseverant – Heniek”.
I was also notified that my brother was seen on about 22 September 1939 in Zamość.
On 26 September 1940, I sent a registered postcard to Starobilsk, but it returned marked as “Retour”. I attached this postcard and letters from the Polish Red Cross.
[…]
Attachments:
| 1. | a postcard; |
| 2. | [a letter from] the Polish Red Cross in London; |
| 3. | [a letter from] the Polish Red Cross in Geneva from 1940; |
| 4. | [a letter from] the Polish Red Cross in Geneva from 1941; |
| 5. | [a letter from] the Polish Red Cross in Geneva from 1947; |
| 6. | [a letter from] the Polish Red Cross in Warsaw. |
Should the attachments be no longer needed, please kindly return them to me.
Postscript. I had one more message, [which I got] in a dream. I dreamt that someone knocked on the window, I jumped out of bed and saw my brother, standing by the window in his uniform, with his bare heard covered in bandage; he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Take care of our home”. This was in April 1940.