Bereza Kartuska prison

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Contents 1 History 2 Inmates 3 Conditions 4 Controversy 5 Documentary 6 Notable inmates 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 10 Further reading

The Bereza Kartuska prison or detention camp (Polish: Miejsce Odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej, "Place of Isolation at Bereza Kartuska") was a Polish prison for political prisoners that was operated in 1934–39 at Bereza Kartuska in the former Polesie Voivodeship (today in Belarus, near the city of Brest).

[edit] History

The institution was created on July 12, 1934, in a former Tsarist prison and barracks at Bereza Kartuska on the authority of a June 17, 1934, order issued by Polish President Ignacy Mościcki. It was intended to accommodate persons "whose activities or conduct give reason to believe that they threaten the public security, peace or order." The event that directly influenced Poland's de facto dictator, Józef Piłsudski, to create the prison was the assassination on June 15, 1934, by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), of Polish Minister of Internal Affairs Bronisław Pieracki.^[1] The inspiration for the establishment of a detention centre for political prisoners at Bereza Kartuzka came from Hermann Göring's during his visit to Poland in 1934^[2].

Individuals were incarcerated at Bereza Kartuska by administrative decision, without right of appeal, for a period of 3 months. The incarceration could be extended for another 3 months (cases are known of individuals being incarcerated for a year). Detained there, in addition to subversion suspects and political opponents of the ruling Sanacja (Sanation) regime, were financial criminals and persons suspected of such crimes (including a substantial proportion of Jews), common criminals (especially recidivists), and in the prison's final phase, persons suspected of sabotage and espionage for Nazi Germany.

The Bereza Kartuska prison was organized by the director of the Political Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Wacław Żyborski, and the head of that Department's Nationalities Section (Wydział Narodowościowy), Colonel Leon Jarosławski. The prison was supervised by the voivode of Polesie Voivodeship, Colonel Wacław Kostek-Biernacki, who has often been erroneously identified as its commandant. In fact, the prison's successive commandants were police inspectors Bolesław Greffner (sometimes his given name is stated as "Jan") of Poznań and Józef Kamala-Kurhański.

[edit] Inmates

Some 16,000 persons passed through Bereza Kartuska over the period of its operation. These included members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Polish Communist Party (KPP) and National Radical Camp (ONR), as well as members of the Peasant Party (SL) and Polish Socialist Party (PPS). Detainees included Bolesław Piasecki and, for some dozen days, the journalist Stanisław Mackiewicz (the latter, paradoxically, a warm supporter of the prison's establishment).

The prison's first inmates arrived there on July 17, 1934, and were activists of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN): Roman Shukhevych, Dmytro Hrytsai and Volodymyr Yaniv. ^[3]

[edit] Conditions

From 1934–1937 the prison usually housed 200–500 inmates at a time. In 1938 the number went up to over 7000.^{[4][dubious – discuss]} Conditions were exceptionally harsh and only one inmate managed to escape.^[5] Only one suicide took place in the camp. On 5 February 1939 inmate Dawid Cymerman slit his throat in the toilet.^[6] During the operation time of the camp 13 inmates died, most of them in a hospital in Kobryń.^[6][7] The number of deaths in detention was kept artificially low by releasing prisoners who were in poor health. Over the five years of the prison's operation, the total number of associated deaths is variously given as between 17 and 20.^{[citation needed]} This number is also repeated in modern sources; for example Norman Davies in God's Playground (1979) gives 17 as the number of deaths.^[8]

Ukrainian historian, Viktor Idzio, states that according to official statistics, 176 men – by unofficial Polish statistics, 324 Ukrainians^[clarify] – were murdered or tortured to death during questioning, or died from disease, while escaping, or disappeared without trace. Most were OUN members.^{[3][dubious – discuss]}

In early 1938, the Polish government suddenly increased the number of inmates by sending 4,500 Ukrainians to Bereza Kartuska without right of appeal.^[3]

OUN members who were incarcerated at Bereza Kartuska have testified to the use there of torture. There were frequent beatings (with boards being placed against inmates' backs and struck with hammers), forced labor, constant harassment, the use of solitary confinement without provocation, punishment for inmates' use of the Ukrainian language, etc.^[3]

Prisoners were accommodated within the main compound, in a three-story brick building. A small white structure served for solitary confinement (in Ukrainian, "kartser"; in Polish, "karcer"). South of the solitary-confinement structure was a well, and south of that was a bathing area. The whole compound was encircled by an electrified barbed-wire fence.

Across a road from this compound were the commandant's house and officers' barracks.

In the prisoners' building, each cell initially held 15 inmates. There were no benches or tables. In 1938 the number of inmates per cell was increased to up to 70. The floors were of concrete and were constantly showered with water so that inmates could not sit.^[3]

By the time they were released from Bereza Kartuska, many Ukrainians had had their health destroyed or had died. Taras Bulba-Borovetz, who later became otaman of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), developed epilepsy as a result of his stay in Bereza Kartuska.^[3]

[edit] Controversy

The Polish government called the prison "Miejsce Odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej" ("Place of Isolation at Bereza Kartuska"). From the facility's inception, the Sanation regime's opponents openly criticized the legal basis for its establishment and operation, calling it a "concentration camp." This term was later popularized by communist propaganda,^[9] which cited the prison as evidence that Poland's prewar government had been a "fascist" regime (despite the fact that Piłsudski had regarded fascism as a menace and that some of his government's most immoderate attacks had been directed against home-grown fascism^[10]). A number of modern non-Soviet sources have also characterized the facility as a concentration camp, including Yale University professor Timothy Snyder, the Library of Congress, and the Polish Nobel prize-winning author Czesław Miłosz.^{[11][12] [13]} Ukrainian sources such as Kubijovych and Idzio representing the Ukrainian Nationalist camp of the interpretation of History also catagorize Bereza Kartuska as a concentration camp.^[14] Polish-British historian Tadeusz Piotrowski who also calls it a concentration camp notes that is establishment of the facility was a norm of its times, similar to camps estabilished by Americans for Japanese during WWII, by Canadians for Ukrainians during WWI, and – as also noted by Norman Davies – on a much smaller scale than those projects (not to mention the giant German or Soviet networks of concentration camps).^[8][15]

[edit] Documentary

Yurij Luhovy, a member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, has completed a documentary film about the prison, based on authentic photographs, documents, archival footage and eyewitness testimony from survivors.^[16] His father was a 1938 inmate.

[edit] Notable inmates

• Witold Borowski
• Henryk Bromboszcz
• Taras Bulba-Borovets
• Adam Doboszyński
• Dmytro Dontsov
• Abram Germański (died there)
• Dmytro Hrytsai
• Orest Kazanivsky
• Dmytro Klyachkivsky
• Hryhory Klymiv
• Yevhen Konovaletz
• Bohdan Kravtsiv
• Stanisław Mackiewicz
• Omelian Matla
• Leon Mirecki
• Jan Mozyrko (died there)
• Bolesław Piasecki
• Marek Rakowski
• Henryk Rossman
• Roman Shukhevych
• Mykhailo Yaniv
• Volodymyr Yaniv

[edit] See also

• Kresy

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• (Polish) Byłem więźniem Berezy - Z Lucjanem Motyką, więźniem Berezy Kartuskiej, rozmawia Magdalena Kaszulanis, Trybuna.com.pl.
• (Polish) Włodzimierz Kalicki, 10 września 1930. Droga do Berezy, Gazeta Wyborcza, 2006-09-11.

[edit] Further reading

• (Polish) "Bereza Kartuska," Encyklopedia Polski (Encyclopedia of Poland), p. 45.
• (Ukrainian) Idzio, Viktor (2005). Ukrainska Povstanska Armiya - zhidno zi svidchennia nimetskykh ta radianskykh arkhiviv (The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, according to Testimony in German and Soviet Archives). ISBN 966-665-268-4. 
• (Polish) Polit, Ireneusz (2003). Obóz odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej 1934–39 (The Bereza Kartuska Isolation Camp, 1934–39). Toruń: Adam Marszałek. ISBN 83-7322-469-6. 
• (Polish) Siekanowicz, Piotr (1991). Obóz odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej 1934–39 (The Bereza Kartuska Isolation Camp, 1934–39). Warszawa: Instytut Historyczny im. Romana Dmowskiego. 
• (Polish) Śleszyński, Wojciech (2003a). Obóz odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej 1934–39 (The Bereza Kartuska Isolation Camp, 1934–39). BENKOWSKI. ISBN 83-918161-0-9. 
• (Polish) Śleszyński, Wojciech (2003b). "Utworzenie i funkcjonowanie obozu odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej (1934–1939)". Dzieje Najnowsze 35 (2): 35–53.