The Augustów Roundup - Instytut Pileckiego

The Augustów Roundup

In 1945, the Second World War came to an end. In London, Paris, Moscow, and New York, thousands of people celebrated in the streets. Soldiers of the victorious Allies – Americans, British, French, and Russians – posed for photos in conquered Berlin. In Poland, the atmosphere was completely different. The country, which in 1939 was the first victim of joint German-Soviet aggression, was now under full Soviet control. Power was seized by Polish communists obedient to orders from Moscow, and the Red Army brought with it a new form of totalitarian enslavement and dictatorship. Repression by the NKVD and Polish security forces hit those who cherished the notion of a free Poland. On 19 January 1945, General Leopold Okulicki pseud. “Niedźwiadek” issued an order to disband the Home Army. Nevertheless, many soldiers wanted to continue fighting for independence. Underground organizations were formed, and partisan units sprouted in the forests. On 5 July, the U.S. and Great Britain withdrew their recognition of the Polish government-in-exile in London and transferred it to the communist Provisional Government of National Unity, formed with the participation of Polish agrarian politicians. A peace conference planned for July in Potsdam was to determine the course of Poland’s western and northern borders. Tension was growing. During the Second World War, rigid structures of the Polish Underground State operated in the Suwałki and Podlasie regions. In February 1945, the Citizens’ Home Army was formed – the largest underground organization in the area since the disbanded Home Army. The forests, lakes, marshes, and numerous Polish villages provided an excellent network to fight against communist terror.

The Crime

In July 1945, the Red Army and the Soviet security apparatus, supported by the Polish army and the Security Office, carried out an operation that went down in history as the Augustów Roundup. Units with a total combined strength of over 40,000 soldiers and officers were ordered to comb through the entire area of the Augustów Forest. The soldiers maintained a distance of between 6 and 8 meters between each other. Anyone suspected of conspiratorial activity was arrested and brutally interrogated by SMERSH, the Soviet military counterintelligence service. As a result of the Augustów Roundup, over 7,000 people were detained; around 5,000 were later released, and more than 500 were handed over to the Soviet authorities in Lithuania. 592 people were executed by the Soviets and buried in an unknown location. Most likely, the same fate befell several hundred more detainees. In Augustów and the Suwałki region, the victims of the roundup are referred to as “Lipcowi” (“July people”). Their families and loved ones still do not know where they are buried. The Augustów Roundup was the largest crime committed against Poles after the conclusion of the Second World War. It symbolizes the dramatic fate of Central and Eastern Europe, which in 1945 found itself under the influence of the Soviet Union for several decades.

The fight for memory

Despite decades of efforts by the victims’ families, research by historians, and a prosecutor’s investigation, it has not yet been possible to find documents describing how exactly the crime was carried out or to determine the location of the death pits and the full list of the victims. The most significant documents remain held in the archives of the Russian secret services. Despite repeated requests for legal assistance, the Russian Federation, the legal successor to the Soviet Union, has consistently refused to grant access to them.

In the photograph at top: Waclaw Sobolewski (standing third from left) in his youth. Victim of the Augustow Roundup,1931.  Photo from the collection of Mieczyslaw Sobolewski.