A memorial complex commemorating hundreds of Polish prisoners of war who perished while being held captive by the Soviet authorities at the end of World War II has been vandalised in northwestern Russia’s Novgorod region, Russian independent news outlet Okno reported on Thursday.
A local resident whom Okno named only as Yelena reportedly noticed the destruction of the monuments on Sunday while walking past a Catholic cemetery near the village of Borovichi-Yogla, the site of Soviet labour camp for foreign prisoners of war where over 600 Poles died of starvation, disease or exhaustion between 1944 and 1946.
The memorial complex after being vandalised. Photo: The Polish Consulate in St. Petersburg
According to Okno, the vandals had removed a cross and had attempted to chip away a Polish inscription on a granite boulder. Photographs of the destruction were shared by the Polish Consulate General in St. Petersburg on Monday.
While the camp initially held German prisoners of war, thousands of members of Poland’s Home Army, a resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II, were sent to the camp for supporting Polish independence as well as for their anti-communist views from 1944 onwards.
The Polish Embassy in Moscow on Tuesday posted more pictures of the memorial before and after it was damaged, citing one witness who said that “several people” had driven to the memorial complex in trucks at night.
The memorial complex after being vandalised. Photo: Okno
In her comments to Okno, Yelena implied that the vandals likely had the backing of the authorities. “It’s impossible to do something like this unnoticed,” she said, adding, “Even though this is all being presented as an act of vandalism, the footprints show that a small group without special equipment simply could not have done it.”
Poland has lodged an official complaint to the Russian Foreign Ministry regarding the “outrageous” incident, Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Paweł Wroński told Polish state news agency PAP on Wednesday, stressing that the entire memorial complex was “one big cemetery” commemorating the place where Polish victims of Soviet brutality were buried.
The incident comes as Polish-Russian relations continue to deteriorate, with Russia announcing last week that it would close the Polish Consulate General in St. Petersburg by early January in response to Poland’s decision to close the Russian Consulate in Poznań.
At least three more memorials were destroyed in the Novgorod region earlier this week — one to German prisoners of war in the village of Ust-Brynkino, and two to Hungarians and Poles imprisoned by the Soviet authorities near the village of Bobrovik, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s northern Russia affiliate, Sever.Realii, reported on Thursday.
“It’s hard for me to imagine the type of person who would go to so much effort … to desecrate the memory of the dead in such a barbaric way,” one local speaking anonymously told Sever.Realii, adding that such an act had “no justification, even from the point of view of extreme patriotism”.
