The Russian plaque near Strzalkow. Photo: lifenews.ru

A plaque containing an inscription in Russian has appeared on a memorial near an old Polish prison-of-war camp dating from the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1919-1921, stating that Red Army soldiers were “brutally tortured in Polish death camps”.

Soon after the plaque appeared on Sunday on the memorial stone near the POW camp in Strzalkow, western Poland, it was taken down under orders from the Wielkopolska provincial governor.

It is not known who fixed the plaque to the memorial stone. Police have so far discerned that around 15.00 CET a group of anonymous men fixed the plaque onto the boulder, which is a memorial to the regaining of Poland’s independence in 1918.

The plaque is written in Russian, and reads “here lie 8,000 Red Army soldiers brutally tortured in Polish death camps between 1919-1921”.

During the Polish-Bolshevik war, a POW camp and cemetery existed near the village of Strzalkow, three kilometres away from the present memorial.

Russian media were quick to get to the scene of the plaque, with NTV and the internet Life News portal reporting on the event first.

According to the Life News website, the plaque is a response to what the portal calls the “scandal [revolving] around the Smolensk plaque at the site of the catastrophe of the Polish [presidential] Tu-154M.”

The “scandal”, as Life News describes it, is the fixing of a plaque, written in Polish, to a rock near the crash site in Smolensk which pays homage to the victims of the plane crash, who were travelling to Katyn to commemorate the murder of over 20,000 Polish officers by the NKVD in 1940.

Polish POW camp

The Strzalkow POW camp was constructed by the Germans at the beginning of the First World War, after which Soviet POWs from the Polish-Bolshevik war were interned there.

Over 1,200 people died at the camp during the period 1919-1920, although over 4,000 POWs perished there the following winter. Over 8,000 Bolshevik soldiers are buried at the cemetery, with historians stating that many of them died due to malnutrition and illness.

However, historians maintain that an order to execute Red Army soldiers was never issued.

Furthermore, the Russian Vedomosti newspaper admitted recently that the “POWs held at Strzalkow, Tuchola and Wadowice suffered because of the cold, damp and darkness,” underlining that “comparing Polish camps with the Nazi death factories, which some publicists are trying to do, is dishonest.”

The daily added that “POWs were allowed to go to church or synagogue, and those who worked received the same rations as Polish soldiers.” (jb)