Adam Hlebowicz
The formation of the underground youth organisation the Union of Defenders of Freedom (ZOW – Związek Obrońców Wolności) in Polesia in 1946 arouses amazement and admiration for the heroism and determination of a group of Polish youth. After two years of activity, many of its members found themselves in labour camps in Vorkuta.
The pre-war Polesia voivodeship of the Second Republic had a complex ethnic mix. Belarusians accounted for approx. 43% of the population, Poles: 24%, Ukrainians: 18%, Jews: 10%. Approx. 4.5% of them were the so-called ‘locals’, i.e. Poleshuks (Poleszucy) identifying with the place rather than a specific nation. Looking at the population data in terms of religion, up to 80% of people declared Orthodoxy and only 8% Catholicism. When both statistics are compared, it indicates that as many as 16% of Poles in Polesia followed Eastern Orthodoxy, which seems a surprising figure. In any given country, of course, some group of people provide data in official censuses linking them to the statehood present there. It was probably the case here too. Regardless of the fact that there have always been Orthodox Poles in our history.
The Second World War brought huge changes to the ethnic mix of Polesia. Nearly all the Jews were murdered by the Germans. The Poles, mainly the intelligentsia, were destroyed above all by the Soviets with their mass deportations to Sybir. However, the Germans also seriously depopulated the Polish in the area through repressions and executions. When the Red Army conquered these lands in 1944, the Yalta decisions granted international sanction for the annexation of the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic to the Soviet Union, the Poles in Polesia became a few-percent-minority. It resulted in the mass expatriation of Kościuszko’s and Rejtan’s descendants to the new Polish borders.
Polesia conspiracy
In this context, the formation of an underground youth organisation the Union of Defenders of Freedom (ZOW) in Polesia in 1946 must come as a surprise. The formation and operation of this organisation in cities, towns and villages of Polesia – and not in Lviv, Vilnius or Grodno, where the Polish population was much greater despite the repressions – arouse amazement and admiration for the heroism and determination of the group of Polish youth.
There has been a lot of controversy over the very date of the formation of the organisation. Rev. prof. Roman Dzwonkowski mentions 1942. It surely must have been confused with the ‘Szaniec’ organisation set up by second lieutenant Zbigniew Słonczyński a.k.a. ‘Jastrząb’ and officer cadet Wiktor Hołub a.k.a. ‘Kmicic’. Both organisations are linked by Father Wacław Jaziewicz SJ, who was their chaplain and spiritual guardian. He was known for two nicknames: ‘Żuraw’ and ‘Kapelan’. Undoubtedly, ‘Szaniec’ had an impact on the later set-up of the ZOW.
Other dates that we can come across in various accounts and publications are 1945 and 1946. The latter date seems to be the closest to the truth, in line with the memories of its leaders. The Union of Defenders for Freedom was formed in Brest-on-the-Bug thanks to inspiration and leadership of Zygmunt Stachowicz a.k.a. ‘Żmudzin’ and Leonard W. Konikiewicz a.k.a. ‘Topola’. With time, Ryszard Snarski a.k.a. ‘Soroka’ became the third leader of the group. The changeability of dates given in various publications is probably due to the fact that several small underground groups had already been active since the re-entry of the Red Army into Polesia. Now they merged into one organisation, which had five main tasks to carry out:
– fight for safeguarding Polishness and defence against Russification, including of other ethnic groups living in the area;
– arranging clandestine education (Polish language and history);
– saving Polish cultural heritage, monuments, cemeteries, library resources;
– organising help for those at risk of repression or providing such help to those already arrested and deported to labour camps;
– fight against Soviet disinformation.
The ZOW was a clandestine organisation, renouncing military action, which made no sense in these political circumstances. It operated according to the quinary system. The conspiratorial patterns were adopted from the period of the Home Army, as well as the Grey Ranks. Many members of the Union were scouts. Hence, the methods of the scout movement were also relied upon as an inspiration for many activities. Clandestine education was in place. They obtained intelligence about planned arrests, tried to rescue books from Polish libraries, and organised small patriotic celebrations. Young people from both Polish and Russian schools were involved in the organisation (the former ones still existed at the time). These included not only the children of the intelligentsia, but also peasants, workers and civil servants. Many of them were traumatised by the war that had just ended: having lost parents, siblings, friends; with a great deal of suffering from traumatic experiences, but also with a will to act, courage, conspiratorial skills.
The Union of Defenders of Freedom grew rapidly. By 1948, the organisation’s total number of members can be estimated at around two hundred. In addition to Brest, the ZOW launched activities in Kobrin, Baranavichy, Gorodets, Nesvizh, Peliszcze, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Niedźwiedzica, Rubieżewicze and other smaller localities. Usually in each of these localities, there were local leaders, for example, Jan Komorowski a.k.a. ‘Kaczor’ in Kobrin and the aforementioned Father Wacław Jaziewicz, who had joined the ZOW with a certain group of people or even an organised structure. Women played an important role in the organisation: Maria Furmianiak ‘Stokrotka’ or Natalia Odyńska ‘Sfinks’. Each new ZOW member took a short oath, which went like this: ‘I take an oath, taking God as my witness, that from now on, I will fight for my homeland and my faith until Poland is free from communism and other enemies. God help me’.
This reference to God involved close collaboration with a circle of Catholic clergy. Besides Father Jaziewicz, in Brest, there were: Father Stanisław Łazar, Father Jerzy Rosiak, Father Wacław Piątkowski as of 1946, first in Rubieżewicze and then in Niedźwiedzica, Father Józef Horodeński in Kobrin, Father Grzegorz Kołosowski in Nesvizh, Father Stanisław Rogowski in Baranavichy. An interesting fact was the commitment of the Belarusian Orthodox clergyman from Brest, Jerzy (Yuri) Piskanowski and his son Alexei, to the ZOW. Particularly noteworthy is the work of Father Jerzy Rosiak, an experienced scouting instructor, both from before his time at the seminary and during his theological studies. This priest had a very strong influence on the youth of Brest, devoting a lot of time to them and playing volleyball with them. He was arrested as early as in August 1947, but without any connection to the ZOW operations. The Soviet secret service made his alleged escape across the Bug River to the other side of the border look like a sham by tossing the priest’s cassock, coat and shoes onto the riverbank. It was only after seven months of investigation that ended in a death sentence, soon replaced by 25 years in labour camps, that Father Rosiak informed his parishioners, including young people, by letter, where he really was. Arresting their priest and the fact that the last Polish school in Brest was closed the same year only intensified anti-Soviet attitudes among young Poles active in the underground.
Arrests and labour camps
The ZOW was uncovered purely by coincidence. One Union member Edward Teleman checked in to the medical clinic in Brest with an accidental gunshot wound. Having been alerted, the NKGB (The People’s Commissariat for State Security) immediately arrived there and arrested him. During the investigation, Witold Ignatowicz was mentioned. The case of deconspiration has not been fully explained to this day. However, a surge of arrests began soon afterwards, which came full circle. Around a hundred ZOW members or collaborators were imprisoned. Among others, Fathers: Horodeński, Jaziewicz and Łazar were arrested. The blitz of trials of those arrested took place in two rounds: 17–20 September and 12–15 November 1948. The young Poles and their priests were tried by the Military Tribunal of the MVD in Brest. Almost all convicts were sentenced to 25 years of labour camps each, regardless of age or sex. None of the defendants repented before the court, no one asked for a reduced sentence. There were cases (L.W. Konikiewicz, Father S. Łazar) of showing their patriotic and independence stance in the convicts’ last statement. Luckily, a large group of the organisation’s members escaped repression and remained in Polesia. However, family and friends’ arrests continued until 1952.
The convicts were sent to labour camps located throughout the vast expanse of the USSR. The first train of convicts departed from the Brest prison at the beginning of December 1948. Some of the ZOW members were sent to the Arkhangelsk area, some to Norilsk beyond the Arctic Circle, while the largest group was sent to the mines of Vorkuta.
Despite very harsh conditions, the members of the group tried to gather information about the Gulag system: the location of the camps, the number of prisoners, the management staff. Jeremi Odyński a.k.a. ‘Babinicz’ had been planning an escape from the camp since the beginning of his conviction. Working at mine no. 40 in Vorkuta, he spent two years preparing for it. In 1953, he and Janusz Prauzner severed the camp wires and escaped into the tundra. Sadly, they were followed by a Soviet patrol. Taken back to the camp, they were shot in front of the other prisoners on 26 August. Before the escape, Odyński wrote a goodbye poem titled ‘The Last Letter’. Fortunately, this simple but remarkable and poignant piece has survived and remains relevant today:
The Last Letter
I’m off to the West…
I take my memories
And I will pass the news
To your loved ones
And if I don’t get there,
Make a deep grave,
As it’s freezing here
And wolves, and foxes…
Or maybe don’t dig too much
Maybe a bit
Closer to the sky
For I believe someday
Some great spring
Will melt the ice
Of Pieczora and Vorkuta
For I believe someday
When the tundra blooms,
And the fresh grass
Will wake us all up
We’ll get up and say:
Hey, fellow Slavs
Why do you enslave?
In this big world,
Thousand Nations
Have their homes
Poles, Lithuanians
Crosses…
Strange poets
Different poems…
Sad cemeteries…
Prettier girls… so what?
Believe, you Russians
In this world
Not everything
Can be just red.
In this world
There are other colours
Life must be lived
In freedom.
In retaliation for Jeremi Odyński’s murder, fellow ZOW member and fellow prisoner Ryszard Snarski planned to blow up one of the mines in Vorkuta. He even stockpiled some of the explosives needed for such an operation. Ultimately, however, the attack did not take place.
In the wake of Khrushchev’s so-called ‘thaw’, other fellow prisoners, including Odyński’s sister Natalia, managed to erect crosses with plaques and inscriptions in Polish on the graves of the murdered. Surprisingly, they bore the pre-war Polish emblem with the crowned eagle alongside the name and date of death. In later years, the Vorkuta prisoners cemetery was removed and today, there is no trace of it.
Imprisoned in labour camps, the remaining members of the ZOW took part in the 1953 Vorkuta mutiny. On 1 August 1953, one of them, 22-year-old Witold Ignatowicz, was killed by bullets from the Soviet army. He was a member of the strike committee that drafted and placed protest slogans on banners. One fellow inmate described his death in these words: ‘Witek Ignatowicz stood on a raised platform near the clock and shouted: “Don’t be scared, they’re just firing to make you fearful!” He just got a blast in the chest’. The army fired four volleys into the defenceless mass of prisoners and then fired at them with machine guns. The Soviet system arrested the leaders of the rebellion and sentenced them to additional terms of imprisonment in labour camps.
In 1954, a wave of strikes extended to the camps in Vorkuta, Norilsk, Kingira, Taishet, Bratsk, Dzhkazgan and many other places. The ZOW members actively participated in them. As a result of the revolts, prisoners began to be treated better, bars in the barracks were removed, prisoner identification numbers were abolished, and the gradual release of the imprisoned commenced.
Conclusion
Most of the ZOW members got released from the labour camps in 1956. While still in Vorkuta, Natalia Odyńska married Olgierd Zarzycki, a soldier of the Nowogródek District of the Home Army. They were joined in holy matrymony by legendary Father Józef Kuczyński, a long-time prisoner of the camp. Released Poles returned to Polesia. However, with no chance to go to university there, to get a normal job, the vast majority left as part of the second expatriation to Poland. Some of them went even further: to the United States and Canada. The few who chose to stay in the Soviet Union did not have an easy life. Jerzy Komaryniec for arrested in Brest for the second time. After his release, he became depressed. As a result, he committed suicide in 1992. Others settled down in Haradzyeya, Kobrin, Peliszcze, Załuzie. A few lived to see the collapse of the USSR and only then could they begin to tell their younger fellow countrymen their true fate. Wacław Trzeciak from Peliszcze was one of them (1927–2018), a member of the Union of Poles in Belarus and the Union of Former Soldiers of the Home Army.
Natalia Odyńska-Zarzycka is 97 years old. In July 2023, she was promoted to lieutenant colonel and lives in Bielsko-Biała. These brave young people are still not properly known and commemorated. The only plaque in honour of Jeremy Odyński is located in the cloisters of St Anthony’s Church on Senatorska Street in Warsaw. In Belarus, any commemoration of the members of the Union of Defenders of Freedom is impossible at the moment, so all the more reason why we should take care of it in Poland. If only by naming one of the schools in, for example, Podlasie or Polish Polesia after the Union of Defenders of Freedom.
Adam Hlebowicz – The Institute of National Remembrance
More information on the ZOW and the Union members’ photographs as well as the sites of their slave labour in Vorkuta can be found here: https://polesie.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/355-1.compressed.pdf
Translated by Małgorzata Giełzakowska
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