Kozelsk, USSR, 30 November 1939
My dearest Julcia and dearest children!
I’m on the territory of the Soviet Russia (USSR). My health is as it used to be during winters at home. In October, I suffered from stomach aches ([of the] epigastrium) and now I have a cough, but generally, I’m well. But that’s enough about me, though I know you’d like to hear more.
Now, Julcia, please answer briefly the following questions: 1) how are you and our darling children; 2) where and how do you live, do you have enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and heat to keep warm; 3) do our children go to school, and whether schools are actually open at all; 4) news about our family, Uncles Roman and Klemens (and his family), about Marczyk, and friends from Jachowicz’s school.
Please tell Uncle from Wysoka that after we retreated from Rzeszów, I spent one night at Uncle Adam’s – he was well, he gave us food and shelter, but I don’t know what befell him afterwards.
Write me once upon receipt of this letter. In my thoughts I’m always by your side, day and night – I miss you tons, I caress you in my soul and I cannot wait to see you and hold you to my heart, even if only for a brief moment. I wish I had your photographs with me. Please be careful, watch your health, and have a healthy Christmas! Do think a little about me, as I’ll be thinking about you. Pay my respects to everyone in our family, our acquaintances, and friends. I send you best regards from Abrotowski, Hawliczek, Dr. Mikiewicz, Dzióbek, and Rubisz.
Please write back as soon as you can, and then after you [will] receive another letter from me.
Hugs and kisses,
Your Daddy
Rzeszów, 8 April 1989
Editorial Board of the “Zorza” weekly
Mokotowska Street 43
00-551 Warsaw
Dear Editor,
In response to the appeal published in your weekly, where in issue no. 9 [dated] 25 February 1989, I found the name of my father, Ignacy Dec (item 736), on the list of the missing in the USSR, I’m sending you the questionnaire and enlarged photocopies of the documents in my possession.
| 1. | Ignacy Dec, son of Wojciech, born on 30 January 1896 in Sokołów, Kolbuszowa district (today Sokołów Małopolski). |
| 2. | Rzeszów, Szopena Street 11. |
| 3. | Teacher. He graduated from the State Academy for Teachers in Rzeszów (diploma of 5 June 1914), (1923/1924), and completed a state course of the Methodology of Teaching Drawing in Lwów (1931). |
He held the posts of: headmaster of the elementary school in Sokołów, and since 1934 – headmaster of the Stanisław Jachowicz Elementary School in Rzeszów, as well as teacher in the Vocational Improvement School in Rzeszów.
In 1939, the school authorities gave him permission to act in the capacity of school inspector. In June 1938, the superintendent of the Lwów School District appointed him a member of the District Disciplinary Board.
Since 1935, he was a member of the Examinations Board for Teachers Taking the Practical Exam at the State Academy for Teachers, later renamed the Pedagogical High School in Rzeszów. He was an active member of the Union of Polish Teachers and headed its local branch in Rzeszów.
He was awarded with:
| – | the Independence Decade Medal, |
| – | the Bronze Medal for Long Service, |
| – | the Gold Cross of Merit, |
| – | the Cross of the Freedom Fighters. |
| 4. | An officer with the reserve, an infantry lieutenant with the 17th Infantry Regiment in Rzeszów. He was called to arms in September 1939 and assigned to the reserve of the Rzeszów police, with whom – wearing a military uniform – he went to join the war effort. I would like to add that during the First World War, my father volunteered to the Legions and fought at the front from 1914 until November 1918 in the 4th [Infantry] Regiment of the Polish Legions, in the 8th company, at the battlefields in the Carpathian Mountains, on the Stokhid River, and – after the so-called Oath crisis – in Albania. |
| 5. | The last person who came across my father and the Rzeszów police in the Eastern territories was a teacher from Rzeszów, Auriga, who informed the family of Ignacy Dec of the fact on 4 October 1939, after he returned from the September Campaign. He claimed that he had met [my] father in Brody, as at the time the Rzeszów police had been trying to cross the border to Romania. In his letter from Kozelsk, father mentioned his meeting with uncle. This was in Brzeżany. |
| 6. | The family received one letter by mail – on 13 January 1940. The letter was written on 30 November 1939 at the camp in Kozelsk, in pencil, on both sides of a sheet of paper torn out from a notebook. |
| 7. | Applicant: Stanisława Dec-Sojowa, the oldest daughter. I would like to add that my father left behind his wife Julia, a retired teacher, and three daughters: Stanisława, 16 years old; Jadwiga, 13 years old; and Zofia, 7 years old. |
| 8. | I enclose photocopies of the following documents: – materials pertaining to my father’s period of service with the Polish Legions during the First World War: |
a) a photograph from that time,
b) title page and four subsequent pages of his military identity card;
– materials pertaining to Katyń:
| c) | a photograph of my father from September 1939, |
| d) | the envelope in which we received his letter from Kozelsk, |
| e) | two pages of the letter which my father wrote in Kozelsk, |
| f) | certified copy of a notarized notice from the Polish Red Cross informing about the exhumation of my father’s body from the mass graves in Kozie Góry (letter of 30 August 1940), |
| g) | a notice from the Polish Red Cross to the effect that they cannot issue us a certificate of my father’s death (letter from 21 December 1945). |
Finishing my letter, I would like to ask for an explanation:
a) Is it possible under present circumstances – since the “blank spots” are being gradually filled in – for relatives of the officers murdered in Katyń to become members of the Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, and if yes, in what character?
b) Is it possible to obtain official confirmation of the death of my father, who was murdered in Katyń, and if yes, which public office is authorized to issue such a death certificate? Nobody in the family has a document of this kind. My mother’s repeated efforts all came to nothing, and in the Stalinist era she even received threats (she is presently deceased). During the years of our education and studies, any financial help offered by the state was unattainable – we couldn’t prove that we were orphans, as we couldn’t produce our father’s death certificate. In order to receive any material assistance for the children, my mother was forced to submit to the authorities the original envelope from Kozelsk, which then “officially” went missing and was never returned to the family.
Stanisława Dec-Sojowa (MA)