Szczecin, 1 May 1989
“Zorza”
Mokotowska Street 43
Warsaw
Dear Editors!
I would have gladly responded sooner to your appeal to complete the Katyń list, because as the wife of the missing A. Szabowski, who was detained in Ostashkov, I care very deeply about updating the list and seeing my husband’s name. However, I do not possess the necessary data such as the exact date of birth and so on, because right after he was captured in the town which I will name below, I was subjected to frequent searches for weapons conducted at night, soon after the Russian army took over Eastern Poland in 1939. They took everything: letters, documents, certificates, photographs, and the only postcard sent by my husband from Ostashkov.
Before I received the postcard, I was visited by a soldier who had been detained with my husband in the camp. He said that Szabowski was crying while he asked him to tell me that I should go and live with [my husband’s] family. He forbade him to say that he would not be allowed to return to Poland and that he would never see his wife and children again. Shortly afterwards I received the postcard from Ostashkov, in which my husband wrote: “My love, I am in Ostashkov, see a good doctor with regards to the childbirth, and go and stay with my family.” This is how I know that the soldier was telling the truth.
Had I listened to my husband, I would not have been sent to Siberia with a newly-born child and another one, aged one and a half. I described these horrors in my journal and I would like everyone deserving to read it – and it is worth reading. After six years of struggle in exile, I was and continue to be very tired and ill. I regretfully do not possess any documents and data such as the exact date of birth and so on. I only know that my husband Antoni Szabowski was called up to service at the border near Romania and that together with his unit he was carrying out the order to remain there until the last moment, i.e., when the Russian army entered Eastern Poland. I am sending you data which stuck in my memory:
| 1. | Antoni Szabowski, born in 1894 in Czersk. |
| 2. | Resided in Uścieczko near Zaleszczyki. |
| 3. | Border Guard. |
| 4. | When and where he was arrested/captured – I cannot tell exactly, I only know that he disappeared when the Russian army had entered Eastern Poland. Terrible fighting was still going on at the time, everyone was hiding in shelters, I was sitting on the stairs with my one-and-a-half-year-old son and another son, who was soon to be born into this miserable world. The only thing I could hear was the sound of windows being blasted and the thunder of bullets, while I was waiting for my husband. |
With kind regards and thanks,
Szabowska
Szczecin, 11 June 1989
“Zorza”
Mokotowska Street
Warsaw
In response to the appeal to complete the Katyń list, on 1 May of the present year I sent a letter. In this letter I forgot to put the data concerning point 4 in order. In the present letter I provide data concerning my husband Antoni Szabowski, who went missing in 1939, while he was on duty at the border markers, on the Soviet side of the border.
| 1. | Antoni Szabowski, born in 1894 in Czersk. |
| 4. | Aspirant of the Border Guard, employed at Uścieczko, district of Zaleszczyki, for various reasons as an inspector. |
| 6. | I received the information that my husband A. Szabowski was in Ostashkov, in a prisoners of war camp, from a Polish soldier who had returned from the camp. A. Szabowski asked him to pay a visit to his wife and tell her that he would not be allowed to return to Poland, because he had been captured, like many others, and asked her to go and stay with his family. I learned that this was true shortly afterwards, from my husband’s postcard from Ostashkov, in which he wrote: “My love, I am in Ostashkov, see a good doctor with regards to the childbirth, and go and stay with my family.” I did not know that I was going to be transported to Siberia, so I did not leave, and was consequently sentenced to six years of hard labor in Siberia, with a newly-born child and another child aged one and a half years. Before I was deported, my house was regularly searched and during these multiple inspections conducted by the Russian soldiers, all the documents, letters, and photographs were taken. |
Szabowska