COMMENT: The version about the genocide of Poles in 1939 in Hlybokaye has been definitively refuted by the prosecutor's office

REMAINS OF HUMANITY It all began in July 2009, when students participating in the OMPBC (Association of Youth of the Belarusian Orthodox Church) summer camp, along with a priest from Minsk, discovered human remains in the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the town of Glubokoye. It is no secret that there are burials in the basements of churches. However, in this case, the remains were not in crypts, but under a flight of stairs leading to the underground premises. Someone had dumped the bodies of men, women, and children into one pile. A pack of Polish "Muza" cigarettes was also found there... This product of the Warsaw tobacco factory "Progress" nearly caused an international scandal. News of the discovered burial quickly spread through the small town. As usual, someone misheard or embellished the story. As a result, people began to whisper that the cathedral had allegedly found evidence of Stalin's genocide – the bodies of Poles innocently shot in 1939. The version was picked up by some local residents. For some reason, their accounts became the basis for publications in several media outlets. In particular, the well-known Polish newspaper "Gazeta Wyborcza" published an article with the sensational headline "Murder of Poles. Unknown NKVD Graves" (Mord na Polakach. Nieznane groby NKWD). The text begins with the phrase: "The remains of murdered Poles were found during landscaping work in the basement of an Orthodox cathedral..." The publication, authoritative in the neighboring country, presented someone's version as fact. The article also mentioned some "independent Belarusian historians" who were convinced that the victims of the NKVD had been found in the church. As often happens in the media space, the sensational news spread across the internet. And soon, other journalists began to seek comments from "independent historians" who had no connection to the discovery. Of course, certain circles found it beneficial to play the trump card of Polish victims on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the reunification of Belarus and to gain further publicity from the scandal. And so it went. Reports emerged that items "dated to 1939," and shell casings used by the NKVD, were found along with the remains. Other supposedly irrefutable evidence was also cited. However, there were no references to experts or the people who found the items. Many did not even mention that the remains were found by participants of an Orthodox camp. The same "independents" came to the forefront. Later, the camp leader, Orthodox priest Alexander Ledokhovich, was eventually contacted by correspondents from some newspapers. He told them that there were no specific data pointing to the 1939 version. The cleric of the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Minsk is originally from Glubokoye and has been interested in the history of his hometown since childhood. He and many other residents of Glubokoye know that the town's Orthodox cathedral survived World War I and World War II, as well as the equally brutal Soviet-Polish confrontation of the 1920s. Many people used the cathedral's basements. Ammunition was stored there, archives were kept, and after the war, a warehouse for a cannery was organized... Therefore, anything could be found in the basement. Including shell casings. However, they were not found in the burial itself under the stairs. But supporters of the 1939 version were not satisfied with the priest's explanations or the references to Maxim Kotov, a representative of the Belarusian Geographical Society, who had worked at the burial site with a metal detector and found no cartridges. They were also not satisfied with the results of the first examination, which established that the age of the remains ranged from 80 to 100 years. In other words, people who died at different times lay in the mass grave, but this was not taken into account by those who are fighting ghosts of the past. Meanwhile, the Vitebsk Regional Prosecutor's Office informed a BELTA correspondent: the skeletal remains belonged to at least 54 individuals, of whom at least 12 were children under 16 years of age. It was established that 20 skeletons were male and 11 were female. Specialists found no damage resembling gunshot wounds or injuries from sharp or blunt objects. Only fresh damage in the form of notches and chips was identified – the result of extracting bones from the soil. There were also natural damages on the bones caused by time. There was no data on violent death. Furthermore, quite recently, experts from the State Forensic Examination Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs completed the examination of the remnants of clothing found in the burial and other items discovered in the cathedral. The clothing elements were made of silk. All items were hand-sewn using silk threads. This indicates the high cost of the clothing. Most likely, a significant portion of the garments had a religious purpose. In particular, one of the caps strongly resembles a church skufia. In any case, representatives of Polish authorities or intelligentsia could not have worn such clothing. Some media outlets referred to bullets (allegedly from Chekist Nagant revolvers). The fact that ammunition was found in other parts of the basement did not reassure them. But here too, the examination results speak against the Polish connection. After studying individual cartridges and their components, specialists determined that they belong to various periods. One 7.62x54R rifle cartridge was manufactured in 1917 by Kynoch Limited (England), nine 8mm Lebel cartridges (8x50 R Lebel) were produced in 1918 in France, two 7.92x57 Mauser rifle cartridge casings were made in Germany in 1917 and 1938 respectively, and so on. According to the prosecutor's office, they were not officially in service with the Red Army, NKVD units, or the police during the alleged period of executions. It would seem the issue was settled, but two buttons from Soviet military uniforms were also found in the basement. According to the examination, they were used to fasten pockets and secure shoulder straps on the uniforms of Red Army servicemen. Buttons of this pattern were only introduced in 1943. And again, they were not found under the stairs. What about the pack of "Muza" cigarettes, which in a number of publications was dated to 1939? As priest Alexander Ledokhovich told a BELTA correspondent, the camp participants put forward their own versions and thought about the find for a long time. The priest himself even sought help from Polish historians to find more information about the "Progress" tobacco factory. The Poles sent him an article from "Gazeta Wyborcza." It described how the Pilsudski government nationalized the enterprise in the 1920s. In the 1930s, something like a shelter for the homeless was organized there. It is clear that no cigarettes were produced there in 1939. It is noteworthy that at the opposite end of the basement, Orthodox volunteers found other interesting items – bottles of alcoholic beverages. Labels have been preserved on them, indicating that this alcohol was produced in Vilnius and Warsaw in the 1930s. This was precisely the time when Glubokoye was under Polish rule. No one delved into the past and asked the question: "Why were bottles of alcohol found in the church during Polish rule?" The cigarette pack was obviously part of the same debris as the bottles. However, the camp participants were concerned about something else at that moment: why were there no finger or toe bones, and why were pectoral crosses and medallions practically absent? So, where did this burial come from? The camp participants and the prosecutor's office independently reached the same conclusion. The building was initially part of a Catholic monastery and later an Orthodox cathedral. Throughout this time, both clergy and laity were buried in its underground part. Subsequently, when the cathedral survived all the aforementioned wars, workers from the cannery found skeletal remains while clearing the basement premises. They then piled them under the staircase and later walled them up. This is not just a hypothesis. The prosecutor's office confirmed this version by obtaining explanations not from outsiders, but from former factory workers. And now law enforcement officials have come to the final conclusion – there is not a single piece of evidence that directly or indirectly confirms the version of mass executions of Poles in Glubokoye in 1939. This once again proves that we must learn lessons from history, not try to stir up conflicts on the bones of those who died in past conflicts. We need to think about what will happen to us tomorrow. Vasily MALASHENKOV, BELTA.-0-