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Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland that existed during 1919-1924 housed two main categories of detainees:
GENERAL During a war between two countries experiencing great socioeconomic difficulties, and often unable to provide adquately for their own populations, the treatment of Prisoners Of War was far from adequate. During the Polish-Soviet War , some 85,000 Soviet soldiers 1 became Prisoners Of War and were held in Polish POW Camp s. The conditions in these camps were bad, as the newly recreated Polish state lacked many basic capabilities and had few resources to construct them. Thus the existing camps, many of which were adapted from WWI German and Russian facilities or constructed by the prisoners themselves, were not adequate for holding the large number of prisoners, who suffered from hunger, bad sanitation and inadequate hygiene. Between 16,000 and 17,000 prisoners (18,000 to 20,000 according to Russian historians) 1 died, mostly as a result of Epidemic s which raged in the camps, especially the diasastrous post-WWI Spanish Flu Pandemic . The bad conditions in these camps were known to Public Opinion in Poland at the time, as a number of Polish newspapers openly wrote about them, criticizing the government for not correcting the situation. Little public awareness about this part of Polish history exists in present day Polish society, but the issue has been addressed in a number of scholarly publications. 2 Until the source documents were published in Moscow in 2004, some Russian historians have put the number of deaths of prisoners much higher, estimating that it was up to 70,000. They arrived at this number by first estimating the number of POWs, then subtracting the number that has been repatriated to the Soviet Union after the hostilities ended, and then assuming that most of the remainder died in POW camps. Polish historians always countered this by arguing that: (a) the number of POWs was very difficult to estimate accurately, due to the chaotic situation prevailing for most of the war, and (b) many Soviet POWs lost that status after they switched sides and entered units fighting alongside Polish forces against the Red Army. There was also the problem that significant number of Russian POWs were left in the territory of Poland since WWI (about 3.9 million soldiers of the Russian Empire were taken captive by the Central Powers ) and obviously when the Polish-Soviet conflict deteriorated, these POWs were not released to Russia. The condition of Polish POWs held by the Soviets during this time is less well known. While the conditions for Soviet prisoners were clearly exposed by the free press in Poland, no corresponding factfinding about Soviet camps for Polish POWs could be expected from tightly controlled Soviet press of the time. There have been also cases of Soviet army executing Polish POWs, when no POW facilities were available. Some scholarly works addresses the subject 3 . LOCATIONS POW camp locations Interned camp locations
Concentration camp and centre locations Exchange centre locations NOTES # Rezmer, Karpus, Matvejev. # Karpus, Jeńcy i internowani rosyjscy... Polish table of contents online # Karpus, Zwycięzcy za drutami.. REFERENCES
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