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Background history
Today, the letter sent by Roman Tomicki from Oflag VIII A Kreuzburg (Kluczbork), offers a very significant testimony to the variety of vicissitudes of Polish officers, participants of the Polish Campaign in September 1939, who were isolated in two totalitarian POW systems – the German and the Soviet ones. A vital privilege resulting from the Geneva Convention of 1929, which Polish POWs staying in the German captivity were entitled to and which the Germans respected with reference to them, was the possibility to obtain information concerning their nearest from Deutches Rotes Kreuz (The German Red Cross) [GRC]. Ensign Roman Tomicki availed himself of this possibility: he turned to the GRC with a request to launch the search for his brother, Second Lieutenant Edward Tomicki. By five years older, Edward, was a graduate from the Department of Law of the Jagiellonian University and completed successfully the division course designed for officer cadets, organized by the 27th Infantry Regiment in 1935. Fighting as an officer of the 25th Infantry Regiment, Second Lieutenant E. Tomicki was taken captive by the Soviets after 17 September 1939 and was sent to the special camp organized by the NKVD [People’s Commissariat of Interior Affairs of the USSR] in Kozelsk. In his letter to the GRC, Ensign R. Tomicki included the most important information necessary to carry out search for his brother, at the same time pointing to the camp in Kozelsk as the place from which he had received the last message. He expressed his concern about his brother’s fate, underlying that he had not heard from him for months then. The fact that an officer isolated in Oflag VIII A Kreuzburg (Kluczbork) was not able to maintain contact with his brother was the consequence of the prohibition of carrying out correspondence in special camps run by the NKVD, which was introduced by the Soviet authorities in March 1940. Today we know that the ban was dictated by the endeavors to conceal the Katyn massacre. Special reflection is raised by the date of 8 April 1940, the day on which Ensign R. Tomicki wrote the letter to the GRC, being truly concerned about his brother. That could be the very day when E. Tomicki was murdered or possibly one before the murder which was perpetrated shortly afterwards. The first transport of the Polish officers from the camp in Kozelsk, which commenced the action of the so-called discharging, departed on 3 April 1940. Since that moment, almost every day, until the first days of May 1940, transports numbering from 100 to 300 POWs left in an unknown direction. Ensign Roman Tomicki had to wait two years to get news about his elder brother. It was not until April 1943 when the Third Reich publicly released the information about the mass graves discovered in Katyn, concealing the bodies of the Polish POWs from NKVD camps, who had intensively been looked for since the fall of 1941 by the Polish authorities in exile. Among 4,243 identified victims, there were also the remains of Lieutenant Edward Tomicki. For his brother, Roman, that was the worst reply he could receive in response to his request. The fates of the two brothers, officers of the Polish Army, separated by the war and two hostile totalitarian systems, offer an insight into the complicated and tragic history of Polish officers in the years of World War II. The majority of officers taken captive by Germans survived the war to finally regain their freedom, whereas almost all of those staying in Soviet camps were murdered.
Prepared by: Bartosz Janczak
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Ensign Roman Tomicki’s letter
Source of acquisition
The letter was forwarded to the Museum by the Chief Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland.
Description of the item
A letter sent by post on a standard form of 35cm x 14.5cm, bearing the title on the obverse: Kriegsgefangenenpost, and the name of the camp underneath, and also the address of the German Red Cross in the German language; under the address – a red censor’s stamp, below which there is the name and surname of the sender together with his POW number; on the reverse, in the upper left corner – the same censor’s stamp; in the right corner – the date 8 April 1940 and the content of the letter written in German and in Russian.
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