POLAND AND RUSSIA - 2 - RESPECT AND PRAYER FOR THE DEAD

Two more stories, which I cannot guarantee as true, but I know and trust the people who told me.

1.
The grandfather of a friend who was in the A.K. (Armia Krajowa - Home Army) in the last war, fighting the Germans, was, naturally enough, arrested by the Soviets in 1945, convicted of being a 'fascist bandit' , and sent to a Russian gułag in 1946.

When the trainload of hungry, tired prisoners arrived at the nearest town to the gułag, they found the station platform lined with local Russian people, carrying parcels of bread, sausage, whatever they had. They, too, were starving, but had been told that a train-load of bandits, fascists, and agents-provocateurs was coming, saw through the lies, and wanted to give.

2.
A group of Polish workers were, voluntarily and paid, working in Russia in 1980, laying an oil pipe-line. They were housed in huts near the site.

When it was dark, stealthy Russian locals would come with gifts of vodka, cigarettes, bread, and sausages. They thought the Poles were slave labour and hungry. The Poles explained that they were being paid far more that the local Soviet wages, but the visits and gifts continued.

One night, A Russian took a group of Poles to a piece of waste ground nearby, where lamps were burning, as on a grave. The Russian said that when he was a boy, he remembered the sound of shooting, going on for hours, and afterwards it was seen that the ground had been disturbed. He explained that it was rumoured that the site was a mass grave of Poles murdered by the Soviets, and that the local Orthodox came at night to pray for the souls of the Polish Catholics, and light a znicz - a traditional grave light.