JANUSZ ŻARNOWSKI

Warsaw, 12 November 1989

[…]

Editorial Office of the “Zorza” weekly
Mokotowska Street 43
00-551 Warsaw

In connection with the publication of the list of Polish officers who were murdered in the USSR, I hereby send information concerning my Father, the late Wacław Żarnowski, who was a prisoner at Starobilsk. My Father’s surname is on the Starobilsk list, for example in Szcześniak’s book (“Katyń. Lista ofiar i zaginionych jeńców obozów Kozielsk, Ostaszków, Starobielsk”, Warsaw 1989, ALFA publishers), on p. 362: “Żarnowski Wacław, Lieutenant”.

Wacław Żarnowski, son of Wincenty and Julia, born on 24 September 1893 in Kutno, resident in Warsaw [at] Złota Street 25, flat 6, a lawyer and legal counselor of the Italian insurance company Generali-Port-Polonia. A participant of the 1920 campaign, he was a Lieutenant of the Reserve in 1939. He was captured by the Soviets and imprisoned in Starobilsk, of which fact we were informed by a friend, a private who was released from captivity – Mr. Talarek, a lawyer, and thereafter through postcards and telegrams which Father sent to us in 1940.

These documents went missing during the Warsaw Uprising, however recently Professor Czesław Madajczyk from the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences searched the archives of the former German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Auswärtiges Amt), which are located in Bonn, and found a document concerning my Father, namely the reply of the aforementioned Ministry to an appeal submitted by Generali-Port-Polonia to the German authorities for bringing about the release of my Father from Soviet captivity (from May 1940), which in all probability had been requested by my Mother. I have attached a photocopy of this document. In its letter the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that it was unable to intervene, for the matter concerned a Pole, and advised that Father himself should turn to the administration of the POW camp (!) with a request for release, citing the fact that the Soviet authorities had in fact released prisoners officially resident on lands under German control.

I have also attached a photocopy of Father’s insurance identity card and the family insurance identity card, made out for Mother and myself, as well as a photograph of Father in his officer’s uniform.

My Father’s wife and my Mother was […], and she died on 1 November 1947. I was my Parents’ sole child, born on 26 April 1932.

[…]

[PS] Attachments:

–seven photocopies,

–one photograph.