Czortków Uprising
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| Czortków Uprising | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Occupation of Poland | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Anti-soviet Polish students |
 Soviet Union |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 100 to 250 insurgents | Unknown | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 14 KIA, several wounded, around 150 taken prisoner in the following days, out of which 24 were executed. |
Three KIA | ||||||
The Czortków Uprising (Polish: Powstanie Czortkowskie) was a failed attempt by anti-Soviet Poles, most of them teenagers from local high schools, to storm the local Red Army barracks and a prison, in order to release Polish soldiers kept there. It occurred during the night of January 21/22, 1940, in the Soviet-occupied Podolian town of Czortków (now Chortkiv, Ukraine). It was the first Polish uprising during World War II.
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[edit] Background
On September 17, 1939, units of the Red Army, allied with the Wehrmacht (see: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), invaded the eastern part of Poland. The Soviets advanced quickly, as the bulk of the Polish Army was concentrated in the west, fighting the Germans.
| This article is part of the series: Polish Secret State  History of Poland |
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According to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Poland was to be divided by the two allied powers. The Germans occupied the western part of the country, while the Soviets annexed eastern Poland (see: Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union), including the town of Czortków (population 20,000), seat of a powiat, located in prewar Tarnopol Voivodeship.
Soon after Czortków’s annexation into the Ukrainian SSR, the new rulers began a campaign of repressions. The Soviets arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles during 1939-1941 – officials, officers, and so-called "enemies of the people," like the clergy, executing about 65,000 Poles.
The Polish population of Czortków (in 1931 Poles made up 46.4% of the town's inhabitants) organized itself as early as in October 1939, when a conspirational organization, Stronnictwo Narodowe (National Alliance), was created.[1] Its purpose was to fight the Soviet occupiers and carry out sabotage.[2]
Soon afterwards, the founders of the organization, mostly students from local high schools, such as Tadeusz Bankowski, Henryk Kamiński and Heweliusz Malawski, and their teacher Józef Opacki, decided to organize a large-scale uprising.[2]
[edit] The night attack
In December of 1939, a large part of the Red Army troops from the garrison of Czortków left the town, to be sent north to fight in the Winter War against Finland. The conspirators noticed this and saw their chance of success. They were planning to make a surprise attack on the barracks, capture the local prison (in which officers of the Polish Army were kept), post office, hospital and rail station. Together with the freed officers, the plotters wanted to seize a train, and go to nearby Romania, via Zaleszczyki. To delay the Soviet pursuit, they also planned to blow up the rail bridge on the Seret.[2]
The Polish conspirators decided to start the uprising on the night of January 21/22, 1940, the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1863 January Uprising. In the evening of January 21, between 100 and 250 people gathered in Czortków’s Roman Catholic Dominican Church. Most of them were not armed, only a few had guns or knives, some even old-fashioned swords. They divided themselves into four groups – the first was going to seize the main barracks, the second – the prison, the third – the center of the town, and the fourth – the rail station. The plotters agreed that their battle cry would be Z krzyzem (With the cross).[2]
The attack on the Red Army barracks took place at 22:00, but the plotters, who underestimated the strength of the Soviets, failed to capture the complex. Alarmed by gunshots, the Soviet troops left the barracks and counterattacked. After a short firefight, in which three Soviet soldiers and 14 Poles died, and several were wounded, the plotters dispersed.[1]
[edit] Aftermath
On the next day, January 22, NKVD troops began mass arrests of participants in the uprising. Altogether, they incarcerated some 150 people. Twenty four of them, after brutal interrogation, during which the NKVD tortured the Poles (Jan Tomasz Gross writes that the plotters were beaten with wooden poles, handguns, bottles and metal bars, and kicked until their jaws and ribs were broken[3]), were shot and 55 were sent to Siberia.[1][2] Almost all of those murdered or expelled were male teenagers of Polish nationality from Czortkow. Also, officers of the Polish Army, kept in Czortkow prison, were among those murdered in the Katyn massacre.
Eighteen months later, on July 2, 1941, just before entry of the Wehrmacht, the Soviets shot eight Dominican monks from the Roman Catholic Church. According to some witnesses, this was in revenge for Dominican help with the uprising.[1]
Władysław Buczkowski, a witness to the uprising, wrote in his memoirs that even though he did not take part in the uprising, he was arrested on January 27 and, after torture, was sent to prison in Tarnopol. Sentenced to 15 years, together with other Poles from Czortków, he was taken to Kharkiv and later to Siberia. Buczkowski was among the few who survived, and in 1942, due to the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, he managed to escape from the Soviet Union.[4]
