Żołnierze Armii Krajowej w obozie Jogła
Soldiers of the Home Army in the Jogła Camp

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the deportations of soldiers of the Polish Home Army, who were transported to the labor camps of the NKVD Nr 270 in the region of Borowicze, Novgorod County in November and December 1944 and returned to Poland in the spring of 1946. Aggressive behavior of the escorts, acute shortage of food and especially water, rationed in very sparse quantities during many days of the journey, lack of any information – such were the physical and mental oppressions which taken together were a foretoken of what might be expected at the unknown place of destination. This destination turned out to be the Jogta labor camp. A majority of the internees were Home Army privates from the Lublin area (the biggest groups came from the counties of Radzyn, Lukow, Krasnystaw, Lubartow and the city of Lublin), Eastern-Warsaw and Rzeszow. The prisoners were detained in inhuman and climatically adverse conditions, in overcrowded barracks, received starvation food rations and were forced to do exhausting physical labor; there was a lack of work clothes and adequate shoes, and the sanitary conditions were fatal. Deaths were frequent also due to diseases such as: dystrophy, pneumonia, dysentery, lung tuberculosis and intestine inflammation. After their release from the camp and return to Poland, many of those Home Army soldiers experienced repressions at the hands of the „people’s authority” which was establishing itself in power. They were persecuted and treated as second rate citizens stigmatized with the „Home Army brand”.

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