Film "Soviet Camp 0331" - Instytut Pileckiego

As part of the program accompanying the opening of the Pilecki Institute headquarters at 82 Sienna Street, we invite you to a screening of a film about the tragic experiences of the inhabitants of the Vilnius region.

The film shows the tragic fate of the inhabitants of the Wilno region „liberated” by the Red Army – the future prisoners of the NKVD control and filtration Camp No. 0331 in Kutaisi.

SOVIET CAMP NO. 0331

dir. Grzegorz Czerniak, 60', Jerzy Rohoziński, Wojciech Saramonowicz; produced by the Pilecki Institute, 2022

Kutaisi, the former residence of Georgian kings, hides a grim secret. Unburied remains of the prisoners of the NKVD Camp No. 0331 lie here, far off the beaten track. The inmates were forced to perform slave labor at the local “Kolkhida” car factory. “During the first months, about 10 people died every day,” recalls one of the survivors. Most of the prisoners were Home Army soldiers and female combatants from the Vilnius region, the elites of the local intelligentsia.

The film attempts to restore the memory of the tragedy and heroism of those who worked, starved and died there, without knowing how much longer the misery would go on. During Easter 1947 a strike broke out: ‘Poles won’t go to work!’ The strikers were dispersed to other camps, perfidiously deluded into thinking that they would now be able to return home. The survivors finally arrived in their homeland in the winter of 1948/49 – exhausted, abject and forced to keep silent about their fate. Only after long years of silence and lies would it be possible to ask “why?” and “what for?”