Komu szumią te sosny i brzozy? Pamięć lokalna i historia miejsc straceń w Kosówce

Near the village of Kosówka (Rajgród commune, Podlaskie Voivodeship) there are two execution sites from 1941‑1945. In the largest place (Kosówka I), a monument was erected in 1959 to commemorate Red Army soldiers, partisans, and prisoners of the concentration camp in Bogusze, Poles, Italians, French and Lithuanians. According to the act of establishing the monument, Soviet soldiers and Polish civilians are buried in this place. However, 292 Polish inhabitants of Grajewo and the surrounding area were shot by the Germans in another place (Kosówka II). Source research conducted by the author shows that Soviet prisoners of war – victims of Heydrich's order No. 8 regarding selection in camps – are buried at the first site. According to the post‑war investigation, approximately 5,000 Red Army soldiers of various nations and religions are buried in Kosówka. The monument inscription that is still present today results from the memory politics of the Polish People's Republic, which manipulated numbers and expanded the categories of victims. The inscription constitutes falsified, but also condensed knowledge about the past. It is a manifestation of the amalgamation of collective memory ‑ combining various events, threads, groups and people into one story about the past.