In April 1951 a former Soviet Army major in the western Ukrainian railway town of Zdolbuniv is reported to have said that prisoners of war from Korea, among them Americans, were to be brought to a camp there that had until recently held German prisoners. The statement reached American intelligence through the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was then still fighting Soviet security forces in that district. It was distributed in Washington on 15 October 1952 and marked unevaluated. It has never been confirmed, and it has never been disproved.
What the reporting says
The document is a CIA Information Report, CIA-RDP82-00457R013000310008-9, classified SECRET and distributed 15 October 1952. Its subject line reads: “1. Village of Zdolbunov; 2. PWs Expected from Korea, including Americans; 3. Mass Graves near Zdolbunov.” The report carries the standing caveat on its face: THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION.
Zdolbuniv (50-31N, 26-16E) is a railway junction south of Rivne. The report describes German prisoners rebuilding the railway station, work completed on 1 May 1948. On the camp itself it says:
A concentration camp which formerly housed German PWs is in Zdolbunov. The camp is located about 1[2] km from the Zdolbunov railroad station.
The distance figure is partly redacted in the released copy. Local people were said to have told the source that more than a thousand prisoners had been held there. The report then states the claim that puts the site on this list:
In April 1951, Kuchinski (fnu), a former major at the Voyenkomat in Zdolbunov, [redacted] PWs from Korea were to be brought to the prison camp which formerly housed the German PWs, and that these prisoners were to include Americans.
A hand-drawn sketch accompanies the report. Key number 20 is marked “Former PW camp.” Key number 29 marks a cemetery: “German PWs are buried here. It is located 1 kilometer from the road and 100 meters from the railroad line to Dubno.” A second cemetery, near the town cement factory, was examined by UPA men who reported over a thousand graves with as many as ten bodies in each. The report adds that it “has been completely neglected, and soon no trace will remain of it.”
The same report names the local officials of the period: the chairman of the Rayspolkom, Buri, who disappeared in November 1949; and the militia chief, Capt. Muranov, a Russian of about fifty, working from the MVD building on Tsementna Street.
A separate, declassified 1953 U.S. Air Force intelligence report describes the same camp being refurbished. In that document the former Soviet Army major’s name is rendered Kuczinsky, and the reporting source and the major are two different people.
What an American team found on the ground in 2004
In October 2004 a Joint Commission Support Directorate team traveled to the Rivne region. MSG Michael Lunini, USA, set out to test the declassified 1953 Air Force report in the town itself. He came back with three things, and they do not all point the same way.
The oblast archive said no. Its director, Nikolaj Ivanovch Grigoruk, told Lunini that no records were found in his archives concerning the camp in Zdolbunov.
The city archive said yes, and produced a document. Sent on to the town, Lunini was given by the director of the Zdolbuniv city archive a list of thirteen German prisoners who died in captivity at the camp — all but three of tuberculosis, in 1946 and 1947. The list was to be passed to the German government through its embassy in Washington. A camp death register had survived at municipal level.
An eyewitness said no Americans. With the city historian’s help Lunini found Ilya Mikhajlovich Gukhchuk and interviewed him at the site of the camp. Gukhchuk had been a driver at the work camp from 1945 to 1947, taking German prisoners daily from the camp to the local cement factory and the railroad yard. He said the camp was active from 1944 to 1947; that the prisoners were housed in wooden barracks near the city rail station, not far from the center of town; that the barracks were dismantled in the early 1950s and houses have since been built on the ground; and that no Americans were ever held at the camp.
What that settles
- The site cannot be surveyed. There are homes on the barracks ground. Any plan to walk or geolocate the camp perimeter is closed.
- The distance question is resolved in favor of the 1952 report. Barracks near the rail station, not far from the center — about a kilometer, as the CIA sketch has it.
- The 1952 source knew the town. Gukhchuk independently described prisoners taken daily to the cement factory, which is exactly what the report says. That does not corroborate the source on the Americans. It does establish that he was describing a real place he had seen.
- The camp existed. Zdolbuniv held two different camps. Under German occupation it was part of the Stalag 360 complex for Soviet prisoners of war. After 1944 the Soviet authorities held German prisoners there, and that is the camp the 1952 report and the 2004 witness describe. The easiest objection to the 1952 report — that there was no such camp — does not survive.
What remains unresolved
The 2004 denial is real and the project records it. It is also bounded, and the bounds matter more than the denial.
- The witness’s years are the wrong years. Gukhchuk served at the camp from 1945 to 1947 and described it as active from 1944 to 1947. The claim in the American reporting is of a camp rehabilitated in 1950 and a statement made in April 1951. He is a witness to the German period. He is not a witness to the site in 1950 or 1951.
- The wrong archive was asked. An oblast state archive holds the records of civil administration. A detention facility run by the security or military organs does not report to it.
- 2004 came before the opening. The Ukrainian decommunization laws that opened the Soviet-era security archives were passed in 2015, eleven years after the field check, and the mass digitization that followed came later still. The question was put to a closed system.
- The city archive answered when it was asked. Where a register of the German dead survived at municipal level, other camp administration may have survived beside it. The oblast’s “no records” says nothing about what the town holds.
- Nobody searched for the specifics. No one has looked for the 1950 rehabilitation works or the guard company that would have staffed them; for Kuchinski, Kuczinsky or Kuczyński (Ukrainian Кучинський, Polish Kuczyński), a former major at the Zdolbuniv voyenkomat; for Capt. Muranov of the militia; or for Buri, the Rayspolkom chairman who disappeared in November 1949.
- The 2004 team may have been asking about the wrong document. The trip reporting twice describes the 1953 report as one in which “a Soviet defector alleged” the camp had been refurbished. The Air Force document says “a fairly reliable source has reported,” and in it the source and the former Soviet major are two separate people. If the questions put in Rivne were about a defector’s camp rather than a voyenkomat major’s statement, they were not questions about this record.
- A regional archive is not where the most sensitive material would sit. Records of foreign prisoners held under Soviet security control were kept centrally and classified separately from ordinary camp administration. A negative return from a local state archive is not evidence that the thing did not happen; it is evidence that the local state archive does not hold the paper.
Why this case matters
Ukraine opened its Soviet-era security archives to all researchers, foreign and domestic, by law in 2015. If a Soviet record exists anywhere describing foreign prisoners held on Ukrainian soil, Ukraine is where it can still be asked for.
It is also being lost. The security-service archival holdings in Chernihiv burned during the occupation of 2022, destroying roughly 13,000 case files on Soviet-era repression. The condition of the archives in occupied territory is unknown. And the last people who could answer from memory are going: Gukhchuk was interviewed in 2004; anyone who worked at that site in 1950 or 1951 would now be past ninety.
Evidence and sources
- CIA Information Report CIA-RDP82-00457R013000310008-9, distributed 15 October 1952 — declassified and available in the CIA CREST collection. Redactions remain in the paragraph carrying the Korea claim.
- Declassified 1953 U.S. Air Force intelligence report on a camp near Zdolbunov, Rovne region. The underlying interrogation file behind it has not been produced.
- JCSD trip report, Ukraine, Part 2, covering the October 2004 travel, message R 061255Z JAN 05.
- Ihor Marchuk, head of the history department of the Rivne Regional Museum of Local Lore and a historian of the UPA, and Natalia Marchuk, on Stalag 360 and its sub-camps, including Zdolbuniv.
Request for information
Please contact us if you can help with any of the following.
- Accounts from anyone who lived or worked near the Zdolbuniv camp, the cement factory or the railway yard from 1949 to 1953 of foreign prisoners held there, especially Americans or prisoners from Korea.
- Records of prisoners brought to the Zdolbuniv camp after 1949 (registers, guard-company or transport records).
- Grave locations or burial records for foreigners at the cemetery near the cement factory or the one near the Dubno railway line.
In April 1951 a former Soviet major said prisoners from Korea, Americans among them, were to be brought to the camp. An American team in 2004 found a witness who said no Americans were held there, but he worked at the camp only through 1947. Did the transfer happen? Was it planned and called off? Or was the major wrong?
We do not publish the names of sources without permission. Nothing on this page is offered as a finding; the question is open in both directions, and we are as interested in reporting that closes it as in reporting that confirms it.
Write to contact@powinvestigativeproject.org. We treat every approach in confidence.
Українська
Здолбунів: чи мали привезти сюди американських військовополонених?
У жовтні 1952 року Центральне розвідувальне управління США поширило донесення, отримане через Українську повстанську армію. У ньому йшлося про табір у Здолбунові, де раніше тримали німецьких військовополонених. За словами джерела, у квітні 1951 року Кучинський, колишній майор здолбунівського військкомату, повідомив, що до цього табору мають привезти військовополонених з Кореї, серед них — американців. Донесення позначене як неперевірене. Його досі ані підтверджено, ані спростовано.
У 2004 році американський представник перевіряв цю інформацію на місці. Директор Державного архіву Рівненської області повідомив, що документів про табір у Здолбунові не виявлено. Міський архів Здолбунова натомість передав список тринадцятьох німецьких полонених, які померли в таборі у 1946–1947 роках. Свідок Ілля Михайлович Гухчук, який працював водієм у таборі в 1945–1947 роках, сказав, що американців там ніколи не тримали.
Проте Гухчук працював у таборі саме в 1945–1947 роках, а в донесенні йдеться про 1950–1951 роки. Нам не відомо, щоб до галузевих державних архівів СБУ, МВС чи Міністерства оборони України зверталися із запитом саме про Здолбунів. Тому питання залишається відкритим.
Ми просимо про допомогу. Нас цікавлять:
- свідчення людей, які жили або працювали біля табору, цементного заводу чи залізничної станції у 1949–1953 роках, про іноземних полонених у таборі — особливо американців або полонених із Кореї;
- документи про полонених, яких привезли до табору в Здолбунові після 1949 року (журнали обліку, документи охорони чи перевезень);
- місця поховань або записи про поховання іноземців на цвинтарі біля цементного заводу чи біля залізниці на Дубно.
Ми не публікуємо імена джерел без дозволу. Ми не робимо готових висновків: для нас однаково важливі свідчення, які цю інформацію підтверджують, і ті, що її спростовують.
Напишіть нам: contact@powinvestigativeproject.org