Whilst there, Czapski reported the case of the Polish officers who had now been missing for more than a year and a half. General Nasidkin didn’t recall them being with him, as he had no POWs under his command. Czapski also asked about Franz Josef Land. ‘The general promised me that nobody had been sent to that island. But he added cautiously that if there were any camps there, they could be prisoner-of-war camps in the strict sense of the word, and thus not under his command’ [trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones]. Czapski left Nasidkin’s office with a promise of help: the general had asked him back the next day, as then he would have more information to offer.
That same day in Chkalov, Czapski also went to the NKVD building. A luxurious, shiny black limousine stood before it, and Czapski was admitted to the office-lounge through a wardrobe. He didn’t learn much, however, from Commander Bzyrov, who ‘even felt free enough to express his own surmise, which was that the prisoners of war who had not yet been released were probably right there, in the very far north’ [trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones]. He also suggested that should Czapski want to learn anything further, he would have to seek out the authorities at the highest level – listing the names Beria, Merkulov, Fedotov, Reichman and Zhukov.
The next day, Czapski checked in again at the Gulag headquarters. But General Nasidkin seemed changed – there was no trace of his good-naturedness from the previous day. He stated only that it was possible that some Poles had been sent to work on islands in the north. ‘”But there is no question of thousands of people being sent there, as you’re suggesting’” [trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones], the general concluded.
