Eugeniusz Bodo

Boda died while in the custody of the Soviets.

For decades propagandists spread the belief that he was murdered by the Germans.

Eugeniusz Bodo was a film director, producer, and one of the most popular Polish actors and comedians of the inter-war period. He starred in some of the most popular Polish film productions of the 1930s, including His Excellency, The Shop Assistant (Polish: Jego ekscelencja subiekt), Czy Lucyna to dziewczyna? and Pieśniarz Warszawy.

A skilled singer, he became one of the icons of Polish musical comedies of the time and a “symbol of Polish commercial cinema”. Towards the end of that decade, he also became a successful entrepreneur, a co-owner of a successful film studio, a café, and a producer company.

Arrested by the Soviets in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, he perished in the Gulag. His death was on the 7th of October 1943 in a Soviet forced labor camp in Kotlas Eugeniusz Bodo, the most popular Polish actor of the Between the Wars died of hunger and fatigue. Communist propaganda for years spread the fake information about him being shot by Germans. For years the communists spread false theories about his death. According to the official version he was supposed to be killed by Germans.

The fictional date of death, pointing to German’s responsibility, for years figured in the PRL period encyclopedias. Stanisław Janicki, a known TV journalist and the host of the program “In the old cinema” tried to determine Bodo’s fate. He was sent letters with other versions of Bodo’s death, such as killing during the flee from Lviv or death in the prison on Łącki street in Lviv. Televiewers informed also about the death in Siberia. In the eighties in a letter published the magazine “Polish Weekly” (“Tygodnik Polski”) Aleksander Feiner, the witness of tragic events in the Soviet camp, wrote about actual circumstances of Bodo’s death. Feiner gave the date of death and the exact location: camp “Peresilniy Punkt No. 1” in Boltinka near Kotlas.

In 1994 Russian Red Cross sent two prison photos of Bodo and the information about his arrest and death. In 2011 in Kotlas cemetery a monument of the Polish actor was erected. Thousands of victims of Stalin’s repressions lay there – people who lost their lives working to death cutting out forests, building a bridge over Dvina, and during the transport to other camps.

By Edward Reid

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