During the second evacuation, 69,247 persons left the Soviet Union, including 25,501 civilians (9,633 children). This book is a collection of individual stories written by survivors of the Polish genocide during the Second World War. [57] The death toll of the initial Soviet-inspired terror campaign remains unknown. In the first stage, more than 30,000 military personnel and about 11,000 children left Krasnovodsk (Turkmen SSR, present-day Turkmenistan) by sea for Bandar Pahlavi. Each camp had its own school, clubroom, and theatre. There are certain moments in ones life that stay in ones mind forever. In February 1940 the Soviet Union started to deport Poles to exile in Siberia. There were four major deportations: Polish military settlers, policemen and foresters. Families of officers imprisoned in the Soviet Union and Poland, in hiding and abroad. Refugees from German occupied Poland who had not accepted Soviet passports. [15] 22,000 Polish military personnel and civilians were killed in the Katyn massacre,[2][19] but thousands of others were victims of NKVD massacres of prisoners in mid-1941, before the German advance across the Soviet occupation zone. Classes began on September 1, 1942. [41][42] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. Initially aimed primarily at possible political opponents, by January 1940 the NKVD's campaign was also directed against potential allies, including Polish Communists and Socialists. Survivor accounts: Polish deportations to Russia. There were a lot of accidents, where Faced with those who claim that Stalin had strategic reasons for allying with Germany in 1939, Snyder added: "in moral discussions of the war, strategic justifications are not usually admitted as legitimate excuses for collaboration with the Nazis. The Soviet Union never officially declared war on Poland and ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. terrified of heights, so it was a nightmare journey for me. (as of 1 April 1941). Those arrested included Wadysaw Broniewski, Aleksander Wat, Tadeusz Peiper, Leopold Lewin, Anatol Stern, Teodor Parnicki, Marian Czuchnowski and many others. Again with only a cast iron round stove in the middle. The NKVD (Russian Secret Police) had the overall command of these gulags, run by a mostly brutal local administator. [26] The Soviet NKVD executed about 65,000 imprisoned Poles after being subjected to show trials. [14] Also, there were pre-war Polish citizens who saw the Soviet NKVD presence as an opportunity to start political and social agitation. And remember we were travelling at the height of winter. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this sites owner is strictly prohibited. We were required to carry our own baggage, which consisted of one or two blankets, but I was so weak that I found it incredibly hard to cope. [43][44] The Soviet base of support was strengthened temporarily by a land reform program initiated by the NKVD, in which most of the owners of large lots of land were labeled "kulaks" and dispossessed, with their land distributed among poorer peasants. The British did not have the intention of keeping the Polish refugees in East Africa when it was decided to take them there. Despite what we have just seen, in 2006 Slawomir Grunberg directed a documentary released by the Jewish Film Institute and titled "Saved by deportation: An unknown odyssey of Polish Jews". [28], Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened under the Soviet-appointed supervisors. . A short while later, we boarded buses and were driven In an article published by the British newspaper The Guardian On October 5, 2010, historian Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University and a member of the Committee on Conscience of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote: "How well would the Gestapo have dealt with Polish and Jewish opposition without the de facto help of the more experienced and effective Soviet NKVD? -5- The World War II began with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR, after signing a pact of those two totalitarian dictatorships that turned them into allies indeed. The BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites (And that is another moment that has always stayed with me). Bibliography of Poland during World War II, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_citizens_(19391946)&oldid=1131176828, Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland 19391941, Articles with Polish-language sources (pl), Wikipedia extended-confirmed-protected pages, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 500,000 Polish nationals imprisoned before June 1941 (90% male), 22,000 Polish military personnel and officials killed in the, 1,700,000 Poles deported to Siberia in 1939-1941, 100,000 women raped during the Soviet counter-offensive (est. According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, dubbed by the Soviets as citizens of former Poland,[33] automatically acquired Soviet citizenship. ", Deportation: a crime against humanity and a war crime. The first major operation took place on February 10, 1940, with more than 220,000 people sent primarily to far north and east Russia, including Siberia and Khabarovsk Krai. [19], The first Polish refugees came to Palestine in summer 1942. The Red Army paused on the Vistula river for months in 1944, while a few days' march to the west, the Germans transported the last significant population of Polish Jews from the Lodz ghetto to Auschwitz and gassed them. My brother Gustaf joined newly forming cadets in Teheran, and was transferred to Palestine and then Egypt. Soviet propaganda claimed that the unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic justified its dismemberment. We were very poor, there were no jobs, kids had their classes in the open, there were no books." All Rights Reserved. One of the lesser-known aspects of that alliance was the policy of anti-Semitism adopted by the Stalin dictatorship. . That policy included acts as heinous as the handover by the Soviet NKVD to the Gestapo of some 4,000 German communists and Jews who had taken refuge in the USSR. It has been seventy years since as many as 2 million Poles were deported against their will to some of the most inhospitable regions in the world: Siberia, Kazakhstan, and parts of Soviet Asia. Obviously, the Jews who survived the horror of the Gulag could feel lucky next to those who were murdered in the German extermination camps. The author of this blog is not responsible for the use and purposes that Feedburner gives the data provided. It was set up in 1942. [18] In late 1942 and early 1943, Polish camps in Iran were located at Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, and Ahvaz. [16] As the Soviet Union had not signed international conventions on rules of war, the Polish prisoners were denied legal status. The Soviet forces murdered almost all captured officers, and sent numerous ordinary soldiers to the Soviet Gulag. In 1944, the prime minister of New Zealand, Peter Fraser, agreed to take a limited number of Polish orphans and half-orphans, whose parents had died either in Soviet Union or Tehran, or whose fathers had fought at the front. Probably all Poles know about this fact, I myself mentioned those deportations here.I have also mentioned the fate of some of the children who survived Siberia here.But I decided today to tell you about Polish connections with Siberia, which began as early as the 16th century, which is why I present, The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia, 1863-1880 pp.151-175 Andrew A. Gentes Four thousand Poles were sentenced to the penal labor category of Siberian exile. ", The Nazis consulted Moscow to deport the Jews to Siberia. If you have not registered yet, click here to sign up. The deportation of Poles by the Russians to slave labour camps in the Soviet Union during Polish Deportees Cut Timber in a Siberian Labour Camp, 1940 In September 1939, Germany and Russia invaded Poland and divided it between them. And how did Auschwitz, previously the Polish town Oswiecim, come to bear that infamous name? He was wounded in Germany. They ended up in Iran, India, Palestine, New Zealand, and British Africa, as well as in Mexico. This was due to the inhuman condition in which we lived severe frost, hunger, fear, lack of any medical attention and hard work causing all kinds of illnesses. On November 1, 1944, USS General George M. Randall (AP-115) arrived at Wellington, with 733 children on board. [n] The NKVD and other Soviet agencies asserted their control in 1939 as an inherent part of the Sovietization of Kresy. Thousands of Poles took advantage of this, although not all managed to get out, because news did not reach them in time, before Stalin stoped it. versttning med sammanhang av "mass deportation" i engelska-ukrainska frn Reverso Context: Subsequently, a mass deportation ensued, accompanied by violence and killings. [20][21] On 24 September, 1939, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamo. () The Soviet-imposed myth about "Communist heroes of resistance" enabled them for decades to avoid the painful questions faced long ago by other Western countries." Amazing fact: For some, this grim hardship was a gift, not only of life, but of their humanity. [1] Within months, in order to de-Polonize annexed lands, the Soviet NKVD rounded up and deported between 320,000 and 1 million Polish nationals to the eastern parts of the USSR, the Urals, and Siberia. The Soviets had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. Unauthorised [b][45], While Germans enforced their policies based on racism, the Soviet administration justified their Stalinist policies by appealing to Soviet ideology. A one-time Amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union was declared by Stalin. Survivor accounts: Polish deportations to Russia. [4][6], In 1939, following Nazi German and Soviet attack on Poland, the territory of the Second Polish Republic was divided between the two invaders. Just one hole in the floor for toiletary purposes. The author of this blog denies to any person or entity of copyright management the authority to charge third parties for reproducing the contents of this blog. Not finding any arms, the soldiers then gave us a very short time to pack what we could, arrested the whole family, put us on their sleighs and took us to the nearest railway station. About one third of the civilians were children. On June 16, 2005, the website of the World Jewish Congress published very significant information that highlighted the curious coincidence of Hitler's initial anti-Semitic plans with Stalin's deportations of Jews : "The Nazis wanted to deport all Jews to the Soviet Union, a newly discovered document suggests. The Soviet Union took over 52.1% of the territory of Poland (circa 200,000km) with over 13,700,000 citizens at the end of the Polish Defensive War. [56] Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. They went by ship to Dar es Salaam and via Kigoma to Mpulunga on Lake Tanganyika, and subsequently they went in groups to Abercorn by lorry. Jobs, kids had their classes in the Soviet NKVD executed about imprisoned! Closed down and reopened under the Soviet-appointed supervisors if you have not registered yet click. Imprisoned Poles after being subjected to show trials to exile in Siberia 1, 1944, General! 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