The death rate rose even higher than in the gulags. After the Polish Army had left the Soviet Union, the attitude of the Soviets towards the remaining Poles worsened. deportation of Poles to Siberia. . This book is a collection of individual stories written by survivors of the Polish genocide during the Second World War. Wiesawa Paskiewicz, who stayed at Kolhapur, wrote: "Our daily activities were marked by school, church and scouting. Feature photo: German and Soviet soldiers fraternizing in Brest, where their forces met during the joint invasion of Poland (colorized photo by Mirek Szponar). On top of not being able to see in the dusk, I suffered from eye infection, which caused swelling of my eyelids and heavy yellow discharge. While the overall experiences of the survivors have commonalities, certain details of their stories are uniquely different. [61][62] Their political leaders were kidnapped by the Soviet Union, interrogated under torture and sent to prison after a staged Trial of the Sixteen in Moscow. [41][42] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. [6][7] The Soviets did not classify Polish military personnel as prisoners of war, but as rebels against the new Soviet government in today's Western Ukraine and West Belarus. "De-Polonizing the territories newly incorporated into the USSR", "Near and Middle East: The evacuation of the Polish people from the USSR", "Evacuation of Polish civilians from the Soviet Union to Persia 1942". 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. This action largely nullified the earlier political gains from the land reform as the peasants generally did not want to join the Kolkhoz farms, nor to give away their crops for free to fulfill the state-imposed quotas, which undercut nearly everyone's material needs. Soviet officials openly incited mobs to conduct killings and robberies (19391945). Approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war were captured by the USSR during and after the invasion of Poland. From the meagre money that my family were paid, we. year by Poles (wherever they are). Once One day I saw my fathers shirt lying on the floor actually move with crawling lice. Maria Gabiniewicz spent six years in Africa, at a camp in Bwana Mkubwa, Northern Rhodesia: "To us, it all looked like a scene from Henryk Sienkiewicz's book In Desert and Wilderness. Las cookies no clasificadas son cookies que estamos procesando para clasificar, conjuntamente con los proveedores de cookies individuales. How did Poles deported to Russia in World War 2 escape, to fight on? Johanna Granville, Out of the original group of Polish prisoners of war sent in large number to the labour camps were some 25,000 ordinary soldiers separated from the rest of their colleagues and imprisoned in a work camp in, The actual number of deported in the period of 1939-1941 remains unknown and various estimates vary from 350,000 (, Approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war, German advance across the Soviet occupation zone, exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union, show trial of 16 Polish wartime resistance movement leaders, Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, Raids on communist prisons in Poland (19441946), Flight and expulsion of Poles from the USSR, Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East. It is a free service. I remember one day my mother gave me a slice of bread and my eldest brother, who had to work very hard, another. In an official letter from the British Authorities it was said: "It has been agreed that the welfare work in the Polish settlements must continue and the minimum staff stays to ensure this must be retained." Katz is quite right to recall that the Red Army, three and a half years later, liberated Auschwitz. Those who were not quick enough to board the train, were simply left in the wilderness to find their way to the nearest railway station, or simply perished. However, in October 1946, the Secretary of State in London pronounced that refugees who could get a job in the area for at least 6 months, or had a sum of money sufficient to sustain themselves, could stay. Young as I was, and hungry as I was, I realised that he needed more than I, so I gave him my portion saying that I have already had my ration. The second wave of deportations by the Soviet occupational forces across the Kresy macroregion, affected 300,000 to 330,000 Poles, sent primarily to Kazakhstan. [15] The single man has not been traced; the woman, Josefa Bieronska, moved to South Africa with her children. La intencin es mostrar anuncios que sean relevantes y atractivos para el usuario individual y, por tanto, ms valiosos para los editores y los anunciantes de terceros. I was just a skeleton, simply skin and bones, and I lost touch with my family for quite a while. The adults were uneasy and afraid of the unknown, but us, the children, were happy for an adventure. I watched him eat, silent tears streaming down his face. And that is why my father was marked down for arrest and deportation to hard labour gulags (forced labour camps) in Russia, as he was considered to be a danger to the Russian nation and as a punishment for his volunteering. One of the lesser-known aspects of that alliance was the policy of anti-Semitism adopted by the Stalin dictatorship. Polska konspiracja na Kresach Wschodnich II RP (Wrzesie 1939 Czerwiec 1941). My mother refused the tempting offer of going to Santa Rosa in Mexico. A smaller-scale evacuation to Ashkhabad-Mashhad followed, including the large and final group of civilians. -2- Most of the content on this site is created by our users, who are members of the could not buy very much at any rate there was not much to buy as the shops (some distance away from us) such as they were, were mostly empty. Only the Communist Party was allowed to exist, with organizations subordinated to it. This was only corrected when I was in my middle 60s. [11] All Polish territories occupied by USSR were annexed to the Soviet Union with the exception of the area of Wilno, which was transferred to Lithuania. The Jews who were deported to Siberia and other remote parts of the USSR, and especially those who lost their lives in that deportation, deserve to be remembered and honored and deserve justice just like the Jews murdered by the Nazis. [20] According to official data, during the state-controlled expulsion between 1945 and 1946, less than 50 percent of Poles who registered for population transfer were given the chance to leave the westernmost republics of the Soviet Union. They worked as farmers, and their first transport came through India in October 1943 with 720 people, most of them women and children. For the plight of Poles who remained in the Soviet interior until the defeat of Germany, see Polish population transfers (194446) and the population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine. Sovietisation of Poland's Eastern Territories. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not [21], A Polish woman and her grandchildren at an American Red Cross evacuation camp in, Evacuation of Polish civilians from the USSR in World War II. Unauthorised Wanda Nowoisiad-Ostrowska, quoted by historian Tadeusz Piotrowski (The Polish Deportees of World War II), remembered that Abercorn camp was divided into six sections of single-room houses, a washing area, a laundry, a church, and four school buildings with seven classes. Once you have entered your email in this box and press the "Click to subscribe" black button, you will receive a confirmation email in your mailbox to activate your subscription. [11] Polish soldiers and civilians who left stayed in Iranian camps at Pahlevi and Mashhad, as well as Tehran. . Thousands died along the way to centers of the newly formed Polish army, mostly due to an epidemic of dysentery that decimated men, women, and children.[10]. It was set up in 1942. One of the administrators lived in a building that also had a community centre where films were shown. The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia-This book is a historical narrative based on the written testimony of the Polish Siberian survivors. [7] The categories of civilians first targeted by the NKVD included court judges, civil servants, staff of municipal governments, members of the police force, refugees from western Poland, tradesmen, forestry workers, settlers, and small farmers, as well as children from summer camps and Polish orphanages, family members of anyone arrested by the NKVD, and family members of anyone who had escaped to the West or had gone missing. Following repeatedly impatient loud knocks and shouts to open up, my father opened the front door when a group of Russian solders, with bayonets fixed to their rifles, burst in, ordered arms up, rounded us up and stood us against a wall with rifles pointing at us and searched us for weapons. Mothers unit was also moved to this part, she found me, and it was she who, by some miracle, cured me of dysentery. The documents of the era show that the problem of sexual violence against Polish women by Soviet servicemen was serious both during and after the advance of Soviet forces across Poland. None survived. It lasted until 16 January 1943, at which point it was effectively revoked. "[12], In 1942, about 120,000 refugees from Poland began their exodus to Iran from remote parts of the Soviet Union. Classes began on September 1, 1942. Around 55% of the deportees to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia were Polish women. In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets deported a total of more than 1,200,000 Poles in four waves of mass deportations from the Soviet-occupied Polish territories. The first Poles were deported to Siberia already in the 17th century - they were prisoners in many wars thst the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth conducted with Moscovy, and later the To say that hygienic conditions of our living quarters were less than primitive is to make a gross overstatement. LUDNO CYWILNA I SIEROTY POLSKIE PO AMNESTII 12 SIERPNIA 1941 ROKU. XCLOSE. Las cookies son pequeos archivos de texto que los sitios web pueden utilizar para hacer que la experiencia del usuario sea ms eficiente. The chairs of Marxism-Leninism, and Dialectical and Historical Materialism, aimed at strengthening Soviet ideology, were opened as well. Many of them, like General Jzef Olszyna-Wilczyski, captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were killed during the 1939 campaign. During the second evacuation, 69,247 persons left the Soviet Union, including 25,501 civilians (9,633 children). "[65], To this day, the events of those and the following years constitute stumbling blocks in Polish-Russian foreign relations. The stench was terrible. Immediately after their conquest of eastern Poland, the Soviet authorities started a campaign of sovietization of the newly acquired areas. [n] The NKVD and other Soviet agencies asserted their control in 1939 as an inherent part of the Sovietization of Kresy. The deportation of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939 and 1941. Lessons were held in the open air. -1- However, this was fraught with danger of being left behind. Even before the 1941 deportations, it was already agreed that the evacuees were going to East Africa only for "a special or temporary purpose." [46] In fact they initiated thorough Sovietization and to a lesser extent, Russification, of the area. But, actual conferral of citizenship required individual consent and residents were strongly pressured for such consent. She hoped we would return to Poland some day. Poles deported to Siberia Polish at heart. 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. However, in 2020, Russian President Valdimir Putin went as far as blaming Poland for starting World War II. There we boarded a ship where we were exposed to more appalling conditions. My father, after joining the Polish Army in Russia, was shipped round South Africa to Dalkeith in Scotland, where the 1st Polish Armoured Division was formed under General Maczek, and fought in the Continental campaign. People were dying like flies. [37], Deportations, though, continued in June 1944, around 40,000 soldiers and Polish Underground State officials who refused to join the Soviet-controlled Army were relocated to the most remote areas of the USSR. 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. [16] As the Soviet Union had not signed international conventions on rules of war, the Polish prisoners were denied legal status. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. [29][47] No later than several weeks after the last Polish units surrendered, on October 22, 1939, the Soviets organized staged elections to the Moscow-controlled Supreme Soviets (legislative body) of Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine. [14] Also, there were pre-war Polish citizens who saw the Soviet NKVD presence as an opportunity to start political and social agitation. Fuel for this was cows dried dung which we collected from fields. Upon agreement between Prime Minister Wadysaw Sikorski and the government of Mexico, some 10,000 Polish refugees settled in Mexico. Some 25,000 Polish underground fighters, including 300 top Home Army officers, were captured by NKVD units and SMERSH operational groups in the fall of 1944. I remember my father was so starlted that he dropped the loaf of bread he was slicing. A silenced history: the communist repression against Poles who fought Nazism, The handing over of Jews by the Soviet NKVD to the Gestapo. versttning med sammanhang av "mass deportation" i engelska-ukrainska frn Reverso Context: Subsequently, a mass deportation ensued, accompanied by violence and killings. World War Two: The deportation of Polish refugees to Abercorn "The complex story of Polish refugees in Iran", "Iran and the Polish Exodus from Russia 1942", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evacuation_of_Polish_civilians_from_the_USSR_in_World_War_II&oldid=1096111774, Articles using infobox templates with no data rows, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Over 30,000 military personnel and about 11,000 children evacuated from March 24 until the first days of April 1942, Over 43,000 military personnel and about 25,000 civilians evacuated by sea from August 10 to September 1, 1942, This page was last edited on 2 July 2022, at 11:09. About one third of the civilians were children. In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets deported a total of more than 1,200,000 Poles in four waves of mass deportations from the Soviet-occupied Polish territories. Google Universal Analytics long-time unique user tracking identifier. I will never forget the journey on trucks through the mountains from Ashgabat to Tehran. 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. It became so bad that I, owing to lack of any vitamins so essential at that time of my life, partly lost my sight and was unable to see in the dusk. deportation of Poles to Siberia. My eyes condition made things so much worse for me and it was thus that I awoke next morning to find a body on top of me. People who were thus rewarded were called Osadniki which means Settlers on the new land given to them. After settling me in, which was on a blanket spread on the sand inside a tent, she had to return to her unit. Forty-five new faculty members were assigned to Lww, transferred from other institutions of Soviet Ukraine, mainly the Kharkiv and Kiev universities. But this should not make us forget a fact: Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court considers deportations crimes against humanity and war crimes. 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. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact against Poland, the Soviet Union acquired more than half of the territory of the Second Polish Republic or about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000sqmi) inhabited by more than 13,200,000 people. [28], Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened under the Soviet-appointed supervisors. Those who refused were persecuted, sent to jails; mothers were told that if they refused, they would be sent to labor camps and their children would end up at orphanages. There were a lot of accidents, where Para todos los dems tipos de cookies necesitamos su permiso. Additional Polish transports arrived in late 1943. In recognition of my father volunteering, as. At times I was forced to chew on some bark of a tree in order to put something in my stomach. She wanted us to go either to India or Africa, as it was closer to Europe. Russian historian Pavel Polian, now a professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany, said that Third Reich officials apparently approached Moscow in early 1940 with the idea of deporting all Jews in the German Reich to Birobidjan, a Siberian area that Stalin had designated as a Jewish autonomous region, and to western Ukraine. All Polish parties and organizations were disbanded. terrified of heights, so it was a nightmare journey for me. First schools were opened in Tehran, where after one year there were ten Polish educational institutions. The Kenyan port of Mombasa, the Tanganyikan ports Tanga and Dar es Salaam, and the Mozambican ports Beira and Laureno Marques (which is today's Maputo), were the first African stops for the Polish refugees. Two letters, one from Berlin and another from Vienna, are mentioned in the February 1940 correspondence from Yevgeny Chekmenyov, of Moscows Department of Resettlement, to Viatcheslav Molotov, then foreign minister and head of the Soviet government. Exactly 80 years ago, deportations of Poles to Siberia began. In 1941 Joseph Stalin [3][5], Approximately 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation. Due to Germany attacking Russia on 22nd June, l941, a Polish-Russian treaty was signed with the exiled Polish Government in London, and a decree of amnesty was issued, allowing for the formation of Polish army on Russian territory with the recruiting point at Buzuluk, in the southern European Russia. For any other comments, please Contact Us. Political Migrations on Polish Territories (19391950). We were brought into a region called Czelabinskaja Oblosc to a place called Czepajewka posiolek hard labour camp. [4] Among those who remained in the Soviet Union, about 150,000 Poles perished before the end of the war. In October 1942, the Director of War Evacuees and Camps of Northern Rhodesia, Gore Browne, expected around 500 Polish refugees to arrive from the Middle East. The Polish consulates in the USSR issued in-land temporary passports for those being evacuated: These had to be presented at the border crossings in order to proceed. It is a miracle that we survived, with thousands dead.[12]. Families housed in communal barracks had to endure undescribable living conditions, when people were dying every day from a variety of causes. [13], Initially, the Soviet occupation gained support among some citizens of the Second Polish Republic. Their migration began was encouraged by local noblemen, often Polish landlords, who wanted to develop their significant land-holdings in the area for agricultural use. They ended up in Iran, India, Palestine, New Zealand, and British Africa, as well as in Mexico. We were moved further south to Kazakhstan and accommodated in a small mud hut with another Polish family. My family father Adolf Miluk, mother Anna Miluk (nee Szpula), brothers Alfons and Gustaf, sister Nadzieja and I Helena, were just sitting down to breakfast, when there was a loud and urgent knock on the front door. This invaluable database has details of many of the deported in the 1940s to Russia / Siberia. Hamtramck, MI 48212-3437, 8994 S Kasson St In Ahvaz, "Camp Polonia" was one of the main exit centers for Poles leaving Iran, and the last Ahvaz camp closed in 1945. The train driver never gave notice of moving off, he simply started off, when people frantically climbed on board snatching their pots at the same time. There, all were divided into several groups and began their education. In the two years between the invasion of Poland and the 1941 attack on USSR by Germany, the Soviets arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles. As she was attached to the military, her unit went ahead of us, but she knew that children were being shipped in, so she looked out for every ship arriving in order to find me. [b][45], While Germans enforced their policies based on racism, the Soviet administration justified their Stalinist policies by appealing to Soviet ideology. The Soviets exploited past ethnic tensions between Poles and other ethnic groups living in Poland; they incited and encouraged violence against Poles, suggesting the minorities could "rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule". The Soviets established several new chairs, particularly the chairs of Russian language and literature. Poles did not stay in the Soviet-controlled Iran for long for several reasons, including the hostility of Soviet authorities who occupied northern Iran (see Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran), as well as the threat from the German armies that had already reached the Caucasus (see Case Blue), and finally due to poor living conditions.[13]. Don't miss the news and content that interest you. All Rights Reserved. The food was delivered: rice, flour, meat, salt, sugar, tea, and some coffee. Este sitio utiliza diferentes tipos de cookies. There was one circular cast iron stove in the middle, which did not supply anywhere near the required degree of warmth. [11] On December 21, 1939, the Polish currency was withdrawn from circulation without any exchange to the newly introduced rouble; this meant that the entire population of the area lost all of their life savings overnight. In Northern Rhodesia, 245 evacuees were accepted for permanent residence. We were mentally shaped by such organizations, as Sodality of Our Lady, and The Eucharistic Crusade. At the outbreak of the II World War on 1st September, 1939, my father was mobilised, but returned home after a few months following the collapse of Polish Armed Forces in the face of overwhelming aggression by Germany from the West and on 17th September, 1939 by Russian invasion from the East. , , , , , , , . The Soviets had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. The author of this blog is not responsible for the use and purposes that Feedburner gives the data provided. And so it was that my sister Nadzieja (NB the name means Hope) became a nurse helping to look after the sick and then wounded as she became part of the 2nd Polish Corps under General Anders. In August 1942, two schools were created, for younger (aged 8-15) and older scouts. Then a special camp for Polish children was built near the village of Balachadi in Jamnagar, Kathiawar, thanks to help of the Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawanagar (see also Help of Maharaja of Nawanagar for Polish refugees). [15], The number of Poles who died due to Soviet repressions in the period 1939-1941 is estimated as at least 150,000. These first deportations were made when Hitler and Stalin still maintained their alliance (Photo: Instytut Pamici Narodowej). [62][63] About 600 people died as the result of the Augustw roundup.