February 10, 2022. However, this was fraught with danger of being left behind. (as of 1 April 1941). During those three weeks of meandering through Russia, it was well nigh impossible to have a proper wash. The third wave of JuneJuly 1940 totaled more than 240,000. MY STORY AS REMEMBERED FROM THE DISTANCE OF. While in Russia, says Asher Scharf, protagonist of this lively documentary, I thought, Im going to write a book. About the forced marches, the hard labor, the illness and death, the bedbugs that, like the Soviets, were more clever than we gave them credit for. Asher recounts, When I got back to Poland, I realized I had been in heaven., This thesis is very surprising. Tribute was paid in the eastern Polish city of Lublin on Sunday to Poles expelled from the former eastern borderlands and deported to Siberia by the Soviet authorities. I remember my father was so starlted that he dropped the loaf of bread he was slicing. 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. While the overall experiences of the survivors have commonalities, certain details of their stories are uniquely different. To say that hygienic conditions of our living quarters were less than primitive is to make a gross overstatement. [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. . The Soviet Union never officially declared war on Poland and ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. Hope came in July, 1941. Legacy Google Analytics short-term technical cookie used along with __utmb to determine new users sessions. My brother Gustaf joined newly forming cadets in Teheran, and was transferred to Palestine and then Egypt. 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. The NKVD (Russian Secret Police) had the overall command of these gulags, run by a mostly brutal local administator. I was just a skeleton, simply skin and bones, and I lost touch with my family for quite a while. Poles deported to Siberia in 1940 - 2 of 5 - second world war toitb 14K views 9 years ago The Germans That Fought the Japanese - A Forgotten 1940 Battle Mark Felton Each camp had its own school, clubroom, and theatre. Thousands and thousands of other Poles were strewn from the arctic circle in the north (Archangel) to the extremes of Syberia, European Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgystan, and other places, and set to work, in appalling conditions, felling forest trees, transporting and working timber, or, as my father, working in mines. In addition to sharing information to combat the Polish resistance, the NKVD handed over to the Gestapo Jews who had taken refuge in the USSR. Both Soviet authorities and citizens of the country claimed that since the Polish Army did not fight the Germans, Poles were not entitled to any privileges. Este sitio web utiliza cookies para mejorar su experiencia. The tuition was abolished, as together with the institution's Polonophile traditions, this had prevented most of the rural Ukrainophone population from attending. We never did. There were sports teams, a choir and activities groups. The resultant stench was horrendous. Soviet authorities implemented a political regime similar to a police state,[51][52][53][54] based on terror. Somehow, at some point, my brother Gustaf found me and brought me a piece of bread (his ration for the day I later learned). We, the children, were formed into groups, each group had an adult looking after it. 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. [58] The country remained under de facto military occupation for many years to come, controlled by the Soviet Northern Group of Forces, which were stationed in Poland until 1993. My lungs were also affected, a condition which has dogged me all my life. [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. This was only corrected when I was in my middle 60s. The deportation of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939 and 1941. At Isfahan Polish orphanage, a children's camp was opened, where 2,300 children and 300 adults stayed and eight elementary schools were created. The number and placement of Polish citizens deported in February and June 1940. After the first evacuation, Polish-Soviet relations deteriorated and the Soviet government began arresting Polish officials. Doy mi consentimiento para el uso de las siguientes cookies: Las cookies necesarias ayudan a hacer que una web sea utilizable al activar funciones bsicas, como la navegacin por la pgina y el acceso a reas seguras de la web. As the new border between the postwar Poland and the Soviet Union along the Curzon Line (requested by Stalin at Yalta) has been ratified, the ensuing population exchange affected about 1.1 million Poles (including Polish Jews) as well as close to half a million ethnic Ukrainians. Algunas cookies son colocadas por servicios de terceros que aparecen en nuestras pginas. In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please click here. The Soviet forces murdered almost all captured officers, and sent numerous ordinary soldiers to the Soviet Gulag. 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. [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. One day I saw my fathers shirt lying on the floor actually move with crawling lice. The Siberian Exiles Cross (Polish: Krzy Zesacw Sybiru) is a state decoration in Poland awarded by President of Poland.It was established on October 17, 2003 in order to recognise and commemorate the sufferings of Polish citizens deported to Siberia, Kazakhstan and Northern Russia from 19391956. Further Polish transports went to India by sea, from the port of Ahvaz to Bombay. As luck would have it, he was at home when the Russian soldiers burst in, which was just as well, because they would have arrested the rest of us anyway, and we would not have had him with us to take care of us. Many Poles left Iran for India, thanks to the efforts of Polish consul in Bombay, Eugeniusz Banasinski. buses unable to take a bend simply rolled into the ravine below. They ended up in Iran, India, Palestine, New Zealand, and British Africa, as well as in Mexico. [62][63] About 600 people died as the result of the Augustw roundup. [64] Joanna Ostrowska and Marcin Zaremba of the Polish Academy of Sciences estimate that rapes of Polish women reached a mass scale following the Winter Offensive of 1945. [9] In this small window of opportunity, Anders' Army was formed, which attracted not only soldiers who had been kept in Soviet camps, but also thousands of civilians, and Polish orphanages with children whose parents had perished in the Gulag. It was a hellhungry, sick people, children in rail cars, filled with louse. The BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites Altogether, between 1942 and 1947, Polish schools in Palestine had 1,632 students. As I mentioned previously,we were then crowded into almost unheated cattle trucks, and started our journey into the depths of Russia, which lasted about three weeks, as on occasions were shunted backwards and forwards, and during the course of which, a great number of people died either from exhaustion or were lost in transit. 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. Young as I was, in my mind I resisted. Some members of the Ukrainian population welcomed the unification with Soviet Ukraine. Of the survivors, approximately 80% escap During the second evacuation, 69,247 persons left the Soviet Union, including 25,501 civilians (9,633 children). I will never forget the journey on trucks through the mountains from Ashgabat to Tehran. Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. We were very poor, there were no jobs, kids had their classes in the open, there were no books." But, the Soviet authorities started a campaign of forced collectivisation. He was aware that he might be arrested, so he took to hiding in various places, hardly ever sleeping at home. [41][42] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. On 17 September 1939 the Soviets invaded Poland with an army of 600,000 that included 24 infantry divisions, 15 cavalry divisions, and nine tank brigades [ii]. The subscriptions of this blog can only be accessed by its author. Note that you need to include Polish characters when searching i.e. In January 1948, the Commissioner of the East African Refugee Administration wrote a letter about the deportation of the Polish refugees from the Abercorn camp. 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. [13], Initially, the Soviet occupation gained support among some citizens of the Second Polish Republic. The ship was small and we were squizzed practically like sardines. 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. 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. This was in August 1920, and ever since The stench was terrible. The Pogrom of Ludmiwka: a silenced killing of Jews at the hands of communists, A silenced history: the communist repression against Poles who fought Nazism, a pact of those two totalitarian dictatorships, the handover by the Soviet NKVD to the Gestapo of some 4,000 German communists and Jews who had taken refuge in the USSR, In an article published by the British newspaper The Guardian, the website of the World Jewish Congress published very significant information, "Saved by deportation: An unknown odyssey of Polish Jews", Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, The murder of three Ukrainian soldiers by a Russian mercenary from the Wagner Group, AbramsX: General Dynamics presents the replacement for the M1 Abrams MBT, The day the American M-26 Pershing tank knocked out the Soviet T-34 tank in Korea, A surreal scene: Russian soldiers are captured by Ukrainians while they were sleeping, A detail of the US Army indicating that it is preparing for a long stay in Europe, The story of little Elya, who died of a heart attack in Ukraine at the age of 6, The story of Captain Wilhelm Hosenfeld: a German catholic who helped save Poles, Spain deploys an important Aeronaval Group after the passage of a Russian frigate, NORAD: this is how the great bunker of Cheyenne Mountain was built and this is how it is inside, The 7 communist and 36 Islamic regimes that most persecute Christians in 2023, The three wars of Finland between 1939 and 1945 and its strange situation in WWII, 'The Great Escape': 10 little-known historical curiosities about that excellent movie, The cowardly right and the hysterical left, '27 Minutes', an excellent short film about one of the crimes committed by ETA terrorists. Exactly 80 years ago, deportations of Poles to Siberia began. The train would, from time to time, also stop at stations for coke provisions, where hot water (kipiatok) could be obtained, together with some provisions. On the date of 10th February, 1940, some 218,000 people were forcefully deported from Eastern Poland, and with further deportations during the year, this figure rose to almost 2,000,000. deportation of Poles to Siberia. () 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." Thus we all became separated from each other, and I remember crying myself to sleep every night, as it was the first time in my life that I was apart from my mother and the rest of the family. 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]. A Soviet gulag near the city of Molotov (today called Perm), in the USSR (Photo: Gulag Museum, Moscow, via. As the forces of Nazi Germany were pushed westward in 1945 in the closing months of the war, Poland's formal sovereignty was re-established by the Soviet-formed provisional government, later renamed as the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland. 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. Her son died young due to an accident; her daughter still lives in South Africa with her grandchildren.[16]. This meant that all remaining Poles were re-granted Soviet citizenship and received Soviet passports. Hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens were forced to leave their homes at a moment's notice and were transported in cattle cars to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and other distant parts of Russia. Classes began on September 1, 1942. 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. 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. [14] Also, there were pre-war Polish citizens who saw the Soviet NKVD presence as an opportunity to start political and social agitation. Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll. The over-riding feeling was that of perpetual hunger and fear. I was always. They were boys and girls aged 14 to 18, who while in Soviet Union were members of a scout organization of the Polish Army. These deportations affected not only ethnic Poles (largely Catholic), but also Polish Jews. Again with only a cast iron round stove in the middle. The food was delivered: rice, flour, meat, salt, sugar, tea, and some coffee. Google Analytics campaign and traffic source tracking cookie. Nevertheless, red and common disentery raged. Forced deportations of Polish citizens to Russia is one of the most tragic pages in our history, wrote Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a letter to the participants of the opening ceremony of the Siberian Memorial Museum. A decisive battle was fought on the banks of river Vistula, just outside Warsaw, when, despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered, the Polish forces completely routed and destroyed the Russian army. [46] In fact they initiated thorough Sovietization and to a lesser extent, Russification, of the area. public. It was here that I went down with severe dysentery and it was here that dead bodies were found in water wells. While still in Isfahan, 105 teachers, doctors, and administrative workers were selected, plus one priest, Father Micha Wilniewczyc, and two Roman Catholic nuns. [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. But we ought not to romanticise. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the MolotovRibbentrop Pact. The Polish soldiers, after evacuating from Russia to Persia (now Iran) and undergoing health rehabilitation following their ordeal in the Russian camps, entered the war in the West fighting alongisde the Allies on all fronts land, 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. There is some controversy as to whether the Soviet Union's policies were harsher than those of Nazi Germany until that time. My father, brother Alfons and sister joined the newly forming military units and my mother was enlisted into womens auxiliary force. It is a drama that we still remember and which remains an unhealed wound for us to this day, he added. 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. [39] Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. 1939 II WORLD WAR GERMANY AND RUSSIA INVADE POLAND. Poles deported to Siberia Polish at heart. ", Deportation: a crime against humanity and a war crime. My mother refused the tempting offer of going to Santa Rosa in Mexico. I do not remember the names of towns we went through, but at some point we crossed southern Ural mountains into the southern Asian Russia, the beginning of Syberia. 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. Of forced collectivisation left Iran for India, thanks to the Soviet started... 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