polish deportation to siberia
About one third of the civilians were children. Click here to login. The third wave of JuneJuly 1940 totaled more than 240,000. The NKVD (Russian Secret Police) had the overall command of these gulags, run by a mostly brutal local administator. Camp life was organized, there was a school, scouts, and religious life. 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 They immediately set about There was one circular cast iron stove in the middle, which did not supply anywhere near the required degree of warmth. Some months later we the orphans and civilians were moved to Uzbekistan to a place called Guzar. XCLOSE. onierze sowieccy w dzkiem 19451946.". 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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. One of the administrators lived in a building that also had a community centre where films were shown. While the overall experiences of the survivors have commonalities, certain details of their stories are uniquely different. There we boarded a ship where we were exposed to more appalling conditions. At this time, then, we were scattered over three continents and it took a long time, through the Red Cross, before we made contact with each other. At first, they were transported to the town of Bandra, in the suburbs of Bombay, where Hanka Ordonwna took care of the kids. The deportation of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939 and 1941. 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. . However, my country was still being threatened and attacked by Russia, and, faced with this renewed danger, the Head of Polish Armed Forces, Marshal Josef Pilsudski, appealed for volunteers to fight against this new aggression.My father, then 16 years old, volunteered. From the meagre money that my family were paid, we. 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. 5.1 million or 38% of the population were Polish by ethnicity (wrote Elbieta Trela-Mazur),[11] with 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. However, this was fraught with danger of being left behind. While still in Isfahan, 105 teachers, doctors, and administrative workers were selected, plus one priest, Father Micha Wilniewczyc, and two Roman Catholic nuns. -2- I remember it was so cold, that my mothers hair froze to the side of the carriage, and I caught a bad chill and infection in my left ear which resulted in a perforation of my eardrum. [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. 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. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the MolotovRibbentrop Pact. The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia-This book is a historical narrative based on the written testimony of the Polish Siberian survivors. All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective.[55]. The food was delivered: rice, flour, meat, salt, sugar, tea, and some coffee. There was a kindergarten, a men's school, a women's school, and a middle school. 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. After the Polish Army had left the Soviet Union, the attitude of the Soviets towards the remaining Poles worsened. A smaller-scale evacuation to Ashkhabad-Mashhad followed, including the large and final group of civilians. Families housed in communal barracks had to endure undescribable living conditions, when people were dying every day from a variety of causes. "Terminal horror suffered by so many millions of innocent Jewish, Slavic, and other European peoples as a result of this meeting of evil minds is an indelible stain on the history and integrity of Western civilization, with all of its humanitarian pretensions" (Note: "this meeting" refers to the most famous third (Zakopane) conference). Polish Citizens deported to Soviet Forced-Labor Camps in Siberia Stephen P. Morse, San Francisco Last Name: is exactly starts with contains ends with First Name: is exactly starts with 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." Reproduction of the contents of this blog is prohibited without the author's consent. "[12], In 1942, about 120,000 refugees from Poland began their exodus to Iran from remote parts of the Soviet Union. -3- Between 1939 and 1941, Stalin was Nazi collaborator number one. [18] In late 1942 and early 1943, Polish camps in Iran were located at Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, and Ahvaz. In 1989, the Soviet Union apologized for its crimes against Poland. Altogether, between 1942 and 1947, Polish schools in Palestine had 1,632 students. The last camp that was built in Northern Rhodesia at Abercorn (today's Mbala, Zambia). 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. There we were accommodated in tents (after undergoing more disinfecting procedures when my eyes condition improved considerably), and as the stay prolonged, the Polish authorities in London organised schooling. [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. There was no supply of water either for drinking or washing. 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. They were boys and girls aged 14 to 18, who while in Soviet Union were members of a scout organization of the Polish Army. [22] The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September. My brother Alfons also became a soldier in the 2nd Corps and fought in the North African campaign, and then the Italian campaign, taking part in the assault on Monte Cassino. The MolotovRibbentrop Pact was broken and the new war erupted, the Soviets had already arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Polish nationals in the Kresy macroregion including civic officials, military personnel and all other "enemies of the people" such as clergy and the Polish educators: about one in ten of all adult males. He was wounded in Germany. The ship was small and we were squizzed practically like sardines. 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. [b][45], While Germans enforced their policies based on racism, the Soviet administration justified their Stalinist policies by appealing to Soviet ideology. Twelve people in total shared one small room. [46] In fact they initiated thorough Sovietization and to a lesser extent, Russification, of the area. These first deportations were made when Hitler and Stalin still maintained their alliance (Photo: Instytut Pamici Narodowej). All organized religions were persecuted. A one-time Amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union was declared by Stalin. [3][5], Approximately 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation. It is a miracle that we survived, with thousands dead.[12]. 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. A Soviet gulag near the city of Molotov (today called Perm), in the USSR (Photo: Gulag Museum, Moscow, via. 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. The victims of that crime must be rescued from oblivion. In the second stage of evacuation from the interior, more than 43,000 military personnel and about 25,000 civilians left with General Wadysaw Anders across the Caspian Sea to Iran. Here you can consult our privacy policy. Many of them, like General Jzef Olszyna-Wilczyski, captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were killed during the 1939 campaign. The eastern half of Poland was annexed by the Soviet Union. Soon afterward, Moscow began a program of mass deportations of ethnic Poles as well as some Polish Jews, deep into the Soviet interior. In January 1944, the Polish staff in all East African camps had been reduced. Soviet propaganda claimed that the unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic justified its dismemberment. 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. [citation needed] The Soviets lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow. News spread like wildfire through the village, and almost everybody gathered outside our house. ), This page was last edited on 2 January 2023, at 22:55. referenced. Bogdan Harbuz stayed at Koja camp: "We did not receive any money for food, we only got 5 shillings a month for our expenses. [n] The NKVD and other Soviet agencies asserted their control in 1939 as an inherent part of the Sovietization of Kresy. Malnutrition was evident everywhere. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one,[40] but the Soviets soon proved they were also hostile and destructive towards the Polish citizens. [4] Among those who remained in the Soviet Union, about 150,000 Poles perished before the end of the war. In recognition of my father volunteering, as. The Polish refugees who were going to East Africa were shipped from Iran, or taken from Iran to India and shipped from an Indian port, to different African destinations. those of the BBC. At Isfahan Polish orphanage, a children's camp was opened, where 2,300 children and 300 adults stayed and eight elementary schools were created. Article 7 defines deportation as "forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law.". 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. one chamber, the ceiling collapsed on him. (And that is another moment that has always stayed with me). 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 Between March 24 and April 4, 33,069 soldiers left the Soviet Union for Iran, as well as 10,789 civilians, including 3,100 children. There were a lot of accidents, where 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. The government of Mexico did not finance their staymoney came from the funds of a special Polish-British-American committee. I will never forget the journey on trucks through the mountains from Ashgabat to Tehran. This was in August 1920, and ever since 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. [41][42] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. Amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union, Help of Maharaja of Nawanagar for Polish refugees, People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine, 1.1 million Poles (including Polish Jews), Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939-1946), List of Soviet Union prison sites that detained Poles, List of Polish refugees cemeteries in Africa. 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. A silenced history: the communist repression against Poles who fought Nazism, The handing over of Jews by the Soviet NKVD to the Gestapo. The Soviet Union never officially declared war on Poland and ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. During the second evacuation, 69,247 persons left the Soviet Union, including 25,501 civilians (9,633 children). Now and then the train would stop, and so during those stops, those who managed to pack kettles or pots, would gather snow into these containers, start up a fire, suspend these containers on hastily prepared stands to boil the resultant melting snow, which would then be used for drinking or for washing needs. 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. -1- The Approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war were captured by the USSR during and after the invasion of Poland. Because we were travelling in animal trucks, there were hardly any sanitary provisions. After twelve days, we reached the port of Beira in Mozambique. [34][35][36], The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits. A Polish Child's WWII Journey. Each camp had its own school, clubroom, and theatre. 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]. It had a clubroom, a hospital, and a gym. [15] Around 55% of the deportees to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia were Polish women.[32]. 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