polish deportation to siberia

Sanitary conditions again were almost non-existent. The Ukrainians had failed to achieve independence in 1919 when their attempt at self-determination was crushed during the PolishSoviet and Polish-Ukrainian Wars. [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. [66], Bodies of Polish prisoners-of-war by the mass graves of the, Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (19391946), Aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Poland, Dismantling of Polish governmental and social institutions, Installing Soviet satellite state in Poland. 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. 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. The author of this blog is not responsible for the use and purposes that Feedburner gives the data provided. [16] As the Soviet Union had not signed international conventions on rules of war, the Polish prisoners were denied legal status. My mother, elder brother and sister were made to work on the surface of the mines, and my brother Gustaf and I, being the youngest two, were forced to attend Russian school, where indoctrination procedure was put in hand. [62][63] About 600 people died as the result of the Augustw roundup. 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. He was aware that he might be arrested, so he took to hiding in various places, hardly ever sleeping at home. Unauthorised The British did not have the intention of keeping the Polish refugees in East Africa when it was decided to take them there. All Rights Reserved. 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 death rate rose even higher than in the gulags. [28], Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened under the Soviet-appointed supervisors. [citation needed] The Soviets lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow. 1939 II WORLD WAR GERMANY AND RUSSIA INVADE POLAND. In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please click here. [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. (And that is another moment that has always stayed with me). February 10, 2022. And how did Auschwitz, previously the Polish town Oswiecim, come to bear that infamous name? ", The Nazis consulted Moscow to deport the Jews to Siberia. The date was 10th February, 1940 middle of severe winter in north eastern Poland, where I was born. high up through Elburz Mountains, at break-neck speed (drivers often being drunk) through hairpin bends to Teheran. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Because of heavy rainfall we were in constant fear of the hut collapsing around us (which in fact happened the day after we moved out). buses unable to take a bend simply rolled into the ravine below. 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. A silenced history: the communist repression against Poles who fought Nazism, The handing over of Jews by the Soviet NKVD to the Gestapo. 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. We were moved further south to Kazakhstan and accommodated in a small mud hut with another Polish family. Hope came in July, 1941. [9][10] An estimated 150,000 Polish citizens were killed by Soviet repressions. Las cookies son pequeos archivos de texto que los sitios web pueden utilizar para hacer que la experiencia del usuario sea ms eficiente. The formerly sovereign Lithuania was moved into the Soviet sphere of influence and absorbed into the USSR as the brand new Lithuanian SSR among the Soviet republics. 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. Here you can consult our privacy policy. [22] The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September. Bogdan Harbuz stayed at Koja camp: "We did not receive any money for food, we only got 5 shillings a month for our expenses. In August 1945, the number of Polish refugees in Northern Rhodesia was 3,419, of which 1,227 stayed in camps in the capital Lusaka, 1,431 in Bwana Mkubwa at the Copperbelt,164 in Fort Jameson at the border with Nyasaland, and 597 in Abercorn in the Northern Province. Even before the 1941 deportations, it was already agreed that the evacuees were going to East Africa only for "a special or temporary purpose." Illnessestyphoid, dysentery, no restrooms in cars. 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. The stench was terrible. Red Army troops requisitioned food and other goods. [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. In due course, my mother and I, along with thousands of other children and their mothers, were moved to Ahvaz on the Persian Gulf. 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. However, in 2020, Russian President Valdimir Putin went as far as blaming Poland for starting World War II. [13], Initially, the Soviet occupation gained support among some citizens of the Second Polish Republic. [2] There were four waves of deportations of entire families with children, women, and elderly people aboard freight trains from 1940 until 1941. This book is a collection of individual stories written by survivors of the Polish genocide during the Second World War. A short while later, we boarded buses and were driven 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. The demarcation line across the center of Poland was shifted to the east, giving Germany more Polish territory. Some had to travel by land to Ashgabat. 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. [28] The wave of arrests and mock convictions contributed to the forced resettlement of large categories of people ("kulaks", Polish civil servants, forest workers, university professors, "osadniks") to the Gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union. While the overall experiences of the survivors have commonalities, certain details of their stories are uniquely different. [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. 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 Find out how you can use this. Most of the content on this site is created by our users, who are members of the Las cookies de preferencias permiten a una web recordar informacin que cambia la forma en que se comporta o se ve la web, como tu idioma preferido o la regin en la que te encuentras. In recognition of my father volunteering, as. 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. [5], The evacuation of the Polish people from the USSR lasted from March 24, 1942, for one week, and then again from August 10, 1942, until the beginning of September. 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. That is where I went to Polish school for the first time in my life. The NKVD deported not just Poles and Balts, but tens of thousands of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939 and 1941. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not 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. I will never forget the journey on trucks through the mountains from Ashgabat to Tehran. Only the Communist Party was allowed to exist, with organizations subordinated to it. Google Analytics campaign and traffic source tracking cookie. POLES DEPORTED TO SIBERIA IN THE YEARS 1940-1945. 'Za pierwszego Sovieta'. Members of the NKVD, Stalin's political police, who collaborated with the German Gestapo between the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the German invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941. Nowoisiad-Ostrowska depicted quite a sociable image with singing songs in the evening, listening together to the radio in order to be informed about the war in Europe, and doing craftwork with other women in the evenings.[14]. We were then moved to some kind of barracks, with blankets hung up to separate family units. It was then that mother herself became very ill, and my brother and I had to struggle very hard to get her to the nearest hospital. 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. During the second evacuation, 69,247 persons left the Soviet Union, including 25,501 civilians (9,633 children). As a result, I fell further and further behind our group walking to the nearest tent shelter, and I dont know what would have happened to me if my mother had not found me. 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. Many of them committed treason against the Polish state by assisting in round-ups and executions of Polish officials. [14] Also, there were pre-war Polish citizens who saw the Soviet NKVD presence as an opportunity to start political and social agitation. 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. Altogether, 257,660 citizens of the Second Polish Republic (190,942 adults and 66,718 kids) received the passports; 1,583 refused and were sent either to prisons or gulag. 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. She hoped we would return to Poland some day. This book is a collection of individual stories written by survivors of the Polish genocide during the Second World War. [15] The single man has not been traced; the woman, Josefa Bieronska, moved to South Africa with her 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. Exactly 80 years ago, deportations of Poles to Siberia began. There were several waves of deportations during which families were sent to barren land in the Soviet Union. The government of Mexico did not finance their staymoney came from the funds of a special Polish-British-American committee. Some 4,254 dead bodies were uncovered in mass graves in Katyn Forest by the Nazis in 1943, who invited an international group of neutral representatives and doctors to examine the corpses and confirm the Soviet guilt. The food was delivered: rice, flour, meat, salt, sugar, tea, and some coffee. Nevertheless, red and common disentery raged. MY STORY AS REMEMBERED FROM THE DISTANCE OF. Went to Polish school for the use and purposes that Feedburner gives the data provided, when got. 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