On November 1, 1944, USS General George M. Randall (AP-115) arrived at Wellington, with 733 children on board. 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. [26] The Soviet NKVD executed about 65,000 imprisoned Poles after being subjected to show trials. Children were taken care of by the Polish Red Cross and residents of Bombay. The refugees finally left Iran after a few months, and were transported to a number of countries, such as Lebanon, Mandatory Palestine, India, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Mexico. [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. The third wave of JuneJuly 1940 totaled more than 240,000. My lungs were also affected, a condition which has dogged me all my life. The deportation of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939 and 1941. 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. Many of them, like General Jzef Olszyna-Wilczyski, captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were killed during the 1939 campaign. The author of this blog is not responsible for the use and purposes that Feedburner gives the data provided. The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia-This book is a historical narrative based on the written testimony of the Polish Siberian survivors. The chairs of Marxism-Leninism, and Dialectical and Historical Materialism, aimed at strengthening Soviet ideology, were opened as well. However, this was fraught with danger of being left behind. But there was a crime quantitatively greater and as unknown as that by the general public. Amazing fact: For some, this grim hardship was a gift, not only of life, but of their humanity. The area amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres, which was inhabited by 13.5 million formerly Polish citizens. Many of them committed treason against the Polish state by assisting in round-ups and executions of Polish officials. 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 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. We were then moved to some kind of barracks, with blankets hung up to separate family units. For some reason that I cannot explain the sight of my brothers face awash with tears has always stayed in my memory. The first transport of prisoners to the Auschwitz extermination camp on June 14, 1940. [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. . [50], All the media became controlled by Moscow. Somehow, at some point, my brother Gustaf found me and brought me a piece of bread (his ration for the day I later learned). You will not receive any email related to other purposes. -2- 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. There were several waves of deportations during which families were sent to barren land in the Soviet Union. [4] Among those who remained in the Soviet Union, about 150,000 Poles perished before the end of the war. But we ought not to romanticise. 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. [39] Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. He was rescued by his co-workers who dug him out with their bare hands. A one-time Amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union was declared by Stalin. 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 death rate rose even higher than in the gulags. [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. 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. 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. [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 tuition was abolished, as together with the institution's Polonophile traditions, this had prevented most of the rural Ukrainophone population from attending. Still, thousands of distraught Poles remained there, sent to kolkhozs. The email sent through this box is stored by Outono.net and used exclusively to send you the updates of this blog. We were moved further south to Kazakhstan and accommodated in a small mud hut with another Polish family. 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. [41][42] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. Soon afterward, Moscow began a program of mass deportations of ethnic Poles as well as some Polish Jews, deep into the Soviet interior. Hope came in July, 1941. However, in 2020, Russian President Valdimir Putin went as far as blaming Poland for starting World War II. [12] By this new and final arrangement often described as a fourth partition of Poland,[2] the Soviet Union secured the lands east of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Bug and San. 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). He was wounded in Germany. According to one of the evacuees, Wanda Ellis: The hunger was terrible, we did not get a loaf of bread a day, as we had in Siberia. Mothers unit was also moved to this part, she found me, and it was she who, by some miracle, cured me of dysentery. All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective.[55]. 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. Other solders rushed through the house looking for hidden arms. Polian suggests the enclosures to the letters, so far not found, were written by Adolf Eichmann and Alois Brunner, responsible for Jewish immigration in Berlin and Vienna, respectively. [60] The events of the late 1940s amounted to a full-scale civil war according to some historians, especially in the eastern and central parts of the country (see: the Cursed soldiers). In August 1942, two schools were created, for younger (aged 8-15) and older scouts. A smaller-scale evacuation to Ashkhabad-Mashhad followed, including the large and final group of civilians. According to the proposed legislation, nobody would receive less than PLN 2,400, or 536 Euro. Lww University and many other schools were reopened soon, but they were to operate as Soviet institutions rather than continue their former legacy. We were brought into a region called Czelabinskaja Oblosc to a place called Czepajewka posiolek hard labour camp. The number and placement of Polish citizens deported in February and June 1940. The Soviets had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. ), This page was last edited on 2 January 2023, at 22:55. A very appropriate way of qualifying the crime committed by Stalin against those hundreds of thousands of Jews, sending them to remote places and subjecting us to hardships that led many to death. 1939 II WORLD WAR GERMANY AND RUSSIA INVADE POLAND. I watched him eat, silent tears streaming down his face. [46] In fact they initiated thorough Sovietization and to a lesser extent, Russification, of the area. Several camps were opened in and around Bombay, with the biggest one located at Kolhapur Valivade, where 5,000 stayed. 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]. Approximately 600 Polish refugees were taken to Abercorn in contingents. Some children were so weak that they could not get up and queue for the toilet. I was just a skeleton, simply skin and bones, and I lost touch with my family for quite a while. The cooking was done in a large kitchen situated in the middle. The resettlement from Abercorn was called Operation Polejump. "In the 1939-1941 period alone, Soviet-inflicted suffering on all citizens in Poland exceeded that of Nazi-inflicted suffering on all citizens. 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. The From the meagre money that my family were paid, we. [56] Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. There was a kindergarten, a men's school, a women's school, and a middle school. REPORT BY A SURVIVOR, MRS. HELENA KNPACZYK [from the archive of The Polish Army Veterans Association (interviewer [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. [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. [15] The NKVD had to open dozens of ad-hoc prison sites in almost all towns of the region. 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]. Nothing looked like Poland, but adults in our camp did their best to emphasize our roots. 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. It is a free service. 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. 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