polish deportation to siberia

Altogether, in 1943-44 there were 26 schools for Polish refugees in the Near East.[12]. 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. I was always. Las cookies de marketing se utilizan para rastrear a los visitantes a travs de las webs. 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. 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). 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. 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. The area amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres, which was inhabited by 13.5 million formerly Polish citizens. [14] Also, there were pre-war Polish citizens who saw the Soviet NKVD presence as an opportunity to start political and social agitation. It had a clubroom, a hospital, and a gym. One of the administrators lived in a building that also had a community centre where films were shown. 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. LUDNO CYWILNA I SIEROTY POLSKIE PO AMNESTII 12 SIERPNIA 1941 ROKU. Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll. But, actual conferral of citizenship required individual consent and residents were strongly pressured for such consent. Malnutrition was evident everywhere. The death rate rose even higher than in the gulags. Camp life was organized, there was a school, scouts, and religious life. Having arrived at the railway station, we were brutally bundled into waiting cattle trucks, fitted out with wooden shelves/bunks in order to pack in as many people as possible, some 50 70 people in one truck. It was here that I went down with severe dysentery and it was here that dead bodies were found in water wells. They immediately set about 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. 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. Lessons were held in the open air. If we examine the war in terms of the Holocaust, why should Stalin's strategic actions be exempt from moral interrogation?" For any questions or concerns related to this service, you can send me an email through this contact form. Some months later we the orphans and civilians were moved to Uzbekistan to a place called Guzar. Among people who stayed there was Bogdan Czaykowski. Mothers unit was also moved to this part, she found me, and it was she who, by some miracle, cured me of dysentery. The main street of the camp was named after General Tadeusz Br-Komorowski. 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. Here you can consult our privacy policy. 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. high up through Elburz Mountains, at break-neck speed (drivers often being drunk) through hairpin bends to Teheran. Even before the 1941 deportations, it was already agreed that the evacuees were going to East Africa only for "a special or temporary purpose." 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]. 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. 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. More than one million Poles died a slow death in the gulags of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin or on their long and desperate journeys to and from the camps. The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia, 1863-1880 pp.151-175 Andrew A. Gentes Four thousand Poles were sentenced to the penal labor category of Siberian exile. On January 16, 1943, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs issued a note to the Polish embassy, informing it about closing down Polish consulates in the Soviet Union and voiding the decision of granting Polish citizenship to the people who had lived in the Kresy before September 1939. [19], The first Polish refugees came to Palestine in summer 1942. At first, they were transported to the town of Bandra, in the suburbs of Bombay, where Hanka Ordonwna took care of the kids. Classes began on September 1, 1942. [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. Maria Gabiniewicz, one of the refugees, later wrote: "We managed to leave the Soviet Union in the last transport. [56] Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. The resettlement from Abercorn was called Operation Polejump. Some had to travel by land to Ashgabat. [11] Polish literature and language studies were dissolved by Soviet authorities. 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. 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. One day I saw my fathers shirt lying on the floor actually move with crawling lice. If at any time you want to unsubscribe, you only just have to click the link that you will find at the bottom of each newsletter. [39] Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. Soviet propaganda claimed that the unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic justified its dismemberment. Many Poles left Iran for India, thanks to the efforts of Polish consul in Bombay, Eugeniusz Banasinski. To say that hygienic conditions of our living quarters were less than primitive is to make a gross overstatement. Yes, even me a child of under 5 years old. In January 1944, the Polish staff in all East African camps had been reduced. Exiled to Siberia. Follow me Polish at Heart, 2020. Most Poles were forced to stay in the Soviet Union. Leer ms, A crime committed during the alliance between Hitler and Stalin in 1939-1941. [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. 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). The following year, between 40,000 and 50,000 people - mostly from Upper Silesia - were deported to forced labor camps.[38]. We, the children, were formed into groups, each group had an adult looking after it. After the hell that we survived, Tehran was a different world. 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 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. 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. As a result of the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland (as agreed by the Nazis and Soviets in their Her son died young due to an accident; her daughter still lives in South Africa with her grandchildren.[16]. 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 cooking was done in a large kitchen situated in the middle. 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. 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. During the unrest in 1905 he was deported to Siberia by the Tsarist authorities. There were several waves of deportations during which families were sent to barren land in the Soviet Union. [15] Around 55% of the deportees to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia were Polish women.[32]. year by Poles (wherever they are). 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. Still, thousands of distraught Poles remained there, sent to kolkhozs. [28], Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened under the Soviet-appointed supervisors. In the end unable to bear it any longer, I crawled on to the floor of the bus and stayed there until we miraculously reached Teheran. We were treated like animals. [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. Google Analytics long-term user and session tracking identifier. They settled in a camp at Santa Rosa, near the city of Len, in central 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. Had these Jews remained in Poland rather than suffering and dying on the steppe or in the gulag, would Jewish resistance to the Germans have been more significant? Exactly 80 years ago, deportations of Poles to Siberia began. Don't miss the news and content that interest you. 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. In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please click here. The email sent through this box is stored by Outono.net and used exclusively to send you the updates of this blog. This meant that all remaining Poles were re-granted Soviet citizenship and received Soviet passports. The NKVD (Russian Secret Police) had the overall command of these gulags, run by a mostly brutal local administator. In an article published by the British newspaper The Guardian On October 5, 2010, historian Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University and a member of the Committee on Conscience of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote: "How well would the Gestapo have dealt with Polish and Jewish opposition without the de facto help of the more experienced and effective Soviet NKVD? 1939 wrzesie 17, Moskwa Nota rzdu sowieckiego nie przyjta przez ambasadora Wacawa Grzybowskiego, "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre", "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field, "ledztwo w sprawie zabjstwa w dniu 22 wrzenia 1939 r. w okolicach miejscowoci Sopokinie generaa brygady Wojska Polskiego Jzefa Olszyny-Wilczyskiego i jego adiutanta kapitana Mieczysawa Strzemskiego przez onierzy b. Zwizku Radzieckiego. However, in 2020, Russian President Valdimir Putin went as far as blaming Poland for starting World War II. 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. News spread like wildfire through the village, and almost everybody gathered outside our house. 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. The Soviet Union never officially declared war on Poland and ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. "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". In 1941 Joseph Stalin ordered all inhabitants with a German father to be deported, mostly to Siberia or Kazakhstan. The second wave of 13 April 1940, consisted of 320,000 people sent primarily to Kazakhstan. This was only corrected when I was in my middle 60s. Luckily, my mother managed to pack enough cooked food, which, with careful rationing, just about lasted long enough till we reached our destination. The Soviet forces murdered almost all captured officers, and sent numerous ordinary soldiers to the Soviet Gulag. The Pogrom of Ludmiwka: a silenced killing of Jews at the hands of communists Algunas cookies son colocadas por servicios de terceros que aparecen en nuestras pginas. 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. "In the 1939-1941 period alone, Soviet-inflicted suffering on all citizens in Poland exceeded that of Nazi-inflicted suffering on all citizens. Obviously, the Jews who survived the horror of the Gulag could feel lucky next to those who were murdered in the German extermination camps. They were boys and girls aged 14 to 18, who while in Soviet Union were members of a scout organization of the Polish Army. And remember we were travelling at the height of winter. The stench was terrible. 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. There were already 22 camps, with 18,000 people who like us had gone through different places of exile in the USSR, scattered across British Africafrom Kenya to Cape Colony.[12]. After twelve days, we reached the port of Beira in Mozambique. 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. Her request was granted. In August 1942, two schools were created, for younger (aged 8-15) and older scouts. 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. They were so bad that we were continually covered in lice and bedbugs. The BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites A Polish Child's WWII Journey. Snyder also recalled what made the Holocaust possible at the hands of the Nazis: "In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Moscow reversed its alliances. [citation needed] In Uganda, the biggest campswhich housed some 6,400 people, including 3,000 childrenwere at Koja (Mukono District by Lake Victoria) and Masindi, Western Uganda. La web no puede funcionar correctamente sin estas cookies. 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. 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 NKVD deported not just Poles and Balts, but tens of thousands of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939 and 1941. Hamtramck, MI 48212-3437, 8994 S Kasson St buses unable to take a bend simply rolled into the ravine below. It was a hellhungry, sick people, children in rail cars, filled with louse. ), This page was last edited on 2 January 2023, at 22:55. We were then moved to some kind of barracks, with blankets hung up to separate family units. 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". 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. Meantime, my mother, who by then was also in Teheran, found my brother Gustaf and me, and asked to be released from the womens service in order to be with us. 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. The subscriptions of this blog can only be accessed by its author. Living in Africa was very difficult for the Poles who were unfamiliar with local customs and languages and were not used to tropical weather. The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia-This book is a historical narrative based on the written testimony of the Polish Siberian survivors. This book is a collection of individual stories written by survivors of the Polish genocide during the Second World War. 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. Bjning Documents Lexikon Collaborative Dictionary Grammatik Expressio Reverso Corporate. There we boarded a ship where we were exposed to more appalling conditions. You must login to comment. The author of this blog is not responsible for the use and purposes that Feedburner gives the data provided. We never did. The NKVD and other Soviet agencies asserted their control in 1939 as an inherent part of 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. POLES DEPORTED TO SIBERIA IN THE YEARS 1940-1945. The Soviets had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. As a result of the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland (as agreed by the Nazis and Soviets in their pact of August 1939), 1.2 million Poles were deported by the Soviets to Siberia and to other remote places in the USSR. In Northern Rhodesia, 245 evacuees were accepted for permanent residence. The Ukrainians had failed to achieve independence in 1919 when their attempt at self-determination was crushed during the PolishSoviet and Polish-Ukrainian Wars. Some children were so weak that they could not get up and queue for the toilet. They worked as farmers, and their first transport came through India in October 1943 with 720 people, most of them women and children. In 1944, the prime minister of New Zealand, Peter Fraser, agreed to take a limited number of Polish orphans and half-orphans, whose parents had died either in Soviet Union or Tehran, or whose fathers had fought at the front. 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. 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 I cannot remember how long it took us to reach port Pahlavi in Persia (now Iran). [23], The Soviet authorities regarded service to the prewar Polish state as a "crime against revolution"[24] and "counter-revolutionary activity",[25] and proceeded to arrest large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, former officials, politicians, civil servants and scientists, intellectuals and the clergy, as well as ordinary people thought to pose a threat to Soviet rule. "[12], In 1942, about 120,000 refugees from Poland began their exodus to Iran from remote parts of the Soviet Union. [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. 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. The journey was an inhuman nightmare. Twelve people in total shared one small room. During the second evacuation, 69,247 persons left the Soviet Union, including 25,501 civilians (9,633 children). Perhaps that is why (in adulthood), much to the annoyance of our children, I developed an absolute phobia for neatness and tidiness. Ornamental Plants - Biennials / Perennials, 303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron - Softcover, Code Name: Zegota Rescuing Jews in Occupied Poland, 1942-1945: The Most Dangerous Conspiracy in Wartime Europe, The Color of Courage: A Boy at War: The World War II Diary of Julian Kulski, No Greater Ally - The Untold Story Of Poland's Forces In World War II, Inside A Gestapo Prison - Letters of Krystyna Wituska 1942-1944, A Homeland Denied: In the Footsteps of a Polish POW. For any other comments, please Contact Us. [27] The prisons soon got severely overcrowded, with all detainees accused of anti-Soviet activities. 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. 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. Nevertheless, red and common disentery raged. 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. 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. We were not first the Poles in Africa. Because we were travelling in animal trucks, there were hardly any sanitary provisions. . 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