A short while later, we boarded buses and were driven Exiled to Siberia. [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. 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. My father, brother Alfons and sister joined the newly forming military units and my mother was enlisted into womens auxiliary force. According to the proposed legislation, nobody would receive less than PLN 2,400, or 536 Euro. 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. People who were thus rewarded were called Osadniki which means Settlers on the new land given to them. 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. [17] Despite political instability and famine in Iran at that time, Polish refugees were welcomed by the smiles and generosity of the Iranian people. We were not first the Poles in Africa. Buy used: $34.00. This meant that all remaining Poles were re-granted Soviet citizenship and received Soviet passports. 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. 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? Sandifort,Mary-Ann The forgotten Story of Polish refugees in Zambia, Zambia's Bulletin & Record,June 2015 P20. Following repeatedly impatient loud knocks and shouts to open up, my father opened the front door when a group of Russian solders, with bayonets fixed to their rifles, burst in, ordered arms up, rounded us up and stood us against a wall with rifles pointing at us and searched us for weapons. deportation of Poles to Siberia. I was always. The stench was terrible. [39] Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Bolshevik invasion. Entdecke Eine polnische Frauenerfahrung im Zweiten Weltkrieg - 9781350178090 in groer Auswahl Vergleichen Angebote und Preise Online kaufen bei eBay Kostenlose Lieferung fr viele Artikel! 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. year by Poles (wherever they are). The fourth and final wave occurred in June 1941, deporting 300,000. At Isfahan Polish orphanage, a children's camp was opened, where 2,300 children and 300 adults stayed and eight elementary schools were created. referenced. 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. As I have already said, my father was made to work in mines, mining mainly malachite where, on one occasion, he sustained a bad accident. He was aware that he might be arrested, so he took to hiding in various places, hardly ever sleeping at home. Google Analytics campaign and traffic source tracking cookie. Between 1944 and 1946, thousands of Polish independence fighters actively opposed the new communist regime, attacking country offices of NKVD, SMERSH and the Polish communist secret service (UB). [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. 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. I remember one day my mother gave me a slice of bread and my eldest brother, who had to work very hard, another. , , , , , , , . These first deportations were made when Hitler and Stalin still maintained their alliance (Photo: Instytut Pamici Narodowej). Polish evacuees had to travel by train to Krasnovodsk, where they took a ship across the Caspian Sea to Iran. MY STORY AS REMEMBERED FROM THE DISTANCE OF. Anyone who believes that Stalin's alliance with Hitler is irrelevant to the Holocaust must have answers to such questions". 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". For any questions or concerns related to this service, you can send me an email through this contact form. -2- Again with only a cast iron round stove in the middle. Lww University was reorganized in accordance with the Statute Books for Soviet Higher Schools. 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. The decoration Sybir Deportee Cross was established on October 17th, 2003 in order to recognise and commemorate the sufferings of Polish citizens deported to Siberia, If we examine the war in terms of the Holocaust, why should Stalin's strategic actions be exempt from moral interrogation?" Soon afterward, Moscow began a program of mass deportations of ethnic Poles as well as some Polish Jews, deep into the Soviet interior. Soviet authorities implemented a political regime similar to a police state,[51][52][53][54] based on terror. 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). [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. 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. Soviet officials openly incited mobs to conduct killings and robberies (19391945). While drilling in public. To understand why my family, the only one from the whole village, were arrested, I must go back to the year l918-20 when, after the First World War, Poland regained its independence after some 123 years of being partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Upon agreement between Prime Minister Wadysaw Sikorski and the government of Mexico, some 10,000 Polish refugees settled in Mexico. 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. Iran and the Polish Exodus from Russia 1942. [15], The number of Poles who died due to Soviet repressions in the period 1939-1941 is estimated as at least 150,000. It is a miracle that we survived, with thousands dead.[12]. The following year, between 40,000 and 50,000 people - mostly from Upper Silesia - were deported to forced labor camps.[38]. [15] Around 55% of the deportees to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia were Polish women.[32]. [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. This invaluable database has details of many of the deported in the 1940s to Russia / Siberia. The journey from Poland to Siberia to Central Asia will be told not only by Asher and Shifra Scharf but also by several other Polish Jews, each detailing a particular leg of the journey. People were dying like flies. Her son died young due to an accident; her daughter still lives in South Africa with her grandchildren.[16]. A Polish Child's WWII Journey. But we ought not to romanticise. Probably all Poles know about this fact, I myself mentioned those deportations here.I have also mentioned the fate of some of the children who survived Siberia here.But I decided today to tell you about Polish connections with Siberia, which began as early as the 16th century, which is why I present, We were very poor, there were no jobs, kids had their classes in the open, there were no books." In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please click here. Classes began on September 1, 1942. ), This page was last edited on 2 January 2023, at 22:55. Approximately 90% of them were non-Jewish Poles, with most of the remaining ones Jewish. 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. 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. 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. He was wounded in Germany. Thousands of Poles took advantage of this, although not all managed to get out, because news did not reach them in time, before Stalin stoped it. Google Analytics long-term user and session tracking identifier. The deportation of Poles by the Russians to slave labour camps in the Soviet Union during [11] All Polish territories occupied by USSR were annexed to the Soviet Union with the exception of the area of Wilno, which was transferred to Lithuania. [19], The first Polish refugees came to Palestine in summer 1942. [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. On one occasion when there was actually fire burning in the cast iron stove, the train moved off with such a sudden jerk, that I, standing next to it, put my hand on the hot pipe leading into the roof of the truck to steady myself, badly burning my hand. The third wave of JuneJuly 1940 totaled more than 240,000. 1939 II WORLD WAR GERMANY AND RUSSIA INVADE POLAND. The food was delivered: rice, flour, meat, salt, sugar, tea, and some coffee. My lungs were also affected, a condition which has dogged me all my life. 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. 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. [15] The single man has not been traced; the woman, Josefa Bieronska, moved to South Africa with her children. (as of 1 April 1941). Some children were so weak that they could not get up and queue for the toilet. On January 15, 1940 the Lww University was reopened; its professors started to teach in accordance with Soviet curricula. By then we were very frightened and crying uncontrollably my father white as a sheet. "[65], To this day, the events of those and the following years constitute stumbling blocks in Polish-Russian foreign relations. [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. [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. This story has been placed in the following categories. 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. Asumiremos que est de acuerdo con esto, pero puede optar por no participar si lo desea. 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. How did Poles deported to Russia in World War 2 escape, to fight on? 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. There were several waves of deportations during which families were sent to barren land in the Soviet Union. In recognition of my father volunteering, as. 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. I do not recall why we did not get any help from anybody. All Polish parties and organizations were disbanded. [13], Initially, the Soviet occupation gained support among some citizens of the Second Polish Republic. La web no puede funcionar correctamente sin estas cookies. Las cookies son pequeos archivos de texto que los sitios web pueden utilizar para hacer que la experiencia del usuario sea ms eficiente. Lessons were held in the open air. Once She hoped we would return to Poland some day. The Ukrainians had failed to achieve independence in 1919 when their attempt at self-determination was crushed during the PolishSoviet and Polish-Ukrainian Wars. . None survived. During those three weeks of meandering through Russia, it was well nigh impossible to have a proper wash. 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. 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