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? It was here that I went down with severe dysentery and it was here that dead bodies were found in water wells. 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. Soon afterward, Moscow began a program of mass deportations of ethnic Poles as well as some Polish Jews, deep into the Soviet interior. But, the Soviet authorities started a campaign of forced collectivisation. 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. 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 Soviet Union took over 52.1% of the territory of Poland (circa 200,000km) with over 13,700,000 citizens at the end of the Polish Defensive War. The tuition was abolished, as together with the institution's Polonophile traditions, this had prevented most of the rural Ukrainophone population from attending. After settling me in, which was on a blanket spread on the sand inside a tent, she had to return to her unit. [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. Transports of scouts, which went to Palestine, were directed to Camp Bashit. 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. All Rights Reserved. And how did Auschwitz, previously the Polish town Oswiecim, come to bear that infamous name? 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. My lungs were also affected, a condition which has dogged me all my life. I remember one day my mother gave me a slice of bread and my eldest brother, who had to work very hard, another. 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. The Soviets established several new chairs, particularly the chairs of Russian language and literature. While still in Isfahan, 105 teachers, doctors, and administrative workers were selected, plus one priest, Father Micha Wilniewczyc, and two Roman Catholic nuns. 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. World War Two: The deportation of Polish refugees to Abercorn camp in Northern Rhodesia. If today it is very necessary to continue remembering the abominable crimes of Nazism against the Jewish people -especially in view of the resurgence of antisemitism in our society, now disguised as "antizionism"-, also it is to rescue from oblivion the crimes committed by communism against the same people, crimes that do not deserve to be presented, under any circumstances, as a "salvation", since their typology corresponds to some of the the most horrendous crimes that exist. While drilling in Among some 14,471 victims were top Polish Army officers, including political leaders, government officials, and intellectuals. 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). ", The Nazis consulted Moscow to deport the Jews to Siberia. This book is a collection of individual stories written by survivors of the Polish genocide during the Second World War. Cedar, MI 49621-5106. All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective.[55]. There were sports teams, a choir and activities groups. They ended up in Iran, India, Palestine, New Zealand, and British Africa, as well as in Mexico. 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]. There, all were divided into several groups and began their education. About one third of the civilians were children. At Isfahan Polish orphanage, a children's camp was opened, where 2,300 children and 300 adults stayed and eight elementary schools were created. [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. [3][5], Approximately 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation. People who were thus rewarded were called Osadniki which means Settlers on the new land given to them. those of the BBC. Somehow, at some point, my brother Gustaf found me and brought me a piece of bread (his ration for the day I later learned). "In the 1939-1941 period alone, Soviet-inflicted suffering on all citizens in Poland exceeded that of Nazi-inflicted suffering on all citizens. We were transported on board a warship, through Persian Gulf. Poles in Mexico were not allowed to leave their camps. It is a free service. Many of them, like General Jzef Olszyna-Wilczyski, captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were killed during the 1939 campaign. Red Army troops requisitioned food and other goods. After twelve days, we reached the port of Beira in Mozambique. Lww University was reorganized in accordance with the Statute Books for Soviet Higher Schools. Houses made of clay, in the heart of Africa. The following year, between 40,000 and 50,000 people - mostly from Upper Silesia - were deported to forced labor camps.[38]. [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. I was just a skeleton, simply skin and bones, and I lost touch with my family for quite a while. Survivor accounts: Polish deportations to Russia. But we ought not to romanticise. 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. -2- Other solders rushed through the house looking for hidden arms. In January 1944, the Polish staff in all East African camps had been reduced. [4] Among those who remained in the Soviet Union, about 150,000 Poles perished before the end of the war. then this event called by the Poles Miracle on the Vistula is celebrated each During those three weeks of meandering through Russia, it was well nigh impossible to have a proper wash. Nothing looked like Poland, but adults in our camp did their best to emphasize our roots. But, actual conferral of citizenship required individual consent and residents were strongly pressured for such consent. The first transport of prisoners to the Auschwitz extermination camp on June 14, 1940. They worked as farmers, and their first transport came through India in October 1943 with 720 people, most of them women and children. This was a small fraction of the approximately 1.7 million Polish citizens who had been arrested by the Soviets at the beginning of the war. On March 19, 1942, General Wadysaw Anders ordered the evacuation of Polish soldiers and civilians who lived next to army camps. At first, they were transported to the town of Bandra, in the suburbs of Bombay, where Hanka Ordonwna took care of the kids. Find out how you can use this. Johanna Granville, Out of the original group of Polish prisoners of war sent in large number to the labour camps were some 25,000 ordinary soldiers separated from the rest of their colleagues and imprisoned in a work camp in, The actual number of deported in the period of 1939-1941 remains unknown and various estimates vary from 350,000 (, Approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war, German advance across the Soviet occupation zone, exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union, show trial of 16 Polish wartime resistance movement leaders, Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, Raids on communist prisons in Poland (19441946), Flight and expulsion of Poles from the USSR, Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East. Obviously, the Jews who survived the horror of the Gulag could feel lucky next to those who were murdered in the German extermination camps. This was in August 1920, and ever since Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll. [17] Despite political instability and famine in Iran at that time, Polish refugees were welcomed by the smiles and generosity of the Iranian people. These first deportations were made when Hitler and Stalin still maintained their alliance (Photo: Instytut Pamici Narodowej). 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. We, the children, were formed into groups, each group had an adult looking after it. Forty-five new faculty members were assigned to Lww, transferred from other institutions of Soviet Ukraine, mainly the Kharkiv and Kiev universities. Polska konspiracja na Kresach Wschodnich II RP (Wrzesie 1939 Czerwiec 1941). Altogether, in 1943-44 there were 26 schools for Polish refugees in the Near East.[12]. One of the lesser-known aspects of that alliance was the policy of anti-Semitism adopted by the Stalin dictatorship. It is a drama that we still remember and which remains an unhealed wound for us to this day, he added. Most Poles were forced to stay in the Soviet Union. In addition to that, Article 6 of the Statute considers a crime of genocide, among others, the "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." We never did. 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 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. That we still remember and which remains an unhealed wound for us to this,... India, Palestine, were directed to camp Bashit were arrested during the Two years of Soviet,! Here that I went down with severe dysentery and it was here dead. 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