At Isfahan Polish orphanage, a children's camp was opened, where 2,300 children and 300 adults stayed and eight elementary schools were created. Most of them were Polish Catholics and there were also some Jews. [6][7] 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. Of the survivors, approximately 80% escap In Ahvaz, "Camp Polonia" was one of the main exit centers for Poles leaving Iran, and the last Ahvaz camp closed in 1945. There were sports teams, a choir and activities groups. 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. All Polish parties and organizations were disbanded. They ended up in Iran, India, Palestine, New Zealand, and British Africa, as well as in Mexico. Polish Deportees Cut Timber in a Siberian Labour Camp, 1940 In September 1939, Germany and Russia invaded Poland and divided it between them. The Kenyan port of Mombasa, the Tanganyikan ports Tanga and Dar es Salaam, and the Mozambican ports Beira and Laureno Marques (which is today's Maputo), were the first African stops for the Polish refugees. 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. Built with Volusion. It is a miracle that we survived, with thousands dead.[12]. Reproduction of the contents of this blog is prohibited without the author's consent. According to depositions by Jzef wiato and other communist sources, the number of members of the Polish underground, rounded up by order of Lavrentiy Beria of the NKVD and deported to Siberia and various gulags in the Soviet Union reached 50,000 in 1945 alone. (S 6/02/Zk)", REPRESJE 1939-41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich, "Formy, skala i konsekwencje sowieckich represji wobec Polakw w latach 1939-1941", Represje 1939-41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich, "Ivan Franko National University of L'viv", The establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 By Norman Naimark, "Wyzwoliciele czy okupanci? Among some 14,471 victims were top Polish Army officers, including political leaders, government officials, and intellectuals. 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. Putin on 18-1-23 re siege of Leningrad, "Representatives of many European countries took part in the Siege of Leningrad and committed crimes" History: Red army invaded Poland in concert with Nazi Germany on 16-9-39, executed 25K Polish officers & deported 1.3M Poles to Siberia On November 1, 1944, USS General George M. Randall (AP-115) arrived at Wellington, with 733 children on board. News spread like wildfire through the village, and almost everybody gathered outside our house. buses unable to take a bend simply rolled into the ravine below. [4] Whether the number of victims could have reached or even exceeded 100,000 is only a matter of guessing,[4] considering the traditional taboos among the women incapable of finding "a voice that would have enabled them to talk openly" about their wartime experiences "while preserving their dignity. Only the Communist Party was allowed to exist, with organizations subordinated to it. One of the administrators lived in a building that also had a community centre where films were shown. And how did Auschwitz, previously the Polish town Oswiecim, come to bear that infamous name? There was a kindergarten, a men's school, a women's school, and a middle school. 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]. [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. Altogether, in 1943-44 there were 26 schools for Polish refugees in the Near East.[12]. ", Deportation: a crime against humanity and a war crime. Unauthorised That is where I went to Polish school for the first time in my life. 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. The first transport of prisoners to the Auschwitz extermination camp on June 14, 1940. The eastern half of Poland was annexed by the Soviet Union. Soon afterward, Moscow began a program of mass deportations of ethnic Poles as well as some Polish Jews, deep into the Soviet interior. Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll. First schools were opened in Tehran, where after one year there were ten Polish educational institutions. However, in 2020, Russian President Valdimir Putin went as far as blaming Poland for starting World War II. There we boarded a ship where we were exposed to more appalling conditions. In the second stage of evacuation from the interior, more than 43,000 military personnel and about 25,000 civilians left with General Wadysaw Anders across the Caspian Sea to Iran. There were only four toilet facilities on board, so with people and children suffering from dysentery and other stomach disorders, it simply was impossible for everybody to avail themselves of toilet facilities. These first deportations were made when Hitler and Stalin still maintained their alliance (Photo: Instytut Pamici Narodowej). After the Polish Army had left the Soviet Union, the attitude of the Soviets towards the remaining Poles worsened. The death rate rose even higher than in the gulags. Las cookies no clasificadas son cookies que estamos procesando para clasificar, conjuntamente con los proveedores de cookies individuales. Forced deportations of Polish citizens to Russia is one of the most tragic pages in our history, wrote Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a letter to the participants of the opening ceremony of the Siberian Memorial Museum. In an official letter from the British Authorities it was said: "It has been agreed that the welfare work in the Polish settlements must continue and the minimum staff stays to ensure this must be retained." REPORT BY A SURVIVOR, MRS. HELENA KNPACZYK [from the archive of The Polish Army Veterans Association (interviewer However, this was fraught with danger of being left behind. Its estimated that Polish deportees were held captive in the USSR on average for 66 months, meaning that the average sum to be received by the survivors could amount to PLN 13,200, or around EUR 3000. They immediately set about [22] The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September. Tribute was paid in the eastern Polish city of Lublin on Sunday to Poles expelled from the former eastern borderlands and deported to Siberia by the Soviet authorities. [50], All the media became controlled by Moscow. Amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union, Help of Maharaja of Nawanagar for Polish refugees, People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine, 1.1 million Poles (including Polish Jews), Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939-1946), List of Soviet Union prison sites that detained Poles, List of Polish refugees cemeteries in Africa. 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. [29] Altogether the Soviets sent roughly a million people from Poland to Siberia. Faced with those who claim that Stalin had strategic reasons for allying with Germany in 1939, Snyder added: "in moral discussions of the war, strategic justifications are not usually admitted as legitimate excuses for collaboration with the Nazis. Further Polish transports went to India by sea, from the port of Ahvaz to Bombay. There were a lot of accidents, where 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. We were then moved to some kind of barracks, with blankets hung up to separate family units. I remember my father was so starlted that he dropped the loaf of bread he was slicing. 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. The last camp that was built in Northern Rhodesia at Abercorn (today's Mbala, Zambia). [3][5], Approximately 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation. 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. To say that hygienic conditions of our living quarters were less than primitive is to make a gross overstatement. [41][42] They began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. The Soviet Union never officially declared war on Poland and ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. 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. People were dying like flies. The Soviet Union never officially declared war on Poland and ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. [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. (as of 1 April 1941). 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. [18] In late 1942 and early 1943, Polish camps in Iran were located at Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, and Ahvaz. --4- 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 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. NKVD agents issued Soviet passports to Poles in February-May 1943. 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 For any questions or concerns related to this service, you can send me an email through this contact form. She wanted us to go either to India or Africa, as it was closer to Europe. 9539 Joseph Campau This was only corrected when I was in my middle 60s. then this event called by the Poles Miracle on the Vistula is celebrated each Mothers unit was also moved to this part, she found me, and it was she who, by some miracle, cured me of dysentery. [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. Don't miss the news and content that interest you. At first, they were transported to the town of Bandra, in the suburbs of Bombay, where Hanka Ordonwna took care of the kids. 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