Figure 1.--Unlike the Germans, the Soviets did not take many photographs of their subgacration of occupied countries. Thuus we have few images of the Polish woman and children deported to Central Asia and Siberia. We only have images of them after they escaped from Soviet Central Asia. Here we see some of the children aboasrd an American crewed vessel somewher in the Indian Ocean, we think on their way to Australia and safety at last. These children at tyheir young age have had more ddventures in their short lives than most adults. The press caption read, "Learning How to Play: Play, something which these these Polish war refugees had almost forgotten during the past two years, is now bringing them new joy as they try hard to forget the ravages of war which they have seen.The deck of this Coast Guard manned transport is alive with youngsters finding new hope as they sail for the land of safety. " The photograph was dated December 5, 1944. The caption is wrong in one respect. The children saw very little of the ravages of war and a great deal of the brurality of Soviet Communism.

The Cold War which followed World War II between the Soviets and the western Allies had its origins in Poland. World War II histories often focus on the NAZI brutalities in occupied Poland. The Soviets also invaded (September 17). The Soviet occupation also was extremely brutal, very similar to the NAZI occupation except for horrendous Jewish component. The objective was to destroy Polish nationalism. The Soviet NKVD arrested men from the upper classes and either shot or sent to a slower death in the Gulag. In additional middle class men were also arrested. This was not because they actually engaged in anti-Soviet activities, but because they were likely to harbor strong patriotic feelings. This included a wide rage of people identified as ' anti-Soviet elements', including government officials, army officers, police, lawyers, judges, teachers and professors, engineers, foresters, etc. 【Piotrowski】 The men were commonly shot or sent to the Gulag. A young Army officer provides a chilling account of the Soviet Gulag. 【Rawicz】 The best known example of this is if course Katyn. When discovered during the War, the Soviets tried to blame it on the Germans who were more than capable of such acts. The actions not only targeted men, but the whole families. While the men were arrested, their families including wives, children, and elderly dependents were deported to Central Asia and Siberia. There were four waves of forced deportations (February, April, and June 1940, and early June 1941)--only ending with the NAZI invasion. This whole process would be repeated in each of the the Baltic Republics, occupied by the Soviets a year later after fall of France. Only in Finland it did not occur, because the Finnish Army enabled people in occupied Karelia to escape before their homes and farms were seized. While Stalin was intent on destroying the Polish nation, Soviet occupation policy did not have the much more deadly racial component of NAZI policy -- Generalplan Ost. There is no precise data on the number of Poles deported and historians provide varying estimates ranging from 0.3-1.0 million people. 【Kuśnierz, Gross & Grudzińska-Gross, Gurjanow, and Lebedeva】 The NKVD shot or committed most of those arrested to the Gulag. They were mostly adult males. The deportees were mostly women and children. 【Jolluck】 Unlike the men whom were executed or incarcerated, the deportees were not charged with any offense, they were simply subject to deportation, an administrative decree. There status was 'free exile' or 'resettlement’. 【Jolluck, p. 465. 】 The deportation transport was harrowing. They were not allowed to bring anything of value with them. Many died along the way. They were locked into cattle cars with little food or water or protection from the elements. They were settled on collective farms (kolkhozes) or in even worse NKVD penal colonies. Here they were subject to slave labor, hunger, disease, and primitive living conditions. This was the situation these unfortunate people had to endure, separated from their fathers and husbands and not uncommonly the children were also separated from their mothers. This was the situation when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, including Soviet occupied Poland (June 1944). Unlike other Poles they were moved east of the Urals at least beyond the reach of NAZI armies.

Sources

Gross, J.T. and Grudzińska-Gross, I. War through Children's Eyes: The Soviet Occupation of Poland and the Deportations, 1939–1941 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1981).

Gurjanow, A. "Cztery deportacje 1940–41," Karta Vol. 12 (1994), pp. 114–36.

Jolluck, K.R. 2001. "'You can't even call them women': Poles and 'Others' in Soviet exile during the Second World War". Contemporary European History Vol. 10, No. 3 (2001), pp. 463–80.

Kuśnierz, B. Stalin and the Poles. An Indictment of the Soviet Leaders (London: Hollis and Carter, 1949).

Lebedeva, N.S. "The deportation of the Polish population to the USSR, 1939–41," The Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics Vol. 16, No. 1–2 (2000), pp. 28–45.

Piotrowski, T. The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World (Jefferson, N.C., London: McFarland, 2004).

Rawicz, Sławomir. The Long Walk (1956). The book was ghost-written by Ronald Downing based on conversations with Rawicz. It was released in Britain (1956). A film was made based on the book (2000). The Soviets backed by the BBC denied the story. Rawicz was beld in The Gulag but released as part of the 1942 general amnesty of Poles after the German invasion. He was transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran and made it to the British forces in Egypt. Witold Gliński, a Polish World War II veteran living in the UK, came forward to claim that the story of Rawicz was true, but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. This all, however, related to the esape to India. Both Rawicz and Gliński had been held in the Soviet Gulag for an extended period.

Created: 8:34 PM 5/2/2024
Last updated: 8:34 PM 5/2/2024