Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World, by Tadeusz Piotrowski (ed.) 2004. McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

My Aunt in Siberia. An Anthology of the Testimonies of Polish Gulag Survivors, Including My Parents and Grandparents

This work features the testimonies of former Polish deportees, not only into the USSR itself, but their subsequent “post-amnesty” travels to such places as India, Iran, various African nations, New Zealand, and Mexico. I focus on some of the experiences of my aunt “Eva”.

THE ARREST AND DEPORTATION

The family lived in recently Soviet-occupied eastern Poland (Kresy). My aunt “Eva (Ewa)” writes, “On April 13, 1940, at four o’clock in the morning, our house was surrounded by many soldiers. Six soldiers with an officer came inside to accuse us of various ‘crimes’: of being the family of two army officers, of belonging to the wealthy class, and of pursuing the education of a ‘false’ history of Europe and even the world, the latter being unmistakable signs of our being deadly enemies of the ‘great, beneficial’ October Revolution”. (p. 24).

“Eva” continues, “Before departure my mother told my sister and me never to give the Communists the opportunity to enjoy our tragedy, to pray with faith, and to remain spotless daughters of our homeland. As the train moved, the whole long serpent of wagons was full of patriotic songs which cemented our spirits.” (p. 25).

She adds that, “After 42 days the long, macabre journey came to an end. We arrived in Siberia, and land so awfully well-known in history. We learned our destiny was to be a concentration camp, whose main project was the building of a railway on the vast Siberian plains.” (p. 68).

OVERWORK AND STARVATION

“Eva” continues, “Carrying heavy stones and wood all day long extracted every bit of energy which bread, given once daily, and transparent watery soup, given twice daily, could give. Illnesses due to starvation and dirt such as typhoid fever, scabies, avitaminosis, and haemocolitis, were commonplace…Unquestionably the technique of the Russian leaders to destroy a human being is slow and methodical.” (p. 69).

THE COMMUNISTS WERE PRIMARILY AFTER HER FATHER (MY GRANDFATHER)

My aunt comments, “My father was a great patriot of my nation. When the war started he thwarted the attempts of the German and Russian armies to exploit the land and the people. Therefore he was doomed by both the Germans and the Russians. Having the instinct of a persecuted animal, he used to hide himself successfully in towns and villages. His head was priced high.” (p. 69).

THE COMMUNISTS USED BOTH PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE

My aunt “Eva” was brutally imprisoned in an attempt to force her to disclose the whereabouts of her father. She relates, “I was informed that very soon they would make me tell the truth and that my father was captured waiting for trial and execution. In the second session I received a horrible beating and was told that my mother and sister were already among the angels, in whom we believed, and soon they were going to enable me to join my noble ancestors.” (p. 69).

She was thrown into a dark prison cell that contained a decomposing human body, as she relates, “I received painful kicks from both of them. Their final push sent me falling down the stairs…The ghastly smell of something, like spoiled meat, attacked my nose…The door closed behind me, and I remained motionless in the darkness full of the indescribable stench…I always awoke to full consciousness, wet with vomit and urine…I recognized a corpse as the source of the stench. I understood then that I was sentenced not only to death but also to insanity.” (p. 70).

In time, the family turned out to be alive, and was released in the “amnesty” that followed the unexpected Nazi German attack on its erstwhile Soviet ally.

—–

SOME NUMBERS OF POLISH VICTIMS

How do we arrive at an estimate of the number of Polish citizens deported to the interior of the USSR in 1939-1941? Editor Piotrowski answers, “One promising approach to this question of numbers is proved by Polish railway employees who, after all, had firsthand knowledge of the preparations being made for the deportations and who operated the trains bound for the interior of the Soviet Union. According to their reckoning, the occupation authorities utilized from 120 to 150 trains for each of the deportations, each train carrying an average of 2,000 persons. Using this information and relying on additional information provided by the deportees, Bohdan Podoski–himself a victim of NKVD arrest and exile–estimates that 110 trains were used in the first deportation, 160 in the second, 120 in the third, and 120 in the deportation of June of 1941. Moreover, he estimates that about ten percent of the deportees and prisoners were marched or transported by trucks into the Soviet Union just before the German invasion. Thus, according to Podoski, 220,000 persons were deported in February [1940], 320,000 in April [1940], 240,000 in June 1940, and 265,000 in June of the following year. That last deportation consisted of 170,000 exiles and 95,000 prisoners. In addition, there were approximately 647,000 POWs, Red Army recruits, and concentration camp victims in the Soviet Union as of June 1941. Podoski’s grand total, therefore, of all Polish citizens deported to the Soviet Union in 1939-41 stands at 1,692,000.” (p. 5).

Soviet archives admit less than 400,000 Polish deportees, but they are of questionable reliability. For a modern historian who supports the traditional higher figure, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2020/08/22/gulag-numbers-poles-1939-1941-1-25-million-affirmed-soviet-archives-unreliable-ablamowicz/