Civilian Deportations
Most poignant of all are the accounts of the deportations,
most often of entire families expelled from their homes on short notice
and under harsh conditions, with the few possessions they could carry.
The deportees were taken to nearby railway stations and loaded into cattle
cars destined for labour camps and remote settlements in the far reaches
of the Soviet Union. What remained of their property was often looted by
local officials, many of whom had been their long-time neighbours.
The first large wave of deportations to the "gulag", in
February 1940, which targeted mostly ethnic Poles, occurred almost two
years before the Germans embarked on their "resettlement" of the Jews
from the ghettos. The brunt of the ensuing misfortune was borne by the
Polish population, an overall minority in this part of Poland, though
Jews too, mostly refugees from the German occupation zone, and to a lesser
extent Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Lithuanians, were included in the
later waves of deportations.
The deportations could take place only with the precise,
advance identification of the targeted "political" and "class enemies", a
task entrusted to local collaborators.
As British historian, Keith Sword, has observed:
... The degree of organization and planning necessary
on the part of the Soviet authorities was considerable ...
Lists of the victims, their precise whereabouts and destinations had to
be drawn up. So meticulous and precise was this preparation that cases
are recorded of Poles being taken from prison to be reunited with their
families at the railway station; also, children taken from school to be
reunited with their parents at the station.
Trusted personnel had to be mobilized to carry out the operations: the
NKVD, local militias, the Army, and even trusted civilians were employed.
Herschel Wajnrauch was a Soviet citizen - a journalist brought in to
work on a Jewish newspaper in Bialystok. He recalled: 'The Soviet police
did not have enough people to carry out the mass arrests, so ordinary
Soviet [local] citizens were used to help. Our newspaper was
asked to provide two people, and I was one of them. We were given
weapons and went with the Police to arrest these people and send them
to Siberia'.
The whole operation [the first mass deportation in February 1940
which included few non-Poles - M.P.] was carried out in such
secrecy that it came as a complete surprise to most victims.
Historian Grzegorz Mazur has detailed the mechanics of the
operation. At the county and township level, a threesome overseen by the
NKVD, and which included local Communist Party secretaries, had the final
say as to who was to be deported. The functionaries carrying out the
arrests designated people from the local administration and party bodies
to assist them. This action was in turn overseen by the party committee
and administrative bodies at the regional level.
The role of local people serving in the "militia" and
administration, in which Jews figured very prominently, was thus
all-encompassing.
Not only did they draw up lists of deportees, but they
also arrested them and helped to drive them out of their homes, which
they often looted. They escorted the deportees to cattle cars assembled
at train stations and guarded them as they were loaded into trains and
dispatched on their long, harsh journey to remote destinations. The
numerous accounts cited below corroborate this fully.
What is less known, is the massive proportions of the
misappropriation of property seized from the deportees and the outright
thefts perpetrated by local officials during the course of deportations.
This even resulted in the setting up of special commissions to
investigate the widespread abuses, recover the stolen property, and
punish the perpetrators. There is no evidence, however, that this
undertaking met with success.
What transpired in the town of Boremel (Volhynia), was
typical of virtually all the small towns in Eastern Poland. There too,
Jews and Ukrainians with red armbands had paved the way for Soviet rule
by disarming the local Polish police in September 1939:
... The small town of Boremel counted about 3000
inhabitants of which more than 2000 were Jews. The remaining
inhabitants consisted of Poles, Russians, Czechs and Ukrainians.
After power was taken over by the Soviets, a local [Communist] Party committee was constituted whose national composition was
uniform - Jewish.
A lot depended on that direct authority: who would be deported, who
would receive a favourable opinion, who would be finally classified
one way or another.
Similar reports come from numerous other localities.
In Beresteczko, near Horochow, also in Volhynia:
... Poor Jews entered the Soviet administration
and it is they who carried out the cleansing and deported people to
Siberia by providing the NKVD with names of members of the Polish
Legions, the families of officers, officials, judges and others.
Ukrainian communists also joined the administration, but they
displayed their hatred to a lesser degree and sometimes even warned
people about their deportation.
Very often entire Polish settlements were brutally
deported in the dead of winter:
... Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the
surprised village was given a half an hour to get ready after which,
in the bitter cold, the entire population was loaded on sleds,
driven to the railroad, and packed onto trains.
No one was spared. They took the elderly and the infants, the
crippled and the imbeciles. Mothers, who were giving birth were
thrown out of their beds and told to climb on the sleds. They
dragged those who were bed-ridden and paralyzed.
In a village or settlement that had been slated for extinction no
living soul had the right to remain. The livestock and inventory
automatically became the property of the State ...
Foremost it was the purely Polish villages and colonies and the
military settlements that were victimized.
At that time they also deported all of the families of the
foresters and gamekeepers and the remaining Polish intelligentsia,
who had been expelled from their manors and estates and were hiding
in the villages and foresters' lodges.
The militia which was employed to carry out this cleansing
consisted mainly of local Jews, Ukrainian communists, and the
Soviet militia that had been brought in furtively from Kiev for
that purpose.
At the time, a telling jingle made the rounds in
Wlodzimierz Wolynski (Volhynia) which captured the mood in the air
and the new reality being witnessed on a daily basis:
Nasi Zydki siedy tedy,
Wszystkie pojda na urzedy,
Ukraincy do kolchozu,
A Polaki do wywozu.
(Our Jews here and there,
Will all go into government offices,
The Ukrainians to the kolkhozes,
And the Poles will be deported.)
Though sudden and swift, undertaken at night to catch
the deportees off guard, and well orchestrated, the deportations were
not camouflaged in any way. The immediate surroundings became aware
of them immediately and commotion spread as the convoys of Poles made
their way through villages and towns to train stations in the depth of
winter.
Once the deportees were loaded into cattle cars, their clamour could
be heard far and wide. Frozen bodies lay strewn along the roads and
railroad tracks for all to behold.
The following is a description from Ostrowek, near
Iwacewicze:
... On February 10, 1940, in the middle of the
night, a group of armed NKVD ... men, together with the local militia,
banged on our door.
We were shoved against the wall and searched. All the holy ornaments
had been ripped off our necks, thrown on the floor, trampled on, and
thrown into the trash. Then they searched the room that we had been
gathered up in and the rest of the premises. After the search had been
completed, we were told that we had 15 minutes to leave the house.
... Before the 15 minutes were up, we had been pushed out the door.
... As we entered the snow-covered courtyard, three sleighs harnessed
with one horse to each waited for us. With each horse there was a man
from Vierashki [Wieraszki was a neighbouring Ukrainian village - M.P.].
... NKVD men ... pointing the rifles in our direction. My parents,
Sabina, and Barbara had to walk beside our sleigh.
We were taken to the school, where we met almost everybody from our
community. The entire playground and the road to the Ostrovek village
were covered with sleighs. After us, a few more families were brought
in.
... At nightfall, a local man called out our names alphabetically. Each
family left one by one, every member being checked. ... As we stepped
outside, our guards and drivers were waiting.
... From the time of the leaving of our homes, all the dogs in our
little community had been howling. Cows were mooing and horses were
neighing. It sounded as though a calamity had struck the earth ...
It was about ten miles to the railway station. ... Hungry, almost
frozen, and exhausted to the limit, we arrived at the station.
Seven-month pregnant Sabina walked all the way.
On a side track, a freight train was standing. We were shoved inside.
Some of our neighbors were in and lamenting.
... The doors of the car had been shut and locked from outside.
... The next night, more people had been brought in to our car. They
were from Mihalin [Michalin], about five miles from us.
... That night there was a bump, a jerk, and we were moving. ...
Someone had said that the Russians were going to take us into the
forest and shoot us all. With that sort of statement, instant panic
erupted. The women began to pray and cry, and the children followed.
It turned into a gigantic beehive.
... We began singing an evening hymn.
Similar descriptions of the deportations of February 10,
1940 abound. A railwayman in Smorgonie, in the Wilno region, recalled: ... the indescribable crying and wailing of mothers and children.
In the colony of Dobra Wola in Polesia, as the people were driven away: ... only crying, the howling of dogs and shots here and there could
be heard at the station. When the train left Krzemieniec loaded with
deportees: ... there was loud screaming and crying at the station.
Carriages carrying families, guarded by "militiamen",
converged on the train station in Husiatyn, near the Soviet border. The
station was surrounded by "militiamen" and the NKVD:
... The picture was horrifying. Many children had
frozen on the way to the station. The screaming of the mothers was so
shrill that one could go mad ... From those mothers, who wanted to
take their frozen-dead children into the wagons, the bodies were
seized and thrown directly into the snow.
The bodies of children, who froze on the way to the train
station in Przemysl, were found by the roadside.
The railroad joining Rowne and Szepietowka was lined with frozen bodies,
mostly children, discarded on the tracks by the guards.
Similar scenes occurred in Bialystok, Lomza, and Drohobycz. The Polish
population, who witnessed these cruel deeds was in a state of shock and
stupor.
How did Jews react, when their Polish neighbours were
rounded up in full view and deported to the "gulag"?
Most Jewish memoirs are silent or dismissive about the
first winter deportations, as if they didn't occur or were of no
particular significance. A case in point is Ejszyszki mentioned later.
A few memoirs speak of the fate of the Poles, but do not acknowledge
that local Jews were involved in the deportations of their Polish
neighbours in any way. When they do, as in the case of Michel Mielnicki,
noted earlier, it is the Polish victims of the deportation, who are
vilified:
... We have to get rid of the fascists. They
deserve to go to Siberia. They are not good for the Jewish people.
Other testimonies, referred to later, are even more
shocking in their callousness.
How does one explain this widespread indifference
toward and even rejoicing at the fate of one's neighbours? As one shall
see, the attitude of the Jews toward their co-religionists, who were
deported, was markedly different that toward the "other" - their
Christian neighbours.
A Jew from Antopol, near Kobryn (Polesia), rationalized
the fate of those deported to the "gulag" from the perspective of later
events:
... The new regime took to purging the atmosphere
of reaction, kulaks, ideological and economic opposition, etc. Among
others, recent Polish settlers were carried off to the interior of
Russia. At night the military authorities informed the victims to
dress and pack, and they were loaded on motor cars to be taken to an
assembly center. ...
[when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941]: ... The
Soviet authorities threw everything they had onto the vehicles and
rushed away, promising they would return. ... We now envied the
kulaks, who had been forcibly deported to the land beyond the Volga.
They were sure of their lives.
Miriam Berger, who witnessed the deportations in Horochow
(Volhynia), is one of the exceptional few, who was truly moved by the
plight of the Polish deportees:
... It was at this time that the NKVD began its
operations. Numerous vehicles were commandeered from the nearby
villages and were used to transport Poles, who had settled in the
town to the railway.
Those deported were allowed to take with them only as much of their
belongings as could be packed in half an hour, and on reaching the
railway cars were packed into wagons which took them away to work in
Siberia.
... A few weeks later NKVD men reappeared with their vehicles and this
time took away the families of Polish officers, who had reached the
town during the retreat of the Polish Army.
It was the depths of winter and the journey to Siberia lasted several
weeks. We heard that many children and old people could not stand the
terrible hardships and died before reaching their destination.
It was now the turn of the Kulaks, the rich peasants. Thousands of
them, with their families were expelled ... Among them were old people,
who begged to be allowed to die in their homes, but their pleas fell
on deaf ears.
A similar sense of compassion, this time for fellow
victims, was displayed by a young Jewish girl, who was deported from
Wilno, along with her family, wealthy industrialists, in the last wave
of deportations of June 1941. This was her recollection of what she
witnessed upon arrival at the train station, from where she was shipped
to the "gulag":
... Ahead of us the cattle cars were waiting for
their human cargo.
... What I saw only added to my bewilderment ... I saw nothing more
villainous than peasants - women in shawls, men in cotton jackets and
trousers that reassembled riding breeches. I saw Polish peasants, not
a rich capitalist among them; yanked from their land, they had toted
their belongings in sacks, in shawls, in cardboard boxes. I saw
reflected in their stricken faces our mutual shock.
A young Jewish "idealist" from Wlodzimierz Wolynski, who
found the arrest of Polish officials, military personnel and clergy ... logical and necessary ..., because of their ... strong
anti-Soviet and anti-Communist sentiments ..., began to have second
thoughts, when the Soviets started to victimize his parents'
middle-class Jewish friends and acquaintances:
... In late November [1939], however, I
became troubled by stories about the brutal treatment of local
citizens during night searches and arrests. These operations usually
focused on landowners and merchants, many of whom I had known since
childhood and whose honesty and integrity had never been questioned.
... I hadn't realized that the city council officials, all of whom I
knew and thought were my friends, considered my parents capitalists
and therefore "vragi naroda" [enemies of the people]. I
couldn't believe that they would take forcefully take my father's
property and my parents' valuables.
... I followed Dmitri's advice not to ask any more questions and not
to plead on behalf of my parents and their friends, and I immersed
myself even more in political activity, hoping my devotion would
save my parents from trouble.
I stood up on the platform at meetings and enthusiastically gave
reports. I was delegated to participate daily in local gatherings
and eventually was nominated to be a designated speaker at the
meetings required for all citizens. At these meetings, designed for
the "political education of the masses", I presented and analyzed
political and military events and explained the role of the Red Army,
which was to save the eastern part of Poland from the capitalists by
incorporating it into Ukraine [Bardach was vice-chairman of the
municipal election committee, who agitated for the annexation of
Eastern Poland into the Soviet Union].
... During the first week of December, a curfew was imposed on the
city. An increased number of soldiers patrolled the streets, and
rumors spread that dozens of cattle cars were arriving at the train
station. I went with my friends to the station to see what was going
on. Red boxcars were lined up by the hundreds and hooked to
coal-burning locomotives.
Their presence indicated that deportations were being planned, but
no one knew exactly when they would take place or who would be
deported.
... Late in the afternoon on December 5, Yuri Savchenko came to my
house, out of breath, and told me that mass arrests and deportations
would take place late that night. He thought my parents might be on
the list [Bardach immediately rushed off to warn his parents and
family and friends. He was then taken by the NKVD as a "portnoi", a
civilian witness, to assist and witness the searches and arrests].
Andrei handed me the list. I recognized many names - friends of mine
and of my parents. I flipped to the second page and froze 'Shimon
Stern - 4'. Taubcia's father.
My father's name was also on the list, but for some reason it had
been crossed off. Perhaps I would be able to scratch off other names
when no one was looking.
As we got closer to the train station, shouting, wailing, and crying
pierced the air, punctuated by gruff Russian commands. Hundreds of
deportees were gathered on the plaza and guarded by soldiers. Several
trucks were parked on the circle in front of the station, a place
usually reserved for carriages. We pulled up behind the last truck
and watched those ahead of us unload. Soldiers with bayonets
surrounded the trucks, taking every opportunity to threaten, kick,
shove, and swear at the captives.
This "idealist" also describes how ordinary Poles put
their lives at risk for their Jewish employers, who were slated for
deportation and died in a Gestapo-like execution - an occurrence for
which no Jewish counterpart has been found (though examples of Jews
assisting Poles have been meticulously noted later on):
... We drove halfway down Kowelska Street and
stopped in front of one of the newest houses, that belonging to Dr.
Schechter. His children, Dalek and Marusia, were close friends of
mine. Gennady's mouth gaped open when he saw the magnificent facade.
... Gennady ordered Andrei to break down the door, and after several
blows with the crowbar the handle broke. ... He was determined to
find the Schechter family.
In the backyard there was a large brick barn. The gardener, his
wife, and the night watchman lived in the three attached rooms, and
Gennady thought the Schechters might be hiding there [in fact,
they were hiding in an underground shelter in the nearby orchard].
He pounded on the wooden door until the gardener and his wife,
dressed in nightclothes, answered.
'Where's the Schechter family?'
'They're at home', the gardener murmured.,br>
His soft, sleepy reply further angered Gennady. 'You son of a whore!'
He grabbed the gardener by his nightshirt and pulled him close. 'Find
them or I'll kill you!' Spit sprayed in the gadener's face. Gennady
pulled the gardener outside and threw him on the ground. The man
stood up, wiped the spit off his face, and ran toward the house.
The gardener's wife began to wail. 'Holy Mary! Holy Jesus! Please, I
beg you, leave us in peace. Oh God! Holy Mary! Save us!'
This was too much for Gennady. Although he barely understood Polish,
he understood her religious invocation.
He grabbed her by the robe, which opened, exposing her breasts.
'Filthy whore. I'll teach you a lesson.' He began to kiss and fondle
the woman. Her screams pierced my heart.
The gardener came running back to the barn. 'Sir, please stop. Leave
my wife alone. I'll do whatever you want, but please, leave her alone!'
'Did you bring your master and his family? Gennady shouted.
'I don't know where the Schechter family is. I went through the entire
house and checked the backyard. I couldn't find them anywhere' [obviously, the gardener could not have done all that in the short
interval; more importantly, he did not disclose the existence of the
secret shelter - M.P.].
He had barely finished the sentence when Gennady punched him in the
face.
The gardener's nose bled profusely. He put both hands to his face,
still pleading with Gennady to leave his wife alone. Gennady let go of
the woman. 'Liar!' he said. He pointed his pistol at the man's face
and fired. The gardener's wife jumped on Gennady scratching him. He
flung her to the ground and drew his pistol.
The night watchman appeared, and when he saw the gun pointed at the
woman, he ran up to Gennady and pushed him, throwing him off balance.
Kostia and Andrei cocked their pistols, ready to shoot, when Gennady
shouted, 'Leave him for me! I'll teach him what it means to attack an
officer of the NKVD. He's going to lick my boots and beg to die
quickly.' Gennady smashed the pistol across his face and tried to
kick him in the groin but missed, landing his foot on the watchman's
stomach. The watchman doubled forward. Gennady smashed the pistol on
the back of his head.
... The watchman's face had puffed. His eyes were closed, his nose
was bleeding, and his upper lip was split in half. Gennady straightened
up and backed away from him. He looked exhausted, and I thought he had
finished, but then he lunged at the watchman again, grabbed him by both
ears, and tore them out. Blood spurted onto the ground.
... As Gennady started to kick the watchman again ... Kostia and Andrei
were dragging the gardener's wife into a corner. She screamed and
twisted, trying to free her limbs. Andrei pinned down her arms while
Kostia spread her legs. She screamed wildly, and Kostia slapped her
across the face and cursed. When Gennady stumbled over, Kostia got
up and pulled up his pants.
'How was it?' Gennady asked. 'Did you give her a good Russian fuck?'
He breathed hard. 'The bitch loved it.'
... 'Is she still alive?' 'I think so. You go next, boss'. But Andrei
was already on top of her.
Gennady took two big swigs of vodka, then handed what little was left
to Kostia. They both laughed wildly and slurred obscenities while
Andrei raped the woman. She didn't scream anymore, and I didn't think
she was moving.
... I slipped outside and walked around in the cold air. A few minutes
later, I heard two more shots.
A Jewish doctor, who spent the Soviet occupation in home
town of Podhajce and the nearby town of Tluste, somehow managed to turn
a blind eye to the fate of Polish officials and military personnel
arrested in September and October 1939, but pitied the Polish settlers,
who were deported in February 1940, and some of the later deportees:
... And when the deportations to Russia began, they
first deported the Polish settlers, then the families of officials and
military personnel, afterwards the bezhentsy, that is the refugees
from the west [German occupation zone of Poland], and then at
the very end some Ukrainian nationalists. They should have started with
the last group, and not with the hard-working settlers who were not in
anyone's way - only in the way of the Ukrainian nationalists, who saw
to it that they were deported in order to increase their chances for
an independent Ukraine.
With the utmost ruthlessness, and without taking into account the
weather or a person's state of health, even in the depth of winter,
they transported these unfortunate people under guard. Among them were
pregnant women, just about to give birth, and also those who had just
given birth. They were packed into freight trains like cattle and
shipped into exile in a strange, cold country.
For the most part, however, as many accounts illustrate,
Jews were largely indifferent to the fate of the Poles and even profited
from their misfortune.
Many Jews lined the streets to rejoice at the scenes of their Polish
neighbours being shipped off to the "gulag" and mocked these destitute
masses. Such "spectacles" became a popular form of entertainment.
When the Poles were being deported from Zambrow, near Lomza,
the Jews who gathered to watch the spectacle laughed merrily: ... The
Poles are going on a pilgrimage to Czestochowa, they mocked [the shrine
of the Black Madonna on Jasna Gora in Czestochowa is Poland's most revered
shrine and a place of pilgrimage].
In Lubieszow (Polesia), Jews took part in the arrest and
deportation of Polish settlers consisting of ex-servicemen and their
families to Siberia in February 1940. As the Poles were led to the train
station to be loaded into cattle cars in the depth of winter, Jewish
townspeople gathered around and applauded.
When later deportations engulfed many Jews as well (in the
more benign climactic conditions of the summer of 1940), the reaction of
the local Jewish population was markedly different from the send-off
accorded to their Polish neighbours in the winter of 1940. For Jewish
victims they did exhibit a sense of brotherhood. They would bring food to
these unfortunate Jews, mostly refugees from the German occupation zone,
who were being deported with the assistance of local Jewish communists;
sometimes they would even attempt to hide endangered Jews.
According to one account:
... Hundreds of Luboml Jews came to the [train] station to see their "refugees" off, for each had become used to his
own refugee. At that moment the kind-heartedness of the people of Luboml
became apparent, for these people, despite their own difficulties, have
given us their help, either with a kind word or with beds for the
homeless and packages of food.
The litany of Polish accounts attesting to Jewish
complicity in the deportations of the civilian population is long and sad.
Already in October 1939, which Polish historian Daniel
Bockowski considers to be the first wave of deportations, the newly
appointed village council and "militia" in Bialozorka, near Krzemieniec,
in which many local Jews served, ordered and carried out the deportation
of Polish settlers. In that early period, the settlers were given a
generous three days' notice of their expulsion and allowed to take only
one cow and those belongings that would fit on a carriage.
At a public meeting organized by the NKVD in the village market square,
an agitated crowd of Jews and Ukrainians gathered calling for the
deportation of the Polish "leeches". Accompanied by the "militia", Jews
went from house to house making inventories of agricultural produce and
livestock to be taken over by the council. The contempt that some of
these Jews displayed toward their Polish neighbours with whom they had
traded and lived amicably before the occupation was baffling for the
Poles. Polish school children also felt the wrath of their new Jewish
teacher, Fejga Baszer, who subjected them to differential treatment
unknown at their school before the war.
A Polish woman, whose husband had been deported from
Stanislawow in October 1939, recalled how, in April of the following year,
she was taken from her home in the middle of the night together with her
four young children and deported to Siberia. The Soviet soldier, who came
for her was, as in very many such cases, accompanied by a local Jew.
Earlier, this Polish woman had been urged by an unknown Jewish woman to
sell her furniture to her, because she would soon have no need for it:
... I remember well the date October 26, 1939 because
my husband, who had been condemned to death, managed to yell out through
a window in his train wagon which was wired shut: '... My dearest wife,
hope for the best, I'll be back soon'. Those were the last words heard
from the lips of my dear husband and father of four children (10, 8, 4
and 1.5 years old).
... I asked a Jew I knew, a Polish citizen, what should I do, who should
I turn to to get my husband out of jail?
'We are in charge now, and you want them to be released? No, they won't
be released, they're taking them to Tysmienica', he replied.
'What will they do there?' I asked.
The Jew answered: 'A bullet in the skull - you don't want that?'
I stood nailed to the ground. Seeing that this had hurt me badly, he
sneered and walked away.
... After my husband had been deported, one day a middle-aged Jewish
woman came by and asked: 'Do you have any furniture to sell?' 'No I
don't', I replied. ... 'You're making a mistake because soon you won't
need it'. ... Eventually, I had to sell some of my furniture ... to
the wife of a Soviet prosecutor. ...
[several weeks later, she went to his home to collect the rest of the
money owed for the furniture]: ... He sat at the table and his
first words were why did I sell the furniture? I told him it was
because you have taken my husband ... He listened and then said:
'Don't blame us. Your people insisted on it'. 'Our people?', I said in
an astonished voice. 'Yes, it was your Jews, who insisted on it. If
you don't believe me, go to the court and you'll see, who is standing
by the door to the Grievance Chamber'.
The third transport was for us, women with children, the wives of the
men who had already been deported. On April 13, 1940, at one o'clock at
night, two people came: a Soviet soldier with a rifle over his shoulder
and a somewhat older Jew, his interpreter, whose hat covered his eyes.
'So, do you have a weapon?' asked the Soviet. 'No, I don't'. Just to be
sure, I was told to stand by the wall and not move. First, they
searched the room, where the children were sleeping. They awoke and
started to cry ...
They looked through all the drawers throwing the contents onto the
floor. ... Finally, they said, 'Let's go. You have a half hour to get
ready. We're waiting for you'. My parents did not live far away and
they helped me gather together the things I needed most ...
The Soviet and Jew looked on and said, 'What's left belongs to the
Soviet government'.
In Byblo and the surrounding villages, in the county of
Rohatyn, local Jews and Ukrainians denounced Poles, who were then
arrested by the NKVD and deported. A similar fate met Polish residents
of Kosow Huculski, Kuty, Tysmienica, Stryj, Budzanow, Rudki, Komarno,
Bilka Szlachecka, Zaloziec, Sasow, and Sniatyn.
The deportations, conducted in the extremely harsh
conditions of February 1940, stand out for their cruelty.
The following scene was witnessed in Derazne, near
Kostopol (Volhynia):
... The winter of 1940 was very frosty ... The
Polish population is being deported ever more frequently: 'kulaks',
former Polish civil servants, teachers, the intelligentsia,
gamekeepers, colonists, foresters, etc. They are driven daily to the
train station in an endless procession of carriages. People freeze ...
they can only take with them their clothes, a small sack, and a little
food.
The transports are guarded on both sides by NKVD soldiers. One cannot
approach these people or pass them some warm food or clothes - they
are treated by the Russians like the plague.
The Ukrainians and Jews do not hide their joy and denounce whomever
else they feel should be deported.
We already know that some of the people detained by the NKVD are shot,
but no one knows where.
In Huta Stepanska, near Kostopol (Volhynia), a "militia",
consisting of Ukrainian and Jewish riff-raff, arrested local officials
and handed them over to the Soviets. A pack of "militiamen" descended on
the rectory of the Catholic church and seized the elderly parents of
the pastor, Rev. Czaban, who were around 80 years of age, pious and
well-respected in the community. They were shoved around and mocked, and
then loaded on a carriage. They perished in exile in Kamchatka.
In Bialozorka, near Krzemieniec, entire Polish families
were rounded up on February 10, 1940, permitted to take only a few
possessions, and assembled at the local school. The NKVD officer, who
oversaw the operation, was accompanied by Ukrainians from the local
police and the secretary of the heavily Jewish village council. From
there the Poles were taken by sled over snow-covered roads to the
railway station in Maksymowka, where they were loaded into crowded
cattle cars.
In the colony of Bajonowka, near Tuczyn in the county
of Rowne, on February 10, 1940, at four o'clock in the morning, Polish
settlers were brutally awoken by the NKVD and local Jewish communists
and informed of their deportation. They were given one hour to pack
some belongings, transported to the train station in Zdolbunow, and
packed into cattle cars, whose doors were then bolted shut. The bunk
beds in the wagons were overcrowded with passengers. The next night
the train set off for the Soviet interior.
In the village of Wola Ostrowiecka, near Luboml, the
home of a Polish state gamekeeper was surrounded on February 10, 1940,
by the NKVD and local Jews in their service. While the house was
searched, its inhabitants were forced against the wall with their hands
raised. They were told they would be resettled in a different region
and given two hours to pack whatever belongings they could carry. They
were put on sleighs and taken to the train station in Luboml, where
they were loaded into freight wagons. From there they set off on a
two-month journey to their unknown destination in the Arkhangelsk region
of northern Russia.
Fortune smiled on a Polish family in Rozyszcze, who were
warned by some friendly Jews that they would soon be deported to the
Soviet interior. They were also told the name of the Jew, who had seen
to it that they were placed on the list of deportees.
In Gwozdziec, a small town near Kolomyja:
... Then came the unusually snowy and harsh winter
of 1939-1940, and with it the tragic dawn of February 10, 1940, when
entire Polish families, including children and the elderly, were
loaded into cattle cars. Order was maintained by local Jews and
Ukrainians who not so long ago constituted, or so it seemed, a
friendly contingent of our township community.
A long list of the Polish families affected by the
deportation follows.
In Horodenka, also in Stanislawow voivodship, from
which more than 220 Poles - mostly women and children - were deported
in February 1940, local Ukrainians and Jews continued to denounce
Polish officers and policemen, who remained in hiding. One of them
was a former police commissioner by the name of Bryl, who perished in
Siberia.
In Bogdanowka, near Zborow, the list of deportees was
compiled by local communist officials, all of them apparently recent
converts to the cause, from among the tiny group of some ten Jews, who
lived in this Polish-Ukrainian village. Basia Szapiro headed the
Communist Party, her son-in-law by the name of Lipszyc became the
secretary of the township, the horse trader Josz Pinkas assumed the
position of the "red militia" within days of the Soviet entry, and
two other Jews rounded out the new organs of authority.
On February 10, 1940, three Russian soldiers accompanied
by Josz Pinkas, the armed militiaman, descended on the homes of the
Swirski and Gierc families, well-to-do farmers, and arrested the eight
members of these two Polish families. The Swirski family, consisting
of parents and two teenage sons, was awoken at three o'clock in the
morning and given a half hour to pack. When asked what the charges were,
a document was produced and read: Mr. Swirski had fought in General
Jozef Haller's Army and against Soviet Russia in 1920, Mrs. Swirska was
active in the community as a women's organizer, and the sons had
committed political transgressions of their own. In brief, these
trumped up charges could only have been concocted by local people, who
were quite familiar with their neighbours' affairs.
When asked, where they were being sent, Pinkas replied: To polar
bear country.
The two Polish families were driven by cattle-drawn carriages to the
train station in Jezierna, some five kilometres away. In total, some
92 Poles from surrounding villages were loaded into a cattle car that
left the station late that night.
By the time it arrived at its destination in the Komi ASSR on March
29, six of the passengers had died.
In Hermanow, near Bilka Szlachecka, not far from Lwow,
Maria Karpa recalled how she and her family were driven from their
home:
... On the tenth of February [1940], a
Saturday, at five thirty in the morning, there came seven Soviets
armed with rifles, two men from the Ukrainian militia and five Jews,
who were also armed. There were six of us in our family, and they
were fifteen armed men.
One of the seven Soviets read an official order which was like a
death sentence. We were given fifteen minutes to get ourselves and
our children together. We didn't have enough time to get ready and
were fearful of what would happen to us, so we were only half
dressed. We were not allowed to take anything at all. It was only
about a kilometre to our train station, yet they took us to the
station in Winniki, fourteen kilometres away. We stood all day
inside freight wagons - it was like [being] in a shed
because they were not heated. At night they transported us to
Lwow where we stayed for another whole day. When our family found
out that we were taken from our home under guard without being
allowed to take anything with us, they brought us some food.
The Soviets and Jews did not want to allow our parents to come
close to the wagons, so we started screaming and crying and jumped
out of the wagons not paying attention to the guards because it
didn't matter to us any more. We only wanted to get some food for
our children. The next night they left Lwow with us. There were
58 people in this wagon.
On February 10, 1940, several Jews burst into the home
of eight-year-old Jerzy Biesiadowski in Lwow, and gave the family ten
minutes to pack:
... I put on my coat and fur hat, but only
managed to put on one shoe when I was kicked by a Jew. As I slid
across the floor on my stomach I grabbed the other shoe, but the
Jew tore it out of my hand and threw it in a corner. I was thus
forced, wearing one slipper, out into the snow with my mother.
We were packed into cattle cars for deportation in –40°C weather.
Many people froze. The guards opened the doors and asked, 'Who
croaked?'
The owners of an estate in Hurnowicze, near Molodeczno,
were deported to Siberia in 1940 and 1941. The NKVD was assisted by
a Jew by the name of Sejzer, who had leased a mill belonging to this
Polish family.
In Kleck, in Nieswiez county, many Jews worked for the
NKVD and denunciations of Poles became frequent:
... At four o'clock in the morning, on February 10,
1940, local communists in the company of the NKVD descended on the
homes of Polish settlers in Kuchczyce, robbed them of their valuables,
and gave them two hours to pack what they could carry. Earlier, these
same officials had compiled a thorough census of all the settlers and
an inventory of their property and belongings.
Under guard, in a temperature of -20°C, entire families were taken by
carriage to the train station in Rejtanow. In Baranowicze they were
transferred onto wide-track cattle cars with bunk beds and a small
stove, but lacking in any sanitary facilities. The wagon was cold as
there was often no wood and instead of water a bucket was filled with
snow. The food ration consisted of salted herring.
Those, who died en route to Arkhangelsk, were thrown out of the moving
train onto the snow.
In Sopockinie, near Grodno, according to a Jewish source,
during the day local Jews: ... were invited to come to the NKVD.
That night, February 10, 1940, they accompanied Soviet soldiers to the
homes of the villagers to announce and oversee: ... their forced exile
deep into central Russia. Hundreds of peasant families were led to their
banishment in bitter cold together with their infants.
Jan Koniecko, of the village of Netta Folwark, near
Augustow, recalled how, on February 10, 1940, a Jewish policeman with an
armband, whom his family knew well because they had traded with him before
the war, brought some Soviets to his home. They struck his father in the
back with the butt of a rifle and made him kneel with his arms raised.
His mother and sister frantically packed a few things together and the
family was deported to Irkutsk. Other Jews, whom they knew, went to other
Polish houses.
In Bransk, deportations were dependent on lists drawn up
with the assistance of local collaborators and communists, mainly Jews.
The 'crimes' of those slated for deportation had to be 'confirmed' by two
residents. Eighty-five percent of those deported were ethnic Poles
despite the fact that they constituted just half of the town's population:
... The first deportation of Poles to Siberia took
place on February 10, 1940. There were three more transports.
In total 114 persons, mostly Poles, were deported. A dozen or so Jews
and members of other nationalities were also exiled. The fate of some
of those who got arrested is still unknown. While in Israel, I was told
of the tragic case of a Jewish policeman who came with the Soviets to
take his own brother and participated in his deportation to Siberia.
Not a single case is known of a Jew standing up for, or in any way
helping a Pole by warning him or keeping him hidden from capture. On
the contrary, some of them even participated in deporting the elderly,
women, and children to Siberia. Cultural differences and earlier
economic discords let themselves be felt. After the war, only 50 from
among the 114 exiled to Siberia and Kazakhstan returned to Bransk.
Many eyewitnesses from Jedwabne, near Lomza, both Jews
and Poles, attest to particularly deplorable behaviour on the part of
local Jews. Arrests started soon after the Soviet entry. Pro-Soviet
Jews not only fingered and denounced Poles, but also eagerly
participated in their arrest, round-up and deportation to the "gulag".
Rev. Marian Szumowski, the Catholic pastor, was arrested
by a local Jew in the service of the NKVD and was sent to prison in Minsk,
Belorussia, where he was sentenced to death on January 27, 1941. In total,
several hundred Poles, and perhaps a dozen Jews, were deported to the
Soviet interior from Jedwabne and its surroundings.
Meir Grajewski (later Ronen), a native of Jedwabne, has
identified five 'scoundrels', otherwise for the most part rather ordinary
members of the town's Jewish community, who denounced their Polish
neighbours and, occasionally, fellow Jews:
... During the Soviet occupation five Jewish
scoundrels domineered (in the town).
The first, Eli [Eliasz] Krawiecki ... had a shoe repair shop ...
He was the most intelligent of them ... Under the Soviets he did not
officially fulfill any function, but directed everything from behind the
scenes. He was killed later [after the Soviets retreated in June 1941] ...
Chaim Kosacki, whose father was a butcher ... When the Germans arrived,
some Poles took him to them and they [the Germans] shot him that
same day.
Abraham Dawid Kubrzanski ...
Szajn Binsztejn, who sat in the "Czerwoniak" prison before the war for
three years for raping a girl. He was a real bandit. In the synagogue,
he could only stand behind the stove and could only be part of the minyan
of ten men needed for prayer service when there was no one else.
Mechajkal Wajnsztajn [was] the only one of the five who was alive
after the war.
They ruled the town for the first weeks before Soviet power stabilized.
Their chief was a Pole named Krystofczyk, a true Communist. Krystofczyk
became the chairman of the town hall, and Binsztejn was the commander
of the police.
... It is true that they denounced Poles.
... The Soviets started to make lists and arrest people. Mostly they
arrested Poles.
Meir Grajewski's father, Symcha Grajewski, who had been a
Polish legionnaire and fought for Poland in the Polish-Soviet War of
1919-1920, was arrested on December 10, 1939. He was imprisoned in Lomza
and never heard from again. In March 1940, Meir, then 14 years old, and
his mother were deported to Kazakhstan together with four Polish families
from Jedwabne, after being denounced by Mechajkal Wajnsztajn (or possibly
another Jew).
There are numerous credible testimonies recorded by Poles
that describe other local 'scoundrels' (the Chilewski brothers, the
Lewinowicz brothers, Berek Czapnicki, Ajzyk Jedwabinski and his sons,
Lejb Guzowski, Jakow Kac) and expand on the consequences of their
misdeeds for the Polish population:
... The Jews greeted the Soviets with flowers. ...
The Jews formed a citizens' militia and many of them were employed by
the NKVD.
After the Soviet authority was fully organized the Jews drew up lists
of Poles to be deported to Siberia.
... At first they arrested a number of people from the intelligentsia,
that is, teachers, officials, merchants, wealthier farmers and Rev.
Marian Szumowski.
... When the NKVD called on their homes several people were away ...
These individuals started to hide and organized a resistance movement.
After a while, the Jews tracked them down and the NKVD arrested them.
All traces of them vanished. Only Dr. Jerzy Kowalczyk returned.
The Red army was welcomed by the Jews, who erected gates for them.
The former authorities were replaced with local Jews and Communists.
The police and teachers were arrested. ... Searches took place at the
homes of the wealthier farmers. They seized their furniture, clothing
and valuables, and in a few days they came to arrest them at night.
As soon as the Soviet army arrived a town committee sprang up
spontaneously ... its members were Jews. The militia was also composed
of Jewish Communists.
There were no repressions at first because they [the Soviets] did not know the population. Arrests started only after local
Communists had made their denunciations. Searches [for weapons] were carried out by local militiamen ...
The Soviet authorities set up a militia which consisted mostly of
Jewish Communists. They started to arrest ... those whom the police
laid complaints against.
... The local [Polish] population for the most part boycotted
the voting [on October 22, 1939]. Throughout the entire day
the militia, brandishing their rifles, compelled them to come to the
polling station. The sick were bought by force. Soon after the
elections they staged a raid and arrested entire families who were
deported to the Soviet Union.
When the Soviets came into Jedwabne, the Jews handed over
lists of all the Polish intellectuals. The Soviets rounded them up, took
them to Russia, and executed them:
... When the Russians entered, they did not have to
seek out trouble-making Poles.
[the Jews] ... handed over many people to the NKVD who were then
shipped to Siberia. The Jews informed them who lived where and what
they did. My father was also denounced, and I know exactly who did it.
My father worked in a sawmill owned by a Jew. The Russians came
looking for weapons. My father had one, so they arrested him and
shipped him to Russia, to Arkhangelsk. I never saw him again.
On October 20, 1939, a Soviet and three Jewish neighbours - Janowicz
(their baker), Chilewski, and a third Jew whose name is not known -
came for Franciszek Ksawery Wasowski, a retired police officer. They
arrived in a motor vehicle, arrested Wasowski, and took him to the
jail in Lomza. After officials came to register the remaining members
of the Wasowski family in March 1940, they received a warning from a
Jewish woman, who had heard (likely from other Jews in the service of
the Soviets) that the families who had been recorded would be
deported to Siberia. Mrs. Wasowska and her daughter Jadwiga hid out
for over a year in the villages outside Jedwabne and thus avoided
arrest. Mr. Wasowski was never seen again.
At the end of April 1940, a local Jew arrived at our home in the
uniform of a Russian militiaman and told my father to report to the
NKVD. ... my mother followed that policeman to check who else he went
for because there were more than a dozen names written on his list.
At the beginning of the war a cousin, the wife of a policeman from
Krynki, was staying with my husband's family together with her
12-year-old son. When the Russians arrived, they went from house to
house to look for Poles to deport to Siberia. When they asked who
the boy was, my husband's brother said that it was his son. At this
their Jewish neighbour, Chilewski, (whose brother ran around the
square with a red flag), spoke out: 'Take him away, he's the son of
a [Polish] policeman'.
Before the war, when the police arrested the four sons of Zelman
Lewinowicz, their father begged my grandfather and father to vouch
for them that they were not Communists. And so they did [unwittingly making a false statement - M.P.]. And in
return, under the Soviet occupation, when Poles were being shipped
out to Siberia, Lewinowicz's wife told my father: 'Don't be afraid,
Bronek, we won't take you'.
Why did she say that? Because Jews accompanied the Russians to
capture Poles. They were armed with rifles and looked for Poles in
the villages.
Franciszek Karwowski ... witnessed a chase after his acquaintance,
Szymborski who was fleeing from Jedwabne. He was pursued by two
Jews from Jedwabne on horses. They wore red armbands and had rifles
in their hands. They put their weapons to good use.
After the Red Army entered ... many people were arrested at the
instigation of Jewish Communists ...
The day of the election, on March 31, 1940, at Easter time, the
NKVD was in action. We were not allowed to go to church until we
cast our votes. They called out our names as we walked by and we
were handed a marked ballot to throw in the box. The agitators and
denouncers were local Jews. Patrols armed with rifles walked about
the streets. The population remained passive in the face of this
threat. So ended the elections of the deputies.
... Searches took place at the larger farms and furniture,
clothing and valuables were confiscated. People were taken to
meetings by force. ... The committees were composed of military men,
Jews and local Communists.
The Jews armed themselves and entered the NKVD en masse. Arrests and
deportations of the Polish population to Siberia ensued.
The first transport left in December 1939. Among those arrested were
priests, soldiers, and the well-to-do, who were called 'kulaks - the
Polish bourgeoisie. The temperature fell to minus 40°C. In this
frost people were put on sleighs and driven to the train in Lomza.
There they were loaded into freight wagons like cattle. The Jews
began to hit them with the butts of their rifles to hurry up the
cargo because they were cold.
... An old Jewish woman by the name of Kuropatwa [whose son was
also deported for providing clothes to a Polish pilot on the run
from the Soviets] came to our home and reported that the Jewish
Communists were helping the NKVD ship Polish families off to Siberia.
The daughters of Mrs. Kuropatwa, Pesa and Chaja, stood and cried at
that terrible sight of the savagery into which Jews and the NKVD had
fallen. ... The Poles lived in fear.
The vileness of these deeds was readily apparent to everyone. The
bodies of children who froze on the way to the railway station in
Lomza were strewn on the road. But the deportations continued
unabated.
I remember when the Poles were being carted off to Siberia. On each
wagon there was a Jew with a rifle. Mothers, wives and children were
kneeling down before the wagons begging for mercy and help. The last
such transport left the 21st of June 1941.
The wife of the local Polish police commander, Waclaw
Wawernia returned to Jedwabne with her two daughters after the Soviet
entry in September 1939, only to find their home and possessions taken
over by a Jewish family, who threatened to have them arrested if they
did not leave. They were eventually deported to the Gulag on June 20,
1941, having been denounced by local Jews as "enemies of the people".
Genowefa Malczynska recalled the arrival of the NKVD on
June 20, 1941:
... They knocked on our house at one thirty at
night. Two NKVD officials and two Jews from Jedwabne. My mother got
up and opened the door, and they took out a long list and said: 'Get
ready, hostess'. They told my grandfather to fetch the horse from
the meadow and harness him. I and my sisters started to cry.
Genowefa's mother, who knew Russian, asked the NKVD
official where he was from. When he replied: ... from near Moscow,
she asked him how was it that he had such detailed information. The
NKVD official answered: ... Your own Jews denounced you.
The Zelazny family were also among the last Polish
families to be deported. They were transported to the market square,
where they sat on a wagon until noon, guarded by a Jew with a rifle.
Wagons full of Poles arrived from neighbouring villages and once
assembled, they set out for Lomza under the guard of NKVD officials
and a Jew. Cattle cars awaited them there. The Zelazny family returned
to Poland five years later, in 1946, without the grandfather and
Genowefa's brother, both of whom had died in exile of disease and
starvation.
Similar conditions prevailed in the entire region.
According to a report from vicinity of Jedwabne:
... Before every arrest [in the outlying
village of Makowskie], which took place only at night, there
arrived a few soldiers and the local militia, composed mostly of
our own Jews. They surrounded the house of the person they came to
arrest. A few of them entered the home and ordered him to lie on the
floor. One of them held a gun to his head and the remaining carried
out a thorough search, taking all documents, photographs and papers
bearing seals.
There is no mention whatsoever of any of this in the
Jedwabne Memorial Book - a strong indication that the Jews of Jedwabne
did not, by and large, regard the Polish residents of their town as
their neighbours.
An eyewitness from Radzilow, a nearby village, reported
a similar state of affairs. There too the Jews came out in large numbers
to greet the Soviet invaders for whom they had erected two triumphal
gates. Apart from two Soviet commandants, the entire "militia" and
administration was in the hands of local Jews. Local collaborators
drew up lists of "enemies of the people" and Jewish "militiamen",
armed with rifles, executed the deportations together with Soviet
officials. Entire Polish families were transported to nearby railway
stations in the middle of winter 1940.
When a Pole tried to rescue two Polish women from deportation in April
1940, a young local Jewish collaborator, named Dora Dorogoj and a Jew
from the NKVD, named Milberg stood in the way and had the Pole arrested.
The second large wave of deportations came on April 13,
1940, and again affected mostly Poles. In the early morning hours, teams
composed of NKVD functionaries, NKVD convoy soldiers, and members of the
local militia swarmed through Lwow seizing more than 7000 people, whose
names had been carefully put on lists prepared in advance of this sweep.
The deportees were given a short time to pack whatever belongings they
could carry before being loaded on trucks and dispatched to train
stations, where they were locked up in freight wagons. Family members,
who tried to bring food and clothing to the wagons were brutally chased
away.
During the searches of the deportees' homes valuables were often stolen
by the NKVD personnel and local "militiamen". What remained was auctioned
off for a pittance to Soviet state officials and clerks.
A typical account from Lwow reads:
... Unexpectedly, the night of April 13, 1940,
intruders came into our home: a member of the NKVD dressed in a black
uniform, a young Red Army soldier, and a policeman - a Polish Jew who
was the worst of the lot because he began to steal at once.
After a search of our home we were evacuated. In the course of 15
minutes we lost everything: our own house, fine furniture, a piano,
a wonderful library. Valuable, leather-bound books with gold
lettering were thrown on the floor and stepped on and kicked about
by our executioners, who deported us unlawfully into the depths of
the Soviet Union.
The wife and three young children of Stanislaw Pawulski,
a Polish officer imprisoned by the Soviet in Starobelsk and in the
spring of 1940 murdered by them in Kharkov, were also deported that
night (April 13, 1940) from their apartment on Ziemialkowskiego Street
in Lwow.
During the half hour that they were given to pack one of the eight
pro-Soviet Jewish refugees from Lodz, who had taken over part of their
home, "helped" the distraught Mrs. Pawulska to pack by appropriating
belongings she (the Jewish woman) decided the Pawulskis no longer
needed: carpets, boots, pots, food supplies, etc.
The Jewish woman also "apologized" to Mrs. Pawulska for having denounced
her to the authorities as the wife of a Polish officer, who probably had
weapons concealed in her home. Of course, a search of the premises
revealed no hidden weapons, but false denunciations of this kind which
were rampant were enough to seal the fate of this and many other Polish
families.
The family of Mieczyslaw Hampel was also rounded up in
Lwow for deportation after midnight. Two Soviet soldiers arrived together
with three armed Jews who, typically, were more brutal toward the Polish
family than the Soviet occupiers.
In Kopyczynce, on the night of April 13, 1940, a Soviet
officer accompanied by two soldiers and Krampf, one of a number of local
Jews, who served the Soviet occupiers, arrived at the home of Chichlowski
family, who were given one hour to pack for their 21-day journey to
Siberia.
The family of Sgt. Jozef Ungar, the deceased prewar
commander of the Polish State Police in Sniatyn, was denounced by local
Jews. At three o'clock in the morning on April 13, 1940, Maria Ungar and
her two daughters, Jadwiga and Maria, were seized from their home by a
NKVD member, two Red Army soldiers and a local Jew and deported to the
"gulag".
Another Pole recalled his deportation from Kuty, near the
prewar Romanian border:
... On the night of the 12 to 13 of April 1940, a
threesome arrived to expel my mother and me to Kazakhstan, where we
would spend six years. The threesome consisted of a Russian NKVD
member, Konstantinov, and two local militiamen: the Jew Benek Szerl and
the Ukrainian Hryhorii Kushernuk.
I have to be fair to the Russian - he was the most courteous toward us
and even advised my mother what to take in the permitted ten kilograms
of personal effects. On the other hand, Szerl and Kushernuk, without
any shame and in front of our eyes, stole for themselves our most
valuable belongings: my mother's fur coat, my father's clothing, a
silver fox, a rug made out of wolf skins, a box of gold jewelry, etc.
They shoved these things under the beds, not listing them in the
register of belongings. Thus, after our departure, the threesome must
have divided the prize booty among themselves.
A Polish woman recalled how her mother and younger brother
and sister, the remants of a family previously decimated by NKVD arrests,
were deported from their home in Krzemieniec (Volhynia), with the active
assistance of her neighbours:
... On April 13, 1940, a Ukrainian and Jew, both
neighbours, burst through the Sulkowski door with a Soviet soldier in
tow.
My family was given just thirty minutes to pack and were in a state of
shock - where does one start?
Similar scenes were taking place all over the town as soldiers and
militia dragged families into requisitioned wagons with the aid of dogs
and bayonets. Screams and tears filled the night ...
My brother Czeslaw quickly began packing items into a suitcase and showed
my mother and sister how to make up bundles of clothing. The Soviet
soldier followed him everywhere and refused to let him take an axe as it
could be used as a weapon.
Meanwhile the Ukrainian and the Jew looked for plunder. ... most of our
property was stolen or sold at low prices at an NKVD auction.
... From Siberia, my mother would try to contact her Jewish friends but
as far as they were concerned, the Sulkowski Family and all their things
had been liquidated - family photos would be thrown into the flames by
those, who wanted the frames ...
My family was loaded into wagons and driven to the train station, where
other wagons were disgorging their human cargo to the shouts of 'bystrei!' [Eng.: faster] while soldiers and the local Jewish and Ukrainian
militia brutally kept back frantic relatives.
People, mostly women and children, were crammed 60 and more into an
unheated cattle car with no facilities or water, and only a tiny window.
The train sat sealed in Krzemieniec for another day and night before
setting out for a destination that filled all Poles with dread.
... The train picked up many more victims along the way and would number
over a hundred wagons, when it finally left Poland.
The trip took two weeks under such brutal conditions that the seasoned
Soviet train commandant (who expresses sadness over the fate of Polish
children) committed suicide under the wheels of a locomotive when the
transport finally arrived in Kazakhstan.
The state of mind of this woman's younger sister is recorded
in her own memoirs:
... The culmination of our tragedy was the night of April
13 [1940] when, during the night, they came for our entire family.
There were two civilians among them: a Jew and a Ukrainian. They brought a
Soviet soldier who carried a rifle and ordered us to pack.
I was in a state of shock. My God, why are they chasing us out of our home?
What will become of us?
I was stupefied and didn't know what to pack. My mother also lost her head
and just stood there crying.
Another Pole, whose family had been moving around to avoid
detection, was taken from Krzemieniec that same day along with many other
Poles:
... Around three o'clock at night we heard loud knocking
on the back door not far from our room. We jumped out of our beds ...
We heard Mrs. Basinska's name being called out. She was told to pack by a
militiaman who came with a Ukrainian guide. We no longer thought of
sleeping but started to pack ...
Half an hour later there was more banging. This time they came for us ...
In the team that took us away was Danilov from the NKVD, two soldiers and
a [Jewish] guide, Szmul Beniaminowicz Bezpojesnik.
... Apart from two peasant carts, there was a wagon waiting for us. ...
The entire way Bezpojesnik sang quietly in Russian 'vehement, mighty' [Rus.: kipuchaya, moguchaya (an allusion to a Polish Army slogan:
"silni, zwarci, gotowi")] mocking that our deportation was a tit for
tat for wanting to send Jews from Poland to Palestine [a theoretical
plan that the Zionists discussed with the prewar Polish government].
... It was already becoming light. Many other carts moved slowly along the
road toward the train station loaded with dejected expellees and their
belongings. Passers-by on the street looked with sympathy on this
procession except for young Jews, who cheerfully clapped [their hands] at the sight of us.
In Luck (Volhynia), where the local "militia" was composed: ... for the most part of Jews and Ukrainians, a young boy vividly
recalled the deportation of his family:
... After the first mass deportations to Russia in
February 1940, when with 30°C below zero the military colonists and their
families were deported in unheated freight cars, all the Poles expected the
same thing sooner or later.
And on Apr. 13 an NKVD officer appeared in our lodgings in the company of
two armed militiamen and one civilian agent, who was supposed to be a
"witness" to our deportation, so that this act of violence at least had the
appearance of legality. It was 4 o'clock in the morning.
A Bolshevik locked the door, directed the search, after which he declared
that 'the Soviet government was moving us to Dnepropetrovsk', where we would
join my father, obtain identity cards, and will lead the peaceful carefree
lives of Soviet citizens.
... A few hours later a truck came to take us to the station.
... Cattle cars were all ready at the station platform and rang with the
weeping and clamor of the people locked inside. They crowded us into one
of the cars where there were already 40 people and their baggage. For
three days the train stayed on a siding and horse and foot militia helped
by the army kept people away from the cars who wanted to give something to
their relatives or at least see them for the last time.
During those three days they only let us out twice to get water from the
town. We walked in the middle of the road surrounded by guards (with fixed
bayonets) and on the sides a crowd surged with excited despairing people.
Total strangers sometimes gave us money or bread, but the militia
immediately confiscated it.
On the fourth day the train finally set out and our journey began.
In Kolomyja, the family of a Polish industrialist was one of
the many victims of the second round of deportations of civilians from that
city:
... The first transport was deported from Kolomyja in
February 1940. We were exiled on April 13, 1940.
At two o'clock at night we were awakened by the banging of a rifle butt on
our door. The previous night my father [Karol Biskupski] and
brother had been arrested without being given any reason. On April 12,
Krzysia [younger sister] and I had gone to the jail but they would
not take our package or allow us to see those who had been arrested.
... So, when we heard the banging we knew that our turn had come.
Four politruks with rifles entered and one militiaman, a Jew, who acted
as an interpreter. We were given fifteen minutes to pack. We were told
that we were being sent to another republic.
On the list was my mother, Krzysia, I and my [eighty-year-old] grandmother. [Uncle] Rev. Leopold [Dallinger], who lived
with us, was not on the list.
... After fifteen minutes we were told to get on a dirty rack wagon. ...
Romek [an orphan who was cared for by the family] and the
militiamen helped us pack. My grandmother went in what she had on because
we did not understand until the last moment that there would be no
reprieve for an old woman.
We drove through the main streets of Kolomyja. My uncle, the priest,
walked behind the carriage. On the way to the train station we passed our [family's] factory. We were amazed to see that almost all of the
workers had turned out in front of the factory. Some of their faces
were horror-stricken, others wiped away tears with the palm of their
hands. As if on orders they took off their hats. They probably thought
that we were being sent to our execution.
There was already a crowd of people in front of the train station and
the wagons that brought them. We got out of the carriage and waited for
someone to carry our bundles to the cattle cars. The militiaman blasted
us, 'The Polish Pans have come to an end. You bloodsuckers have to
carry your own things!' On the sly he began to help us to carry our
things to the wagons and whispered to my mother, 'When you return please
remember that Goldberg helped'.
My grandmother had difficulty getting into the wagon [of the train] so the politruk gave her a shove. Without giving it much thought I
spat at his uniform. At first he drew his revolver, but they probably
were under orders not to cause a disturbance, so after he collected
himself he said, 'We'll settle scores when you get there'. Meanwhile,
my uncle who had not been on the list entered the wagon behind the [rest of the] people.
There were fifty of us in the wagon of this long freight train. The
doors were bolted shut and we started to move. The trip lasted three
weeks. Once a day we were given thick soup. That's all. We shared the
food that we had taken with us from home.
... We did not know where we were going. ... After a number of days of
travelling we crossed the Urals.
In Pruzana (Polesia):
... In February 1940, many people on the outskirts
of Pruzana disappeared. Those were all small land owners. The rumors
persisted that the Communists had sent them to Siberia. Since we didn't
own any land, we thought that deportation will not affect us; but in
the first week of March, in the middle of the night, the NKVD (the
Russian Secret Service) arrested my father [a Polish social worker,
decorated by the Polish government; he received a sentence of ten years
of hard labour in Siberia - M.P.].
On the same night they arrested most of the Polish government workers,
shop owners, and other well-to-do people.
On April 13, 1940 ... At 2 A.M., I was awakened by a loud and
continuous knocking at the door. As soon as I unlocked the door the
Russian soldiers pushed their way in. Some of them entered our home and
ordered us to get out of beds, get dressed, and go into one room.
A local Jewish student, a school friend, turned avowed Communist, was
with them; he knew us very well and identified us [the author's
mother and three siblings]. By this action he condemned us to
deportation.
The others searched the house for anything of value, including arms.
They confiscated our family albums, missals, some documents, then
inventorized furniture and household goods. Finishing the search, they
ordered us to pack a few things and leave the house.
... It was early morning, but by the time they loaded us on an open truck,
the whole town was awakened and witnessed our deportation.
... Under the strict control of the NKVD and soldiers the truck moved
slowly through the central street out of town. I looked around and the
only faces I saw were blank and empty of emotion.
My mother and grandmother shut their eyes, keeping tears in check. They
were more experienced in life and knew there will be no return.
The closest railroad station, Oranczyce, was twelve kilometers away,
where the train with box cars awaited us. ... Throughout the next day
people were brought to the train and the NKVD put them into the cars,
fifty people in each. Barbed wire surrounded the whole train.
... The Communists deported my maternal grandmother, Agnieszka, with us.
The family of Klara Rogalska, then a young girl, consisting
of her parents, her sister and her two brothers, were awoken the night of
April 13, 1940, by five men, who burst into their home in a village not
far from the small town of Skidel, near Grodno. Three of the intruders were
Soviet soldiers dressed in military uniforms; the other two were Jews, who
were members of the local "militia" and wore red armbands.
Pointing their rifles the soldiers forced her father and brothers up
against the wall. One of the NKVD men announced the verdict banishing her
father to eight years in a concentration camp and the family's deportation
to Kazakhstan.
They were given fifteen minutes to pack. Her mother took two framed
pictures depicting Jesus and Mary, wrapped them in an embroidered shawl,
and laid them down on a chair. One of the Jews noticed this, went up to
chair and knocked the package on the floor. He glanced at the revered
pictures with disdain and then smashed the frames and glass
energetically with his heal.
A long column of carriages carrying families of Polish deportees wound
its way to the train station in Skidel 18 kilometres away under the guard
of soldiers. There they were loaded into freight cars holding more than
forty people each.
In the village of Lyntupy, north of Wilno, a Polish school
teacher and her children were startled by the barking of the family dog
at four o'clock in the morning. Through the window she spotted three Soviet
soldiers and a Jew in civilian clothes, the local commissar, who shouted
that he had come with an official document. The commissar, who spoke
coarsely in Russian, resembled a Jewish shopkeeper from Swieciany, who had
declared himself to be a communist as soon as the Soviets entered.
The soldiers roughed the Polish family up and gave them thirty minutes to
pack their belongings. The commissar demanded money from her warning that
he knew how to teach respect to 'Polish bitches', like her.
He pressed the soldiers not to delay once the time limit had expired. At
the train station he stood on watch to ensure that all of the Polish
deportees were loaded into the wagons. Many of the Poles were struck by
the soldiers and civilians, who took part in this operation.
The family of the former Polish police commander in
Szarkowszczyzna had already been expelled from their home on February 10,
1940. Their neighbour, "Comrade" Shloma, who had become proficient in
Russian, came that day and, with a smile on his face, handed over 'an order
from Minsk' informing them that their home had been requisitioned by the
Soviet authorities.
The following morning local "militiamen" arrived to ensure that order had
been complied with. The family was rounded up together with the remnants
of the local Polish intelligentsia and "kulaks" on April 12, 1940 and
deported to the "gulag" from the local train station.
The third wave of deportations ensued in June 1940, and
encompassed very many Jewish refugees from the German occupation zone.
A Polish refugee from the German zone described the situation
in Zloczow, where the local "militia" was comprised mostly of Jews and
Ukrainians, as follows:
... As the date of June 29 [1940] approached,
not just the so-called refugees from Western and Central Poland, but all
of the residents of Zloczow became more and more uneasy. In the afternoon
of that day [June 28] our host, a doctor, came and told us that on
the hill near the castle which served as a prison, a large number of
carts had been assembled. They had been brought in from almost the entire
county. Our host counselled us not to sleep in our home ...
He tried to persuade me that that night something would happen because
too many communists had been brought into the town, which was a sure sign
of some NKVD operation.
... we decided, the three of us, to wait. ... Our host's fourteen-year-old
son, acting as a liaison, kept bringing new information from town.
... Around 1:30 o'clock at night, we could clearly hear military
detachments and the NKVD passing on the road and, from time to time, the
banging of their rifles on the doors of homes. We heard these sounds
distinctly coming from the neighbouring home.
Around 2:15 o'clock they began to bang on the door of our house. The host
decided not to open the door. The banging became louder and louder until
the door was broken down and some people came up the staircase. I was
almost certain that they were coming to our room and I waited with
determination.
In fact two members of the NKVD entered in the company of four Soviet
soldiers and two civilians. I soon found out that these civilians were
residents of Zloczow, local communists who helped out in these shameful
deeds. The NKVD representative came into our room and asked for my name.
After I provided my name, he instructed us to get dressed ... The men
then started to search the premises, which lasted a very brief time.
... After packing our things we waited for the truck to come which was
to take us away. Since the trucks were occupied, some carriage was
brought into which we were loaded. We were driven in the direction of
the train station ...
At the train station - at that time it was almost light - stood a long
train consisting of freight cars. Many of our friends peered from out of
the wagons. We all wondered where we were being sent.
... We were crowded into a wagon which was already full of people.
Normally the wagon could have held no more than thirty people, but was
packed with sixty four people. Almost the entire wagon was occupied by
Jews from various parts of the country [refugees from the German
occupation zone - M.P.].
Another Pole recalled, how he and his family were seized
from their home in the countryside near Pohost Zahorodzki (or Pohost
Zahorodny) in Polesia:
... On the 20th of June, 1940, I had intended to take
a small boat out on a lake ...
I was awakened by loud knocking, first at the door, then the window.
Looking out, I saw a local Jew whom I knew and next to him an officer
and a soldier of the NKVD. I knew the significance of this situation at
once. They had come to arrest us and send us to Siberia.
The officer ordered me to open the door. When he entered he read out an
order as follows: 'By decree of the Supreme Soviet, you are sentenced to
exile into the interior of the Soviet Union for five years as
untrustworthy citizens towards the Soviet government'.
He announced that they would search the house and all our possessions.
There were four of us there - my mother, my little sister who was only
six years old, and my mother's father. My father was already in a Soviet
lager, having been caught while trying to cross the border between the
Soviet Union and Poland in 1940.
Frightened by what was happening, my sister sobbed bitterly. Having
carried out the search, the officer also had tears in his eyes as he
whispered quietly in Russian: 'There are beggars in Russia who have more
possessions than you'. The communist propaganda which was drummed into
them about the wealth of Polish "gentlemen" and bourgeoisie could not be
reconciled with what he saw there.
He told us that we had half an hour in which to pack.
... We were living from day to day and had no reserves of food. We packed
a bit of clothing and bedding, whatever we could, in sacks. ... A cart
came and our things were loaded on it. ... We were placed on the cart
together with the driver and soldier, while the officer and the Jew
followed on foot ...
It was only a short distance to the little town of Pohost-Zahorodzki
where waited two Soviet trucks, already partly filled with others also
sentenced to exile. I was surprised to find a number of Jewish families
among them - some whom I knew ...
The family of Zelman Drezner, Jewish refugees from Ostroleka,
who had relocated to Lida, was rounded up in June 1940 by a patrol headed by
a Jewish officer, who arrived at their home at night. They were taken to the
train station where they were loaded into freight wagons packed with Jews
and Poles and dispatched to Arkhangelsk.
A Jewish refugee from Warsaw, who had obtained employment in
Bialystok as a technical engineer, was demoted after refusing to accept a
Soviet passport. His attempt to hide, together with his wife, at a friend's
home ended in failure, when the NKVD arrived and apprehended all of the
residents. Since he did not have a passport, he and his wife were taken to
the train station under the guard of a young armed Jew with a red armband.
On the way, they stopped at their home to gather up a few belongings which
were loaded on a carriage driven by another young Jew.
The fourth and final wave of deportations was carried out in
June of the following year (1941), on the eve of the German invasion.
The spectacle, witnessed in Wilno, was typical. On June 13,
1941, Jews mounted Soviet trucks, where they stood and directed the drivers
to the homes of Poles, whose names had been put on the lists for deportation.
Entire Polish families along with small children and the elderly were
unceremoniously hauled out of their homes and loaded on trucks. The trucks
carted them off to the train station and then returned for more human cargo.
In Nowe Swieciany, to the north of Wilno, a 12-year-old boy
recalled how on June 12, 1941, at six o'clock in the morning, just after
his mother had returned from work, their house was surrounded by Bolsheviks:
... A Jew by the name of Szerman entered the house
accompanied by five NKVD members. We were told to sit on a couch. After
searching the premises, they ordered us to pack. We were told we were being
relocated because Bolshevik soldiers were to move into our house.
After a little while some wagons came by and took us to the train station.
There I saw a string of 70 wagons. The windows were grated. I understood
at once that we had been fooled.
... We were packed into a wagon ... There were about 60 people in the
wagon altogether. It was very hot. We didn't have water for three days.
The elderly and children were fainting from the heat. At the larger
stations we were given one bucket of water which was grabbed by everyone.
After two weeks of such tedious travel we arrived in the city of
Novosibirsk.
Yitzhak Arad, a Jewish historian with the Yad Vashem Institute,
describes conditions he witnessed in the nearby town of Swieciany:
... During the night of June 14, 1941, the town was
shocked when NKVD and militia members took hundreds of people from their
houses and placed them under arrest. Most of the arrested had been officials
of the Polish government, landowners, officers in the Polish army - men, who
had been wealthy or active in political parties (excluding the Communist
party).
That night similar raids took place throughout Lithuania; close to 30 000
people, entire families among them, were arrested and deported to Siberia
and Kazakhstan.
... Jews played a relatively large role in the Communist party apparatus
that was behind the action.
In Ejszyszki, Jewish sources confirm Polish reports that, as
elsewhere, the lists of deportees were compiled with: ... considerable help from local Jews:
... Deportation to Siberia was another threat issued to
the well-to-do, and to whoever else was thought to 'pose a danger to
Communism'.
... Within Eishyshok itself, the shtetl Communists had prepared a list of
people to be deported, but as a personal favor to Moshe Sonenson, Luba
Ginunski removed the names of the Sonenson family as well as those of
their friends the Kiuchefskis, for Moshe had helped the Ginunski family
through some hard times.
That historian, however, fails to notice that among the victims
of the deportations conducted in Ejszyszki on June 12, 1941, there were many
Poles, especially the families of former Polish police officers.
A similar situation prevailed in Szczuczyn, near Lomza. There
too the lists of deportees had been drawn up with the assistance of local
communists, for the most part Jews:
... Suddenly, at one in the morning [in June 1941],
the NKVD arrived with search warrants, according to an official list from
the Communist Civilian Committee.
... After a thorough search the NKVD men ordered us in a sharp tone: 'We
give you 15 minutes to get dressed and pack your things. You will be sent
out to Siberia. Cars are already waiting'.
... From the entire area they were bringing people to the train station [in Grajewo] in order to send them to Siberia. People were stuffed into
wagon cars like packed herring. There were many Polish people as well.
Altogether there were 72 wagons for approximately 300 of us. Before placing
us in the cars the NKVD frisked everyone over again and surveyed the lists
of names.
In Orla, a small town near Bielsk Podlaski, Tadeusz Wroblewski
was denounced at a public meeting by a former student of his, a Jew. This young
man addressed his remarks to a uniformed Soviet functionary extolling his
Polish teacher's participation in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 and his
prewar patriotic activities.
Wroblewski was promptly arrested on June 20, 1941, and taken to the jail in
Bialystok.
His wife, daughter, son and mother-in-law were seized and deported to Siberia.
The train wagon that left Bielsk Podlaski with them, contained more than forty
Poles. When they reached Altai, their remote destination, they were quartered
in a building used to raise cattle.
Maria Niwinska was seized from her home in Bialystok the night
of June 20 to 21 together with her family by a group of policeman consisting
of Jews and one Russian. The Jews searched her husband and took him away. The
Russian helped them pack some belongings. The rest of the family were taken to
a train station in the industrial area and packed on a freight wagon. Their
train did not leave until the following day. The passengers became even more
terrified, when the Germans started to drop bombs on the retreating Soviets.
Some from among the last batch of people to be deported did not
make it to the "gulag" because of the intervening German attack on the Soviet
Union.
A Pole, who resided with his parents in Grodno, recalled:
... On the night of June 20 to 21, 1941, at one o'clock at
night, we were awoken by sudden and brutal knocking on the door. My mother
opens the door. Into the home come four people: two NKVD soldiers with rifles,
an NKVD officer and a local Jew whom we recognized.
The officer says to us in Russian: 'On orders of the Soviet government, you
are being resettled ... You have an hour to pack ...'
My mother asks: 'Are we being sent to Russia?' The officer replies: 'Yes.
There's a truck on the street outside the window. That's where you'll be
loaded on'.
... After being loaded on, the Soviets close and seal our home ... But we
do not go far. After about twenty to thirty metres the vehicle stops and
some of the Soviets get out. After a while they return with Mrs. Gawronska
and her daughter Maura, whom we know. Maura is my friend.
They carry their bundles and packages. They're also being deported. We help
them load their baggage into the bin on the truck.
... The vehicle continues on driving through the city which is still empty
even though it's morning.
In Lomza, Jews reportedly delighted in the spectacle of Poles
being rounded up on June 20 and 21 and hauled off to the train station. They
shouted threats that soon all the Poles would be deported.
The largely Jewish "militia", who played a key role in the last
deportation of Poles in nearby Kolno partied late and boisterously the evening
of June 21 to celebrate the success of their task. They were caught by surprise,
when the Nazi entered the town the next morning.
In Siemiatycze, even Nazi officials joined in the merry-making:
... The night before the German attack on Soviet Russia on
June 20, 1941, there was a ball in Semiatych. It was attended, as always in
recent days, by the German border patrol from the other side.
For many Jews, who faced the same fate, the circumstances of
their own deportation constituted a rude awakening:
... On Friday, in the night, we were woken up by NKVD men.
They would not let us pack anything, but the Jewish militiaman who was with
them allowed us to take a few things.
According to another Jewish testimony:
... One day an NKVD official, a Jew, appeared at our house
and asked to see our papers. Then NKVD men came in the night with the same
official, who this time refused to speak Yiddish to us, and we were taken to
the station.
A Jew from Wolozyn recalled:
... On a sprigtime evening in March 1940 ... We heard
knocking at the door. It was opened. An NKVD agent with two local citizens
entered. The three searched all closets, wardrobes and chests. The policemen
ordered my father to dress.
... went out into the dark, escorted by the three of them. It was the last
time we saw and heard of our father [the owner of a flour mill]. He
was forty-two years old.
Mother went from door to door. She begged for help from the new elite to free
our father. One of the suddenly powerful promised, a second claimed that he
could not help, and the third answered mockingly.
... On Friday morning April 13, 1940 ... they appeared: the NKVD agent with
his two local aides. In front of us, the agent read the official document:
'As individuals not reliable to the Soviet government, we should be expelled
from the border country and transferred to resettle in the central regions
of the Soviet Union'.
... We were driven in this [horse-drawn] cart to the Horod'k [Grodek] rail station.
In anticipation of the German invasion in June 1941, the Soviets
focused their attention again on real and perceived political opponents,
especially those who had been incarcerated, and liquidated thousands of them on
the spot in many towns, often with unspeakable and sadistic cruelty.
Among the victims were some Jews.
But there are also many authentic reports of local Jews in the service of the
Soviets taking part in the mass executions of prisoners carried out by the
Soviet security forces. In addition, hundreds of Poles were also killed in
frantic operations in the countryside.
Mykhailo Rosliak, a Ukrainian lawyer and activist from Czortkow,
was apprehended in the streets of Lwow on June 22, 1941 after being spotted by
Jonas Buchberg, a Jewish NKVD officer from his hometown.
Buchberg ordered Rosliak's arrest in Russian and took him to the jail on
Jachowicz Street. The next day Rosliak was transferred to the notorious prison
known as Brygidki, where he witnessed the execution of scores of political
prisoners before the NKVD fled from Lwow on June 28.
On June 23, 1941, just hours before the Soviet retreat, the
NKVD, accompanied by two Jewish policemen from Bransk, Berko Brojde and the
son-in-law of Nisel Lowszyc, marched about a dozen Poles from the jail in
Bransk to Bialystok.
The prisoners were brutally murdered en route near the village of Folwarki
Tylwickie, near Zabludow. The victims included Zofia Marcinkowska (age 19),
Jozef Wiercinski, Stanislaw Wojcik, Stanislaw Stolarczyk, all from
Ciechanowiec, Stanislaw Akacki from Skorzec, Jan Koc, Boleslaw Maksimczuk,
Aleksander Kwiatkowski from the village of Olendy, Ignacy Plonski from
Bransk (a neighbour of the two Jewish policemen), Helena Zaziemska, a school
teacher from Spieszyn.
In Czortkow, the situation was particularly tragic. Local
Jews in the service of the NKVD played a key role in the horrific execution
of eight Dominican priests and monks on the eve of the German entry:
... The situation of the [Dominican] monastery
changed drastically on the 22nd of June 1941, when the Soviet-German war
broke out. The rapid advance of the German armies eastward gave rise to
universal panic.
As was the custom in the Stalinist system, above all they rushed to
liquidate real and suspected enemies of the Communist government. Included
among that group were members of the clergy. The security forces, together
with a military unit directed [to Czortkow], suddenly arrived and
dragged out of the monastery three barely dressed monks, Father Justyn
Spyrlak, the prior, Father Jacek Misiuta and Father Anatol Znamierowski,
as well as Brother Andrzej Bojanowski.
They were driven to the banks of the river in Stary Czortkow, to a dam
known as Berda, where they were killed by bullet shots in the back of the
head. The executioners were Jews, who served in the NKVD, which is
confirmed by the testimonies of residents of Czortkow ...
News of the deaths of the Dominicans spread quickly through the town and
surroundings. Crowds converged on the spot where the murdered monks lay.
People were in tears. Some knelt and, with the greatest reverence, dipped
their handkerchiefs in the blood; others gathered the blood-stained soil
in dishes and kissed the places where the bodies lay.
Despite requests, the Soviet authorities would not allow the monks to be
buried in the monastic vault in the cemetery. They were buried where they
were found. They were to be buried by two o'clock in the afternoon on July
2nd or else their bodies would be thrown into the river nearby.
... Nothing could be found out about the remaining monks because the army
guarded the entrance to the monastery and the church remained shut. Despite
these obstacles one student was able to get into the church and from there
into the cells on the main floor.
What he saw was horrifying. In their beds lay the murdered Brothers
Reginald Czerwonka and Metody Iwaniszczow, and the tertiary Jozef
Wincentowicz. All of them had been shot in the head.
Information was still lacking about the fate of Father Hieronim Longwa,
who lived on the second floor and could not be reached.
The Soviet security forces also plundered the church, destroying in a
barbaric manner objects of devotion and profaning the Blessed Sacrament,
which was spilled out of containers and deliberately trampled. The entire
church was a picture of deliberate devastation.
In an attempt to cover up the signs of their crimes, on July 4th the
army set fire to the monastery.
... On Sunday morning, July 6th, German forces entered Czortkow. Only now
was it possible to bury the murdered monks in the monastic tomb and to
say a mass of mourning. In preparation for the funeral of these additional
victims, the door to the room on the second floor of the monastery was
broken open. It appeared that Father Longwa had been killed at the same
time as the other brothers. The bed on which he lay was probably
deliberately set on fire and burned together with his body. Only a few
pieces of bones were left to be gathered.
The funeral of Father Hieronim Longwa and the murdered brothers took
place on July 6th, at two o'clock in the afternoon. It was attended by a
large throng of people. The church bells rang for the first time during
the war. A formal mass of mourning was celebrated on July 8th. On Sunday,
July 12th, after the high mass, a procession wound its way to the grave
of the priests. A wreath of thorns adorned with purple flowers was carried
as a symbol of their tragic deaths.
... This crime, perpetrated just before the cowardly escape of the Soviets
in advance of the approaching German army, was not the only one to affect
this small town. In the last few days before leaving Czortkow, hundreds
of people, Ukrainians and Poles, were murdered in the jail.
Many Poles and Ukrainians, imprisoned in Tarnopol, were
executed shortly before the Soviet retreat:
... Three Jews from Trembowla - the cab-driver
Kramer, Dawid Kumel and Dawid Rosenberg - took part in the murder of
prisoners in the jail in Tarnopol.
According to the few Ukrainian prisoners, who survived
the bloodbath in the prison in Luck:
... with more or less serious injuries, the Jews
again played a decisive part in the arrests and shootings.
In Dubno, Col. Chaim Vinokur:
... raced from cell to cell spraying the prisoners
with bullets. Teresa Trautman, Bronek Rumel, Jerzy Bronikowski,
Tadeusz Majewski, Ryszard Kasprzycki and many other friends and
underground members were murdered by Vinokur and his henchmen. Most
were young students with their whole lives ahead of them.
In the face of such atrocities is it surprising that many
people regarded the arrival of the Germans as a reprieve - at least a
temporary one - and that some decided to seek revenge, when the Germans
threw open the jails crammed with putrefying bodies sometimes mangled
beyond recognition?
Yet, contrary to what is claimed in Jewish sources
discussed later on, the departure of the Soviets did not usher in a
period of mass reprisals by the Poles directed indiscriminately at the
Jews. By and large they targeted collaborators regardless of their
nationality.
The extent of Jewish complicity in Soviet atrocities
can be gauged, to some degree, by considering the number and composition
of the local authorities, who fled along with the retreating Soviet
army in June 1941. Of the 2926 persons, who left five counties in the
former Polish province of Stanislawow, 2438 - or about 85 percent -
were Jews.
According to a Jewish source, some 7000-8000 Jews from
the city of Wilno, most of whom were active supporters of the Soviet
regime, fled with the Red Army in June 1941. Ordinary Jewish civilians
rarely took the initiative to leave at that time, and if they did, they
were frequently turned back by the Soviets. Since the survival rate of
those, who fled to the Soviet Union was very high, and given their
complicity in the Soviet occupation of 1939-1941, it is not surprising
that many of them were to resurface in "People's Poland" as communist
functionaries.
POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS UNDER SOVIET
OCCUPATION, 1939-1941
POLAND'S ETHNIC MINORITIES AND THE NAZI-SOVIET
OCCUPATION OF POLAND
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