NEIGHBOURS ON THE EVE
OF THE HOLOCAUST

Mark Paul

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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