SOVIET DEPORTATIONS OF POLISH NATIONALS

SOVIET DEPORTATIONS OF POLISH NATIONALS,
1939-1941

INTRODUCTION

From September 1939, when the Soviet hordes treacherously invaded and subsequently occupied half of Poland's territory, to 1941, when they were shamefully defeated by Nazi Germany, the Soviets incarcerated and ruthlessly deported to uninhabitable parts of Soviet Russia nearly 1 700 000 Polish citizens including newborn babies, children, women and the elderly. All branded as "enemies of the working classes", "enemies of communism", "enemies of the Soviet Union"...

Within few years almost 700 000 of those "enemies" perished - tortured to death in prisons, mass-executed or worked to death in forced labour concentration camps. Freezing cold, starvation and rampant epidemics were on the Soviet side in carrying out the plan of ruthless extermination.

In 1941 the Soviets, pressed by Hitler to the point of total military annihilation and begging desperately for help from the Allies, were forced to bend - they agreed to release all imprisoned and deported Polish citizens and to help organize, on the Soviet territory, a Polish Army under the command of the exiled Polish Government residing in London. However, the Soviets did not intend to meet their obligations and once dragged out of military misery they began to ignore previous agreements. Thousands of available conscripts never reached the recruitment centres of the Polish Army and only a small fraction of the Polish civilian population was allowed to leave the Soviet "paradise" along with the army. Eventually, out of close to 2 mln deported, only approximately 115 000 were freed by the Soviets in 1942 and about 250 000 "repatriated" in 1945-1947.

More than a million Poles were forced to remain in the Evil Empire - most of them forever.

Some remnants of that population of Polish deportees and their descendants still live on territories, which once were parts of the Soviet Russia. Many of them fight desperately for their right to return to Poland where they, as Polish citizens, belong.

It is sad, tragic and despicable that this right is constantly denied by successive Polish governments. The governments, which claim to be truly Polish, truly independent and even Solidarity related, refuse to repatriate Polish citizens! And they use the argumentation (Poland's minister of foreign affairs, Prof. Krzysztof Skubiszewski, being the most infamous example) that is a simple continuation of the Soviet-implemented lawlessness of the communist era in Poland.

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