Soviet deportation of Poles during World War II

The Soviet deportation of Poles during World War II refers to the mass deportation of around 1,200,000 Poles from Soviet-occupied eastern Poland to mainland Russia between February 10, 1940 and June 1941. 




Overview

The deportation happened while Polish and Jewish property across the occupied zone was taken over by the Soviets. Represje 1939-41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich  (Repressions 1939–41. Arrested on the Eastern Borderlands.) Ośrodek Karta. Retrieved 15 November 2006. Polish Jews made up 30% of the Poles deported to Siberia, Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 196–98. The three major Soviet deportations (1940–1941) encompassed varying numbers of Jews, along with some Ukrainians and Byelorussians. The ethnic distribution for all deportations has been estimated at 52 percent Poles, 30 percent Jews (while the Jews made up 10 percent of the total population), and 18 percent others.
 The estimated number of Polish citizens deported from Poland’s eastern borderlands is between 300,000 and 330,000, including some 80,000 Jews; Alina Skibińska, “Żydzi polscy ocaleni na wschodzie (1939– 1946),” in Narody i polityka. Studia ofiarowane profesorowi Jerzemu Tomaszewskiemu, ed. August Grabski and Artur Markowski (Warsaw: ŻIH and Instytut Historyczny UW, 2010). The Index of the Repressed (https://indeksrepresjonowanych.pl) contains incomplete information on Jews deported from the individual county’s localities. The Central Card File of the Jews Who Survived the Holocaust mentions as many as 113 persons who survived in the USSR territory out of 220 from Bielsk County registered by the Central Committee of the Jews in Poland.
 Dora Galperin, “Tragedia i zniszczenie Kamieńca,” in Księga pamięci: Kamieniec Litewski, Zastawie i okolice, http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Kamenets/Kamenets.html. making them statistically the most targeted group among the deportees.

Events

Deportations


The Soviets conducted the deportation in four waves.* 

  Foreword by Dr. Tomasz Piesakowski 1998  reprint with excerpts by Waldemar Wajszczuk. Book review with excerpts by Derek Crowe.
  The first wave of deportation in February 1940 saw 220,000 Poles sent to northern European Russia. The second wave of deportation in April 1940 saw as many as 330,000 Poles sent to Soviet-occupied Kazakhstan. The third and fourth wave saw as many as 400,000 and 200,000 Poles sent to forced settlements across the Soviet Union respectively.

Forced conscription

As many as 210,000 young Polish men were forced to fight for the Soviet Union following the annexation of the Kresy macroregion.

Academic views


Some historians saw the Soviet deportation of Poles as the worst part of the Soviet persecution of Poles during World War II, followed by the Katyn massacre in which around 22,000 Poles were mass-murdered by the Soviets. 




  Some historians saw it as a genocide as well, despite not comparable to the Holocaust.

Related pages

 Double genocide theory
 NKVD prisoner massacres
 Genocides by the Soviet Union

Footnotes

References

Category:Racism
Category:Genocide
Category:Communism
Category:Deportations
Category:1940s in Poland
Category:Soviet crimes against humanity