There are still a few who were deported deep into the USSR as children or were born in exile.
In the period from 1940 to 1941, i.e. the so-called During the first Soviet occupation, several times more Poles were exiled to Siberia than during the 200 years of Russian domination on Polish lands.
On August 15, 2020, the President of the Third Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda, signed the Act of August 14, 2020 on a cash benefit for persons sent or deported by the authorities of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the years 1936–1956. The date of signing the act is special: on August 15, in addition to the church holiday, we, Poles, celebrate the Polish Army Day in memory of the victorious Battle of Warsaw in 1920 during the Polish-Bolshevik war.
Currently, after 30 years of free Poland, about 39 thousand people, who are covered by this law, and who are members of the Siberian Union, live. Although it seems to be a large number, in fact only a handful of them remain, considering that there were 1.35 million people exiled or deported deep into Bolshevik Russia in 1936–1956. And when the Union of Siberians was reactivated in 1988, over 400,000 people were registered. living.
On the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, the inscription on one of the plaques reads “SYBERIA FROM 1768” commemorates the Siberians. What is this date informing about the beginning of the deportation of Poles to Siberia by the Russian authorities? (…)
On August 5, 1864, on the slopes of the Warsaw Citadel, the Russians hanged the last dictator of the January Uprising, Romuald Traugutt, along with four companions. The most tragic and the longest (lasting from January 22, 1863) Polish uprising, known as the January uprising, was ending. During this period, about 200,000 insurgents fought 1,228 battles and skirmishes, in which nearly 25,000 were killed. insurgents. The estates of the participants of the uprising located in the Kingdom of Poland were confiscated and distributed to those who contributed to the “usmirenia of Polish mjatieża” (suppression of the Polish rebellion). Confiscation was applied to 1,660 estates. The total number of emigrants deported deep into Russia and Siberia from the Kingdom of Poland itself is estimated at 31,573 people. It is known that from September 1, 1863 to May 1, 1865, the investigative and war-judicial commissions from the Kingdom itself sent 7,447 people to Russia: 2617 to the arrestory rot, 1979 to settle in Siberia, and 3399 to forced labor.
The hardest sentence was hard labor, i.e. hard work in factories or mines. Most of the exiles, in order to find themselves in Siberia, in the place marked by the tsarist sentence, had to cross the border between Europe and Asia. The most difficult moments were experienced by the convicts during the long staging road. From each party going to Siberia, a few people died of exhaustion and disease almost every day.
Sentenced to hard labor, they were sent to the Nerczyński District. Here, the January insurgents – convicts were the next generation of exiles. Piotr Wysocki (1797–1875) resided in the Akatuja iron ore and lead mines. The initiator of the November Uprising, the leader of the cadets’ conspiracy, a colonel, for his participation in the uprising he was awarded the Gold Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari. He was captured by the Russians in 1831 during the fights in defense of Warsaw. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death three times. The death penalty was changed to him by a tsarist decree for 20 years of hard labor in Siberia. He stayed in Aleksandrowsk. After an escape attempt and the penalty of 1,500 lashes, which he survived, he was sent to the Akatui copper mine in the Nerczyńsk prison camp, where he worked chained to a wheelbarrow. He returned to the country in 1857 after the tsarist amnesty. He was forbidden to stay in Warsaw. Those who were not covered by the amnesty in 1856 remained in Siberia. Two generations of insurgents and political ones, those from the November Uprising and the January Uprising, met.
The word ‘Siberia’ comes from the Tungusian word ‘sidur’ and means mud, swamp, quagmire; in Buryat language ‘Siberian’ means a dangerous dog – a wolf.
Siberia – is a geographical region with an area of 12.7 million km2 in northern Asia, which is part of the Russian state. It is located between the Urals to the west, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the watershed of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans to the east, and the steppes of Kazakhstan and Mongolia to the south.
The climate of southern and even central Siberia is livable and healthy. In winter, the temperature ranges from -30 to -40 ° C, and sometimes it reaches -45, -50 ° C. However, the lack of wind and the dry climate make this frost less noticeable. For the exile staying here, the length of winter was felt, which lasted from 7 to 8 months, and in the north even up to 9 months. In southern and central Siberia, the shortest winter day is 7 to 6 hours. Spring and autumn are gone. Spring can be called a few days when the snow is thawing and they are pouring ice on the rivers. And the air temperature ranges from 20 to 30 ° C warm. It rains only in spring and during the autumn several days. At the beginning of summer, the vegetation of plants is rapid and extremely abundant. The Siberian summer night lasts for several hours. The middle of summer is a heat that can cool down in the blink of an eye by the north wind. Between September and October, there is a sudden cooling down and after a few cool days and heavy snowfall, a severe Siberian winter occurs. (…)
On September 17, 1939, the Bolshevik army entered Polish territory. The NKVD immediately began arresting Poles. According to NKVD data, 5,822 Polish citizens were arrested in the years 1939–1941 in the years 1939–1941, under the “first Russians”. Each arrest and the fate of those imprisoned, interrogated and convicted is a separate story. My grandfather, Władysław Wróbel, the second husband of Zofia’s grandmother, was arrested on October 12, 1939. He was arrested by the NKVD railway, and in fact by two of his employees with red armbands on their sleeves and with rifles. This “enemy of the people” was a senior foreman in the workshops of the Polish State Railways in Lviv, and a bandmaster of the railway orchestra. He was imprisoned in Brygidki and then deported deep into the USSR in an unknown direction. My family knew that much. (…)
Until the first mass deportation, 220,000 Polish citizens took place on February 10, 1940 (140,000 according to NKVD data). The deportation prepared by the NKVD from December 1939 included military settlers, middle and lower government officials, forest service and PKP workers. Poles constituted 70% of the deported, the remaining 30% were Belarusian and Ukrainian. Packing time was taken from several dozen to several minutes. Transport to the place of deportation took place in freight wagons, into which 50 people were put. The journey sometimes took several weeks in inhuman conditions, at temperatures down to -40 ° C. Many people died during the transport, and those who arrived at the place of deportation faced slave labor, poverty, disease and hunger.
Another deportation was carried out by the Bolsheviks on April 13-14, 1940. The deportation included the families of the previously deported enemies of the system, state and military officials, policemen, prison service employees, teachers, social activists, merchants, industrialists and bankers. 320,000 were sent people (61,000 according to NKVD data), including 80% women and children.
The third deportation took place in May and July 1940. It encompassed refugees who had come to the territories occupied by the Soviets during the hostilities. Most of the deported – 80% – were Jews, Belarusians and Ukrainians. The number of deportees amounted to 240 thousand. (according to NKVD data, over 80,000). They were resettled to the Autonomous Soviet Republics, where they were placed in special settlements under the control of the NKVD.
The last, fourth deportation took place at the end of May and June 1941, on the eve of the outbreak of the German-Soviet war. It covered people from intelligentsia, the families of railroad workers, the families of people arrested by the NKVD during the second year of the occupation, workers and craftsmen; in total 220 thousand people (according to NKVD data over 85 thousand). This deportation particularly affected the areas of Białystok, Grodno and Vilnius regions. According to NKVD data disclosed by Russia in 1990, approximately 330,000-340,000 people were deported in four deportations. Polish citizens. According to some Polish historians, it was a much higher number, exceeding one million exiles. One thing is certain that in the period from 1940 to 1941, i.e. the so-called During the first Soviet occupation, several times more Poles were exiled to Siberia than during the 200 years of Russian domination on Polish lands. The deportations of the Polish population deep into the USSR in 1940–41 were not the last.
After the Red Army entered the Polish territories occupied by the Germans, soldiers of Polish underground formations and “enemies of the people”, that is civilians opposed to Soviet domination, were sent to Siberian labor camps. An example of such activities can be Lviv. Immediately after the city was seized by the Red Army in July 1944, that is under the “second Russians”, the NKVD and Smiersz began arresting soldiers of the Home Army, Polish activists of the independence underground and scholars.
On January 2–4, 1945, the Soviet authorities began mass arrests of Poles living in Lviv. They covered 17 thousand. people, including 31 employees of Lviv universities. Some of those arrested were released, but most were deported deep into the USSR. Sentenced to 5 to 15 years of exile, they were assigned to heavy physical work in mines or logging forests. After 6 months of deportation, 7 professors were released; 2 of them did not survive the camp.
Some people displaced deep into Russia managed to leave the labor camps thanks to the army of General Władysław Anders organized in the USSR in 1942. Not all volunteers came to the places of the forming units of the Polish Army, because their attempts were blocked. Another chance to break out of Soviet hell was joining the Tadeusz Kościuszko, which was the nucleus of the “People’s” Polish Army. Unfortunately, around 800,000 people remained in what was then Russia. Polish citizens. (…)
The personal files of the living Siberians show that those who were now alive at the time of deportation were infants or were several years old. They are the “children of Siberia”, deported to Siberia with their parents; for them, the deportation and its reasons were not understood. For them it was hunger, frost, torment and suffering, and many of their peers did not survive the deportation (frozen bodies were thrown from the train cars). Some of them did not survive the harsh conditions in exile, others were forcibly separated from their parents, and still others their parents died. They were placed in orphanages and shelters. Those who survived and returned were lucky, and the memories of Siberia as the “Polish Golgotha of the East” will remain in the memory of the “children of Siberia” until the end of their lives.