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Excerpts from Polish History
Soviet’s invasion on Poland – 17th September 1939
LEST WE FORGET
(Introduction to the publication edited by
Monika Wiench and Elizabeth Drozd published in
2004 by Australian Polish Community Services
Inc.)
In September 1939, as a result of Hitler's and
Stalin's partition of Poland 13 million of
Polish citizens, including over 5 million ethnic
Poles, found themselves under Soviet occupation.
From the very beginning of this period they
suffered arrests, deportations and murders.
All Poles inhabiting the occupied terrains were,
in an enforced manner, granted Soviet
citizenship. By 1939, the Red Army began the
process of ‘recruitment’. This process included
approximately 210,000 young people who were sent
to the far east of the Soviet Empire (the East).
Polish prisoners of war were also sent into the
depth of USSR territory. In total, in 1939 about
250,000 Polish soldiers and officers were
imprisoned by the Soviets.
Many Polish citizens, classified by the Soviet
administration as "enemies of USSR", were also
deported. These deportations reached their peak
in February, April and June in 1940 and in June
1941.
On 10th February 1940, the first mass
deportation of Polish citizens from the eastern
terrains, which had been occupied by the Red
Army and annexed by force to the USSR, took
place. About 300,000 people (men, women and
children) were deported to the East. There were
predominantly civil servants of middle and lower
levels of government, self-government
administration and farm settlers.
On 13th April 1940, additional 300,000 (approx.)
people found themselves being relocated to
Siberia. This group of people predominantly
included family members of those who had already
been deported and it consisted mainly of women
and children. People were being crammed into
cattle wagons and taken away in an unknown
direction. The same year, in June, there was
another mass deportation of over 240,000 people.
They were mainly prisoners of war who came from
the Western and Central regions of Poland.
In 1941, another mass deportation of 300,000
Poles to the East took place. In total, 1.7
million Polish citizens were expatriated, with
the primary targets being members of
intelligentsia, families of soldiers, farm
settlers, more affluent farmers (who were called
"kułakami" back then), office workers and
qualified craftsmen. After 1944, the number of
deportees increased by 50,000 soldiers, who were
a part of the Home Army and by around 150,000
civilians.
Siberia became the place that would signify
repression and became the symbol of Polish
repression. Labour camps, prisons and places of
exile that covered almost all the territory of
the former USSR marked its place on the map. The
exiles and prisoners were mainly sent to
Kazakhstan and other republics in Middle Asia.
Before the year 1943, as a result of hunger,
disease and executions by firing squad, around
half a million Polish citizens perished. This
number includes the murders of Polish officers
in Katyn, Charkow and Miednoje and of Polish
prisoners prior to the advancement of the German
Front in 1941.
Many of those who had managed to leave USSR with
the armies of General Anders, and later on with
General Berling, returned to Poland after 1945.
The remaining members of these groups did not
return until 1957. Many of the exiles, however,
remained forever in the place of exile, "in the
inhumane land" (na nieludzkiej ziemi), many who
were afraid of repercussions emigrated.
For many years the truth about those crimes was
covered up by Soviet administrations and Polish
governments, who were serving the Soviet
interests. Only recently, school text books
began historical acknowledgement and analysis
covering this subject. Before then they were
only available in the West, or in the so called
"underground circulation" (obiegu podziemnym).
Fortunately, some people who remember these
events are still alive. Some of them, having
survived such atrocities, do not wish to talk
about their experiences.
The time has come to reveal again this
historical truth for the benefit, not only of
the present, but also for the future
generations, and not only for Poles, but also
members of other nations.
The time has come to save it from oblivion.
This study is dedicated to them, their children
and grandchildren, and also to the memory of
those whose war memoirs we will not be able to
hear.
Monika Wiench
Lubin 31.08.1982
On
September 31, 1982, the communist regime
perpetrated a crime in Lubin that shall forever
remain in the hearts and minds of the townsmen
as well as all Poles. Due to the actions of
Civic Militia 3 people were fatally shot and
other tens were wounded. The memory of the
victims of the Martial Law is crucial for coming
generations. The memory of Michał Adamowicz,
Andrzej Trajkowski and Mieczysław Poźniak, all
of whom were killed by the 'people's
government', should never wane. The names of
those whose decisions contributed to the killing
of innocent people should also never be
forgotten.
I decided to use the website to publish
photographs documenting the happenings of those
days, collect publications concerning the said
tragic events and document exhibitions related
directly or indirectly to them. Should you be in
possession of any materials or know links to the
internet archives I have not managed to find,
please feel free to share. I will be more than
grateful for any help.
All of these pictures were taken by accident.
Having worked for several years as a reporter, I
had the camera on me from force of habit. Before
I began to take pictures I felt this regular,
humane fear. Fear of the crowd: that they would
take me for a secret service agent. Fear of the
militia: that they would take me and beat me up.
Only when someone with whom I was bilking from a
charge of ZOMO-men (ZOMO – Motorised Reserves of
the Civic Militia) cried: "C’mon man, shoot this
motherfucking hell!", did I set my eye against
the view-finder.
Frankly, I do not exactly remember what
followed. Hundreds of scenes and people fly by
my eyes. But for these pictures, it would be
even more difficult to put the fragments in
chronological order. When I go over them, the
jigsaw becomes evolvable.
I took the most important picture of my life -
that of the group of men carrying fatally
wounded Michał Adamowicz - running hand in hand
with them. A moment earlier I took a picture of
people leaning over a bleeding man; his head
could be seen from behind them. I was in some
sort of shock at that time, my memory hardly
took a notice of the scene.
It was only the following day, when I processed
the film and blew up the frames, that I saw the
scene that made my heart beat really hard. It
came to me what I had witnessed: a man had been
killed before my eyes. And it was not a nameless
soldier or a car accident victim. It was someone
who, several minutes before, could have been
running through the meadow like me, ducking
behind the trees, hearing the zipping of the
bullets and watching leaves showering down when
cut by them.
The scene of the tragic events of September 31,
1982, is strewn with stones-witnesses that
constitute a monumental sculpture installation
by Zbigniew Frąckiewicz. On one of the stones
the author engraved the following inscription:
"Silent; yet, they cry".
Photography – I think – is like a stone. There
is no sound, no scent, nor twinkling fairy
lights. Instead, there are emotions, moods,
light, and – most importantly – truth.
I want my pictures to keep crying, silent like
the stones.
© Krzysztof Raczkowiak
March 1968
Since the mid 1960s, sections of the Polish
intelligentsia entered into a conflict with the
authorities. Academics, journalists and artists
resented the increasing political
de-liberalization and many university students
could see no future for themselves in communist
Poland.
The “March 1968” events were sparked by the
Motor Civic Militia (ZOMO) attack on students
and academics at the University of Warsaw.
From this moment, the students’ movement spread
to all civilian tertiary educational
institutions, involving tens of thousands of
young people.
On March 21-23, students from the two largest
colleges in Warsaw – the University of Warsaw
and the Institute of Technology organized a
sit-down strike. The government responded with
another wave of arrests.
34 students were expelled and another 11
suspended. The Institutes of Economy,
Philosophy, Psychology and third year of Physics
and Mathematics were disbanded, as a result of
which 1616 young people lost their student
status. Many of them were then forcibly enlisted
in the army.
Katyn Massacre
The Katyń Forest Massacre, also known as the
Katyn massacre, was the mass execution of Polish
citizens by the Soviet Union during World War
II. Initially, the expression referred to the
massacre of the Polish officers from the
Kozielsk POW camp in Katyn forest near the
village of Gnezdovo, a short distance from
Smolensk, Soviet Union. More recently, the
phrase also became associated with the murder of
about 22,000 Polish citizens - POWs from
Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov camps and
inmates from West Belarusian and West Ukrainian
prisons, shot on Stalin's orders in Katyn forest
and the prisons of Kalinin (Tver), Kharkov and
other Soviet cities.
Many Poles had become prisoners of war following
the invasion and defeat of Poland by the Nazis
and the Soviet Union in September 1939. Many POW
camps were used for their internment, including
Ostashkov, Kozielsk and Starobielsk. Kozielsk
and Starobielsk were used mainly for officers,
while Ostashkov was mainly used for scouts,
gendarmes, policemen and jailers. Contrary to a
widespread misconception, only about 8,000 out
of about 15,000 POWs in these camps were
officers.
Since Poland's conscription system required
every university graduate to become a reserve
officer, the Soviets gathered much of the
Polish, Jewish and Belarusian intelligentsia.
On March 5, 1940, according to a note to Stalin
prepared by Beria, members of Soviet politburo –
Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich,
Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Voroshilov, and
Lavrenty Beria – signed an order of execution of
"nationalist and counterrevolutionary" activists
kept in camps and prisons of the occupied
Western parts of Ukraine and Belarus. This
resulted in the murder of about 22,000 Polish
citizens, including about 15,000 prisoners of
war. The broad definition of the accused
included significant numbers of Polish
intelligentsia, in addition to policemen,
reservists, and active military officers.
Technology of the massacre
People from Kozielsk were murdered in the usual
mass murder site of Smolensk country, called
Katyn forest; people from Starobielsk were
murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kharkov and
the bodies were buried near Pyatikhatki; and
police officers from Ostashkov were murdered in
the inner NKVD prison of Kalinin (Tver) and
buried in Miednoje.
Detailed information on the executions in
Kalinin NKVD prison was given during the hearing
by Dmitrii S. Tokarev, former head of the Board
of the District NKVD in Kalinin.
According to Tokarev the shooting started in the
evening and ended at dusk. The first transport
on April 4, 1940 was 390 strong and the
executioners had a hard time doing their duty
with so many people during one night. The
following transport were not greater than 250
people. The executions were usually performed
with Walther-type pistols supplied by Moscow.
The executions were carried out as follows.
After the condemned's personal information was
checked, he was then handcuffed and led to a
cell insulated with a felt-lined door. In
addition, the sounds of the execution were
masked through the operation of loud machines
(perhaps fans) throughout the night time. After
being taken into the cell the victim was
immediately shot dead in the back of the head.
His body was then taken out through the opposite
door and laid in one of the five or six waiting
trucks, whereupon the next condemned was taken
inside. The procedure went on every night,
except for the May Day holiday.
Near Smolensk the Poles with the hands tied
behind were led to the graves and shot in the
neck.
The discovery of the massacre precipitated the
severance of diplomatic relations between the
Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile
in London in 1943. The Soviet Union denied the
accusations until 1990, when USSR acknowledged
that NKVD was responsible for the massacre and
cover-up.
Poznań 1956 protests
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Poznań 1956 protests (also known as Poznań
1956 uprising or Poznań June (Polish: Poznański
Czerwiec) was the first of several massive
protests of the Polish people against the
communist government of the People's Republic of
Poland. The protests of workers demanding better
conditions began on June 28, 1956, at Poznań's
Cegielski Factories and were met with violent
repression. A crowd of 100,000 gathered in the
city center near the UB secret police building
and were fired upon. 400 tanks and 10,000
soldiers of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie and Korpus
Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego under Polish-Soviet
general Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to
smash the demonstration. Between 57 to78 people
died, including a 13-year-old boy, Romek
Strzałkowski. Hundreds of people sustained
injuries.
Background
After Stalin's death, the process of
destalinization prompted increasing debates
about fundamental issues throughout the entire
Eastern Bloc. Nikita Khrushchev's speech On the
Personality Cult and its Consequences had wide
implications outside the Soviet Union and in
other communist countries. In Poland, in
addition to cult of personality, the popular
topics centered about the right to steer a more
independent course of 'local, national
socialism' instead of following the Soviet model
down to every little detail; such views were
seen in discussion and critique by many Polish
United Workers' Party members of the Stalin's
execution of Polish communists from Communist
Party of Poland during the Great Purge.
Anti-communist resistance in Poland was also
bolstered, and in Poznań a group of opposition
leaders and cultural figures founded the Klub
Krzywego Koła (Club of the Skewed Wheel)
organization. It promoted discussions about
Polish independence, economical fallacies of the
state controlled economy, or governments disdain
of the Polish Armed Forces in the West and Armia
Krajowa actions during the Second World War.
While intelligentsia expressed its
dissatisfaction with discussions and
publications, workers took to the streets. The
conditions of living in Poland did not improve,
despite government propaganda, and workers
increasingly found that they have little power
compared to bureaucracy of the Party (Nomenklatura).
City of Poznań was one of the largest urban
centers of the People's Republic of Poland, and
an important industrial center. Tensions were
groiwng there particulary since autumn of 1955.
Workers in the largest factory in the city,
Joseph Stalin's (or 'Cegielski's) Metal
Industries, were complaining about higher taxes
for most productive workers ('udarnik's), which
affected several thousands of workers. Local
directors were unable to make any significant
decisions due to micromanagement by the higher
officials; over several months, petitions,
letters and delegations were sent to the Polish
Ministry of Machine Industry and Central
Committee of Polish United Workers' Party, but
to no avail. Finally a delegation of about 27
workers was sent in the days 23 June. On the
night of 26 June, a delegation of workers came
back to Poznań, confident that some of their
demands had been positively considered. The next
morning, the minister of Machine Industry
arrived at the factory and withdrew some of the
Warsaw agreements with workers during a mass
meeting.
Another factor contributing to the raising
tensions was the ongoing Poznań International
Fair.
Strikes
On 27 June, Thursday, several factories and
enterprises in the city went on strike, most of
whom lost premium pay in June as the government
suddenly raised the required work quota. In the
morning of 28 June the strike was joined by
Cegielski's workers; soon many workers took to
the streets forming a large demonstration that
was joined by many other people living in Poznań;
it is estimated that in few hours about 100,000
people took to the streets. The workers,
gathered around official buildings, including
the Imperial Castle in Poznań, demanded
peacefully - lowering of food prices, rising of
wages and revoking some of the recent law
changes that worsened workers conditions;
further they requested the arrival of Polish
Prime Minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz - since the
local government declared they have no authority
to solve the problems. Some police officers
joined the crowd as well.
After 10 a.m. the situtation rapidly
deteriorated, as the information that members of
the negotiating delegation had been allegedly
arrested spread through the crowds. The local
units of Milicja Obywatelska were unable to
contain the crowd, which has turned on official
buildings. The prison was attacked, as some of
the protesters thought the members of the
delegation may be imprisoned there; 257
prisoners were set loose; the police documents
at local police station, procurature and court
were destroyed. The crowds ransacked the
Communist Party Headquarters and then attacked
the Polish secret police - Urząd Bezpieczeństwa
- headquarters where they were repulsed by
police shooting into the crowd.
In the afternoon of the 29 June, the Government
sent in the army: Polish 10th Armoured Division,
Polish 19th Armoured Division, Polish 4th
Infantry Division and Polish 5th Infantry
Division, in total, about 10 300 troops under
command of Polish-Soviet general Stanislav
Poplavsky. A two hour long procession of tanks,
armored cars, field guns, and lorries full of
troops went through the city and surrounded it.
The events in the city were hidden from the rest
of Poland by the censors to prevent unrest from
spreading. On 29 June Cyrankiewicz declared, in
what became one of his most famous quotes, that
"any provocateur or lunatic who raises his hand
against the people's government may be sure that
this hand will be chopped off." Together with
the 13-year-old boy, Romek Strzałkowski, who
died, his quote formed one of the two most
lasting memories of those events. Hundreds of
people sustained injuries. Until the 30 June the
troops were pacyfing the city, exchanging fire
with some violent demonstrators. From 57 to78
people died during the riots; including 8
members of the government forces; hundreds were
wounded on both sides.
Aftermath
Crosses in Poznań commemorating the 1956
protests and subsequent Polish protests against
the Communist political system. Photograph from
2006, after significant changes to the older
monument
About 250 people were arrested in the first few
days, including 196 workers; several hundred
others were arrested in the following weeks.
Lawyer Stanisław Hejmowski who defended them was
later repressed for his statement that
governments actions led to the death of innocent
civilians. The government tried to brutally
coerce them to admit that they were provocated
by foreign (Western) secret services, but
failed; nonetheless this became the official
line of the government for years to come.
Soon the hard-liners realized that they had lost
the support of the Soviet Union, and the regime
turned to conciliation: it announced wage rises
and other reforms. Realizing the need for new
leadership, the Polish communists chose a new
leader, Władysław Gomułka, considered a
moderate; this transistion is known as Polish
October (or Gomułka thaw). Nonetheless for the
next 25 years the communist authorities blocked
any information on these bloody events.
Historians were denied any source research, and
the censorship effectively eliminated any
mentions of June 1956. The most active
participants of these events have been
persecuted for years. The memory of the events
was however preserved by the participants and
members of opposition. One of the first
initiatives of the Independent Self-governing
Trade Union "Solidarity" after the Gdańsk
Agreement was to erect a monument commemorating
Poznań June 1956.
Many historians consider the Poznań 1956
protests to be an important milestone in history
of Poland, and one of the events that brought
the fall of communism in Poland. Nonetheless it
should be noted that the protests of 1956 were
not anti-communists; the workers demands were
mostly economic - better work conditions - not
political; the workers sung The Internationale
and their banners read "We demand bread". It was
government's consistent failure to provide the
first which eventually led to the demands for
the second - but even during the history of
Solidarity few demanded wide political reforms.
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