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THE SOVIET ETHNIC CLEANSING CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE POLES DURING WORLD WAR
II "Amnesty"
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Such was the lot of the deportees until the
invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany on June 22, 1941. A protocol of
the Polish-Soviet (Sikorski-Maisky) agreement of July 30, 1941, provided
for the release of all Poles in Soviet exile as well as for the formation
of a Polish army on Soviet soil. The document, signed in the presence of
Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, used the unfortunate term "amnesty"
(the word should have been "manumission" or "emancipation") to
characterize the release of the exiles; they were Stalin's bargaining chip
in the contest for the status quo ante borders of Poland. According to a
January 15, 1942, note from Beria to Stalin, 389 041 Polish citizens were
freed as a result of that "amnesty". These included 200 828 ethnic Poles,
90 662 Jews, 31 392 Ukrainians, 27 418 Byelorussians, 3421 Russians, and
2291 persons of other nationalities. There was no need to inform Stalin of
the fact that the Soviet authorities often impeded the release of the
deportees from their various places of confinement and absolved themselves
from assisting them in any way whatsoever upon their release. This utter
lack of concern brought about a crisis of unimaginable proportions. Elated by this turn of events, the far-flung Polish exiles began to make, as best as they could, their way southward, to where Gen. Anders' army was forming, in the hope of liberation. These journeys, often several weeks long, brought new suffering - tens of thousands died from hunger, cold, heat, disease and exhaustion on that trip to freedom. For many, the help provided by the United States and Great Britain was too little and too late. In the Samarkand district alone, in a two-and-a-half-month period in 1942, out of 27 000, 1632 Polish citizens perished from typhus and malnutrition. The Polish embassy estimated that between December 1941 and June 1942, 10 percent of the 200 000 Polish citizens that gathered in the central Soviet republics died of typhus alone. Meanwhile, by June 1942, the Polish authorities had gathered over 77 000 lost children and orphans and with the help offered by Great Britain, Canada and the American Red Cross planned to evacuate about 50 000 of them. But Moscow would not agree to such a massive evacuation of children citing transportation problems as the reason and denying that the Polish children were in any danger. The words of reassurance offered by Deputy Commissar Andrei Vyshinsky to Polish Ambassador Stanislaw Kot must surely rank among the most cynical ever uttered by a Soviet official. "The welfare of the children", he said, "is assured by the Soviet authorities". In reality, the Soviets were afraid that the evacuation of these children and the disclosure of their condition at times indistinguishable from that of Nazi concentration-camp victims would have earned them the scorn of the civilized world. As the negotiations, or rather pleas, for the children's release continued, on January 16, 1943, when there were still hundreds of thousands of Poles in the USSR, the Polish embassy was informed that since the number of Poles in the Soviet Union had become negligible, there was no longer a need for the Polish social welfare agencies on Soviet soil, and 400 of them, including numerous orphanages and hospitals, were immediately closed or taken over, along with all their internationally-donated supplies, by Soviet authorities. That March, the remaining Poles were forced to accept Soviet citizenship. So much for "amnesty", the Soviet version. On April 13, 1943, the Germans announced to the world their discovery of the mass graves at Katyn. On April 25 of that same year Stalin broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile using the Polish protests over the executions at Katyn as a pretext. Nevertheless, during the two great evacuations (the first, between March 24 and the beginning of April 1942; the second, between August 10 and September 1, 1942), from Krasnovodsk across the Caspian Sea to Pahlavi, and the smaller overland evacuations from Ashkhabad to Mashhad (March and September 1942), about 115 000 people (including some 37 000 civilians, of whom about 18 300 were children) left the Soviet Union. The soldiers of Gen. Anders'army went on to fight in many battles, including the one at Monte Cassino; the civilians, because they could not be repatriated, were forced to remain in foreign lands for the remainder of the war. The first stop of the refugees evacuated with Anders'army was Iran, where they found temporary quarters in large transit camps initially located in Pahlavi and Mashhad, and later in Teheran and Ahvaz. While Gen. Anders' troops were subsequently transferred to Palestine and from there to Iraq, the civilians remained in Iran. To accommodate the refugees, a sprawling stationary camp was established in Isfahan. Because it housed several camps for the thousands of orphaned Polish children, it came to be known as the "City of Polish Children". The relief assistance afforded by Polish, British, American, and Iranian authorities soon improved their living conditions and brought the devastating contagious diseases under control, diseases acquired in the Soviet Union which continued to rob the refugees of their lives even after liberation (over 2000 refugees died in Iran alone). In time, various Polish institutions, including 24 schools serving some 3000 students, were established in Iran and several Polish periodicals and newspapers appeared. Their stay in Iran, however, was cut short because of the hostility of the Soviet army units occupying northern Iran and because of the threat of the German armies which had already reached the Caucasus. Eventually the refugees were transferred from Iran to other countries, such as Lebanon, Palestine, India, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, North and South Rhodesia, South Africa, Mexico and New Zealand. Wherever they went, the Polish refugees encountered effusive good will not only on the part of the respective governments that invited them, but also on the part of the native populations. Welcoming signs with Polish flags, white eagles, and words of encouragement often greeted their arrival, high government officials paid them visits, and commemorative monuments were erected in their honour. Unlike the Soviet Union, these were, after all, ancient civilized cultures. Why didn't America open its doors, and open them wide, to the Polish refugees? That the Western Allies knew all about the deportations is clear from their relief efforts in their behalf in the Soviet Union and the Middle East. In Iran, although debriefed, the refugees were not encouraged to speak about their experiences in the Soviet Union with outsiders. In America, the date of the arrival of the first transport aboard the USS Hermitage (June 25, 1943, consisting of 706 refugees, including 166 children) was a State secret and two days after disembarking the Poles were sent across the border to Mexico. The second group (726 refugees including 408 children, mostly orphans) ended up in Mexico as well. The delicate balance between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies had to be maintained, it seems, at any cost. Among the victims on this altar of silence were the 14 500 prisoners of war interned in Kozelsk, Starobelsk, and Ostashkov and executed in cold blood in Katyn, Kharkov, and Kalinin in April and May 1940. The Allies never officially contradicted the Soviet line that the Germans, who dug up the graves in the Katyn forest, were responsible for the murders. No doubt "Uncle Joe", homo sovieticus barbarosus incarnate, must have been grateful to the Western Allies for their conspiracy of silence, for preserving the "good name" of his evil empire. He was even more grateful at Yalta, when the Western Allies granted him the right to enslave all of Eastern and half of Central Europe. But was there ever a real need for this cover-up, this concern for maintaining the "delicate balance", this appeasement of Stalin after the revocation of the "amnesty" and the April 25, 1943, rupture of diplomatic relations with the Polish government-in-exile ? He was committed to fighting the Germans whether he wanted to or not, he needed the help of the West, and it was abundantly clear that he would not allow any more evacuations out of the Soviet Union. Moreover, a full, timely, and well-orchestrated disclosure of the Soviet atrocities in Eastern Poland, the deportations, and Katyn - in effect the moral equivalent of a Soviet Nuremberg Trial - may have had a significant impact on the events at Yalta which, in turn, would have had a profound effect on the immediate postwar forced repatriation to the Soviet Bloc of Soviet citizens (often executed upon their return to the Soviet Union because they were considered to be "tainted") as well as the displaced persons of other nations, and there were hundreds of thousands in both categories. More important, it may have given the Allies that much-needed edge to withstand Stalin's postwar territorial demands and thereby would have also prevented the additional Soviet postwar atrocities in those countries which, as the result of Yalta, became captive nations behind the Iron Curtain. Appeasement, as we know, only emboldens the aggressor. The revelations of the Soviet war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity, when they finally came out in the Western media during the Cold War period, were like crying over spilled milk. All the camps and settlements established in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, India, Africa and Mexico (New Zealand offered from the beginning permanent resident status to the orphaned children) were meant to be temporary quarters for the Polish refugees until the end of the war and the expected liberation of their country. However, after Yalta and the significant changes in Poland's borders this became an impossible dream, although a few did return to join their families in Poland. What became of the rest ? Many of those who wound up in New Zealand and the Union of South Africa remained where they were brought. The Polish refugees housed in the various camps in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, India and Africa moved to Great Britain and its dominions, Canada and Australia, from where some of them later emigrated to the United States; some also settled in Argentina and other countries in South America. Thus ended the saga of the deportees from Eastern Poland who managed to get out of the Soviet Union under the provisions of the tenuous "amnesty" of 1941. But what happened to the rest of the hundreds of thousands of deportees who did not leave with Gen. Anders' army ? For tens of thousands the Soviet Union became their final resting place before the war's end. Another quarter of a million were repatriated to the "recovered territories" of Western Poland during the massive population exchanges following World War II. As to what happened to those who never got out, God only knows. Some, no doubt, are still there. |
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