Candles were lit yesterday in Warsaw at the monument to the victims of Stalin's deportations to the East. Aging survivors said prayers for loved ones that had perished, whilst special masses of remembrance were said at churches across Poland.
The deportations came in the wake of the Russian invasion of Poland in the Autumn of 1939. The Germans and the Russians had previously agreed to divide up Poland at the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23rd August 1939.
Following the invasion of Western Poland by the Germans on September 1st 1939, the Soviets followed suit on September 17th, seizing the lands east of the River Bug.
Stalin's intention was to purge the lands of the Polish intelligentsia, and the main victims were landowners, doctors, businessmen, army officers and other white collar patriots.
However, Stalin was keen to remove anyone who might prove problematic to his cause. Thus persons that had been removed from the Communist Party, as well as pre- First World War Mensheviks and Trotskyites were also
earmarked for deportation.
The deportations began in February 1940. Four vast railway convoys were dispatched, carrying approximately 1.5 million people. The first three convoys were sent in February, April and June 1940. The last was dispatched in June 1941. The destinations were Siberia, Kazakhstan and Soviet Asia. More than half of the deportees had perished within a year, and a good number of them died before they even arrived at their barren destinations.
Poland had little say in the post-war settlement, in spite of their loyal role as a member of the winning side. In 1945, Soviet troops were spread across Eastern Europe, and Roosevelt and Churchill assented to Stalin's wish that Poland's border should be moved West.
As Poland was later reduced to the status of a Soviet colony, no monument was allowed to be built to the victims of the deportations. The current monument was only erected in 1995, following the belated advent of democracy in 1989.
|