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The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World

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Piotrowski, the author, dedicates this book: "To the victims of Soviet crimes against humanity". Everyone has heard of what the Nazis did to the Jews, but who ever heard of the 2-3 million Polish gentiles also murdered by the Germans? Even fewer have so much as an inkling of the millions of victims of Communism. The Soviet genocide directed against Poles, reliant as it was on shootings and especially mass overwork and starvation, does not capture the imagination as much as the assembly-style gassing and cremation performed by the Germans. But it was no less real, and no less effective.

All the while, Britain and America were silent and indifferent to Poland's fate. They were in the throes of a Stalin-appeasing mentality, and increasingly saw Poland as a nuisance that undermined Soviet-western relations. As Piotrowski makes it clear, "Appeasement only emboldens the aggressor". Judging by subsequent events of the Cold War, did it ever!

The deportations were the Soviet Union's attempt to gradually destroy the Polish population of the eastern half of Poland that had been conquered in 1939 (Nazi Germany conquered the western half). Piotrowski estimates that 1.7 million Poles were deported to Siberia and other inhospitable regions of the USSR. About half the deported Poles died a slow death there. Only the unexpected German attack on its erstwhile Soviet ally in July 1941 limited the scope of this genocide by putting a halt to further deportations and eventually prompting the release of the emaciated but still-living captive Poles.

Piotrowski describes the harrowing experiences of the Poles in Soviet captivity through the eyes of several eyewitnesses, including "Eva", my aunt. The Communists proved themselves to be masters in psychological torture as well as physical torture. Thus "Eva" was falsely told that her relatives had been put to death. To mock her Christian beliefs, she was dutifully told that her relatives were now "among the angels in heaven". She was thrown in a dungeon in which there was a decomposing human corpse. Miraculously, she was finally released, along with the rest of the family. The surviving Poles lost everything but their lives. After the Soviet "amnesty" (in which only a part of the still-living captive Poles were released, not all as promised), the Poles gathered in five geographic regions, including Iran and India. Most of the survivors never returned to Poland. Poland had already been given away by the west as a Soviet satellite with a Communist puppet government.

Another account on the de-humanization of a people.Gee, I wonder why there aren't any films on this?