Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union (after 1939)
Encyclopedia
As a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939
, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers became prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Many of them were executed; over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre
.
On September 17 1939, the Red Army invaded the territory of Poland
from the east. The invasion took place while Poland was already sustaining serious defeats in the wake of the German
attack on the country
that started on September 1, 1939. The Soviets moved to safeguard their claims
in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
.
During the Red Army
's rapid advance, about 6,000–7,000 Polish soldiers died in the fighting, 230,000–450,000 were taken prisoner—230,000 immediately after the campaign and 70,000 more when the Soviets annexed the Baltic States
and assumed custody of Polish troops interned there.
The Soviets often failed to honour the terms of surrender. In some cases, they promised Polish soldiers freedom after capitulation and then arrested them when they laid down their arms. Some Polish soldiers were murdered shortly after capture, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński
, who was taken prisoner, interrogated and shot on September 22, during the invasion itself. On September 24, the Soviets murdered forty-two staff and patients at a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec
near Zamość
. After a tactical Polish victory at the battle of Szack
on September 28, where the combined Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza (KOP) or Border Protection Corps forces, under General Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann
, routed the Soviet 52nd Rifle Division, the Soviets executed all the Polish officers they captured. The Soviets also executed hundreds of defenders at Grodno
, the exact number of those killed has not been established.
. Out of those, 42,400 soldiers, mostly soldiers of Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnicity serving in the Polish army who lived in the former Polish territories now annexed by the Soviet Union, were released in October. The 43,000 soldiers born in West Poland, then under German control, were transferred to the Germans; in turn the Soviets received 13,575 Polish prisoners from the Germans. The USSR refused to allow Red Cross supervision of prisoners on the grounds that it had not signed the 1929 Geneva Convention
on the Treatment of PoWs and did not recognise the Hague Convention
. Prisoners were handed over by the military to the Nardonyy komissariat vnutrennikh del, (better known as the NKVD
or secret police) and sentenced under clauses in the Soviet Penal Code, including treason and counter-revolution, and were not considered subject to the "Regulations for the Treatment of Prisoners of War" approved by the Soviet Council of Ministers.
As early as September 19 1939, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs and First Rank Commissar of State Security, Lavrenty Beria, ordered the NKVD to create the Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees to manage Polish prisoners. The NKVD took custody of Polish prisoners from the Red Army and proceeded to organize a network of reception centers and transit camps and arrange rail transport to prisoner-of-war camp
s in the western USSR. The camps were located at Jukhnovo (Babynino rail station), Yuzhe (Talitsy), Kozelsk
, Kozelshchyna, Oranki, Ostashkov
(Stolbnyi Island
on Seliger Lake near Ostashkov), Tyotkino rail station (56 mi/90 km from Putyvl
), Starobielsk, Vologda
(Zaenikevo rail station) and Gryazovets
.
Kozelsk and Starobielsk were used mainly for military officers, while Ostashkov was used mainly for Boy Scouts, gendarme
s, police and prison officers. Inmates at these camps were not exclusively military officers or members of the other groups mentioned, they also included the Polish intelligentsia
. The approximate distribution of men throughout the camps was as follows: Kozelsk, 5,000; Ostashkov, 6,570; and Starobelsk, 4,000. They totalled 15,570 men.
According to a report from 19 November 1939, the NKVD had about 40,000 Polish POWs
: about 8,000-8,500 officers and warrant officer
s, 6,000-6,500 police officers and 25,000 soldiers and NCOs
who were still being held as POWs. In December, a wave of arrests took into custody some Polish officers who were not yet imprisoned, Ivan Serov
reported to Lavrentiy Beria
on 3 December that "in all, 1,057 former officers of the Polish Army had been arrested." The 25,000 soldiers and non-commissioned officers were assigned to forced labors
(road construction, heavy metallurgy).
Once at the camps, from October 1939 to February 1940, the Poles were subjected to lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation by NKVD officers such as Vasily Zarubin
. The Poles were encouraged to believe they would be released, but the interviews were in effect a selection process to determine who would live and who would die. According to NKVD reports, the prisoners could not be induced to adopt a pro-Soviet attitude. They were declared "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority."
On March 5, 1940, a note to Joseph Stalin
from Beria, saw the members of the Soviet Politburo
— Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov
, Lazar Kaganovich
, Mikhail Kalinin
, Kliment Voroshilov
, Anastas Mikoyan
and Beria — sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counter-revolutionaries" kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine
and Belarus
. This became known as the Katyn massacre
.
forced Stalin to look for allies. Thus the military agreement from August 14 and subsequent Sikorski-Mayski Agreement
from August 17, 1941, resulted in Stalin agreeing to declare the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
in relation to Poland null and void, and release tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war held in Soviet camps. Pursuant to an agreement between the Polish government-in-exile and Stalin, the Soviets granted "amnesty
" to many Polish citizens, from whom a military force was formed. Stalin also agreed that this military force would be subordinate to the Polish government-in-exile. This force was known as the Anders Army
. From 1943 Poles were recruited into the Berling Army.
, or 'cursed soldiers
') loyal to the Polish government-in-exile and seen by the Soviets as a threat to their establishment of a power base in Poland. Relatively few were sent to the Soviet Union (although there were notable exceptions, see Trial of the Sixteen
); most were transferred to the Polish communist security forces and prisons, or enlisted in the Berling Army.
Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)
The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II. Sixteen days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union did so from the east...
, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers became prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Many of them were executed; over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
.
Soviet invasion of Poland
Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)
The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II. Sixteen days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union did so from the east...
from the east. The invasion took place while Poland was already sustaining serious defeats in the wake of the German
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
attack on the country
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
that started on September 1, 1939. The Soviets moved to safeguard their claims
Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union
Immediately after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded the eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic, which Poles referred to as the "Kresy," and annexed territories totaling 201,015 km² with a population of 13,299,000...
in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
.
During the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
's rapid advance, about 6,000–7,000 Polish soldiers died in the fighting, 230,000–450,000 were taken prisoner—230,000 immediately after the campaign and 70,000 more when the Soviets annexed the Baltic States
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
and assumed custody of Polish troops interned there.
The Soviets often failed to honour the terms of surrender. In some cases, they promised Polish soldiers freedom after capitulation and then arrested them when they laid down their arms. Some Polish soldiers were murdered shortly after capture, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński
Józef Olszyna-Wilczynski
Józef Konstanty Olszyna-Wilczyński was a Polish general and one of the high-ranking commanders of the Polish Army. A veteran of World War I, Polish-Ukrainian War and the Polish-Bolshevik War, he was murdered by the Soviets during the Polish Defensive War of 1939.-Early life:Józef Wilczyński was...
, who was taken prisoner, interrogated and shot on September 22, during the invasion itself. On September 24, the Soviets murdered forty-two staff and patients at a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec
Grabowiec, Zamosc County
Grabowiec is a village in Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Grabowiec. It lies approximately north-east of Zamość and south-east of the regional capital Lublin....
near Zamość
Zamosc
Zamość ukr. Замостя is a town in southeastern Poland with 66,633 inhabitants , situated in the south-western part of Lublin Voivodeship , about from Lublin, from Warsaw and from the border with Ukraine...
. After a tactical Polish victory at the battle of Szack
Battle of Szack
Battle of Szack was one of the major battles between the Polish Army and the Red Army fought in 1939 in the beginning the Second World War.- Eve of the Battle :...
on September 28, where the combined Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza (KOP) or Border Protection Corps forces, under General Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann
Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann
Wilhelm Orlik-Rückemann was a Polish general, military commander and one of the pioneers of armoured warfare in Poland.- Early life :...
, routed the Soviet 52nd Rifle Division, the Soviets executed all the Polish officers they captured. The Soviets also executed hundreds of defenders at Grodno
Battle of Grodno (1939)
The Battle of Grodno took place between 21 September and 24 September 1939, during the Soviet invasion of Poland. It was fought between improvised Polish units under Gen...
, the exact number of those killed has not been established.
First period (1939-1941)
Some Polish prisoners were freed or escaped quickly, while 125,000 were imprisoned in prison camps run by NKVDNKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. Out of those, 42,400 soldiers, mostly soldiers of Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnicity serving in the Polish army who lived in the former Polish territories now annexed by the Soviet Union, were released in October. The 43,000 soldiers born in West Poland, then under German control, were transferred to the Germans; in turn the Soviets received 13,575 Polish prisoners from the Germans. The USSR refused to allow Red Cross supervision of prisoners on the grounds that it had not signed the 1929 Geneva Convention
Geneva Convention (1929)
The Geneva Convention was signed at Geneva, July 27, 1929. Its official name is the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva July 27, 1929. It entered into force 19 June 1931. It is this version of the Geneva Conventions which covered the treatment of prisoners of war...
on the Treatment of PoWs and did not recognise the Hague Convention
Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)
The Hague Conventions were two international treaties negotiated at international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands: The First Hague Conference in 1899 and the Second Hague Conference in 1907...
. Prisoners were handed over by the military to the Nardonyy komissariat vnutrennikh del, (better known as the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
or secret police) and sentenced under clauses in the Soviet Penal Code, including treason and counter-revolution, and were not considered subject to the "Regulations for the Treatment of Prisoners of War" approved by the Soviet Council of Ministers.
As early as September 19 1939, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs and First Rank Commissar of State Security, Lavrenty Beria, ordered the NKVD to create the Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees to manage Polish prisoners. The NKVD took custody of Polish prisoners from the Red Army and proceeded to organize a network of reception centers and transit camps and arrange rail transport to prisoner-of-war camp
Prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of combatants captured by their enemy in time of war, and is similar to an internment camp which is used for civilian populations. A prisoner of war is generally a soldier, sailor, or airman who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or...
s in the western USSR. The camps were located at Jukhnovo (Babynino rail station), Yuzhe (Talitsy), Kozelsk
Kozelsk
Kozelsk is a town in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the Zhizdra River , southwest of Kaluga. Population: -History:The town of Kozelsk was first mentioned in a chronicle under the year of 1146 as a part of Principality of Chernigov...
, Kozelshchyna, Oranki, Ostashkov
Ostashkov
Ostashkov is a town and the administrative center of Ostashkovsky District of Tver Oblast, Russia, located west of Tver on a peninsula at the southern shore of Lake Seliger. Population:...
(Stolbnyi Island
Stolbnyi Island
Stolobny Island is an island on Lake Seliger in the Tver Oblast of Russia, about 10 km north of the town of Ostashkov.-Nilov Monastery:...
on Seliger Lake near Ostashkov), Tyotkino rail station (56 mi/90 km from Putyvl
Putyvl
Putyvl or Putivl is a town in north-east Ukraine, in Sumy Oblast. Currently about 20,000 people live in Putyvl.-History:One of the original Siverian towns, Putyvl was first mentioned as early as 1146 as an important fortress contested between Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversky principalities of...
), Starobielsk, Vologda
Vologda
Vologda is a city and the administrative, cultural, and scientific center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the Vologda River. The city is a major transport knot of the Northwest of Russia. Vologda is among the Russian cities possessing an especially valuable historical heritage...
(Zaenikevo rail station) and Gryazovets
Gryazovets
Gryazovets is a town and the administrative center of Gryazovetsky District of Vologda Oblast, Russia. Municipally, it is incorporated as Gryazovetskoe Urban Settlement in Gryazovetsky Municipal District. Population: -History:...
.
Kozelsk and Starobielsk were used mainly for military officers, while Ostashkov was used mainly for Boy Scouts, gendarme
Gendarmerie
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...
s, police and prison officers. Inmates at these camps were not exclusively military officers or members of the other groups mentioned, they also included the Polish intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
. The approximate distribution of men throughout the camps was as follows: Kozelsk, 5,000; Ostashkov, 6,570; and Starobelsk, 4,000. They totalled 15,570 men.
According to a report from 19 November 1939, the NKVD had about 40,000 Polish POWs
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
: about 8,000-8,500 officers and warrant officer
Warrant Officer
A warrant officer is an officer in a military organization who is designated an officer by a warrant, as distinguished from a commissioned officer who is designated an officer by a commission, or from non-commissioned officer who is designated an officer by virtue of seniority.The rank was first...
s, 6,000-6,500 police officers and 25,000 soldiers and NCOs
Non-commissioned officer
A non-commissioned officer , called a sub-officer in some countries, is a military officer who has not been given a commission...
who were still being held as POWs. In December, a wave of arrests took into custody some Polish officers who were not yet imprisoned, Ivan Serov
Ivan Serov
State Security General Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov was a prominent leader of Soviet security and intelligence agencies, head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as head of the GRU between 1958 and 1963. He was Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria, and was to play a...
reported to Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
on 3 December that "in all, 1,057 former officers of the Polish Army had been arrested." The 25,000 soldiers and non-commissioned officers were assigned to forced labors
Foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union
Foreign forced labor was used by the Soviet Union during and in the aftermath of the World War II, which continued up to 1950s.There have been two categories of foreigners amassed for forced labor: prisoners of war and civilians...
(road construction, heavy metallurgy).
Once at the camps, from October 1939 to February 1940, the Poles were subjected to lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation by NKVD officers such as Vasily Zarubin
Vasily Zarubin
Vasily Mikhailovich Zarubin Василий Михайлович Зарубин was a Soviet intelligence officer. In the United States, he used the cover name Vasily Zubilin and served as Soviet intelligence Rezident from 1941 to 1944. Zarubin's wife, Elizabeth Zubilin, served with him.Zarubin was born in Moscow...
. The Poles were encouraged to believe they would be released, but the interviews were in effect a selection process to determine who would live and who would die. According to NKVD reports, the prisoners could not be induced to adopt a pro-Soviet attitude. They were declared "hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority."
On March 5, 1940, a note to Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
from Beria, saw the members of the Soviet Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
— Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
, Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin.-Early life:Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire...
, Mikhail Kalinin
Mikhail Kalinin
Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin , known familiarly by Soviet citizens as "Kalinych," was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the nominal head of state of Russia and later of the Soviet Union, from 1919 to 1946...
, Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov , popularly known as Klim Voroshilov was a Soviet military officer, politician, and statesman...
, Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....
and Beria — sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counter-revolutionaries" kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
. This became known as the Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
.
Second period (1941-1944)
Diplomatic relations were, however, re-established in 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet UnionOperation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
forced Stalin to look for allies. Thus the military agreement from August 14 and subsequent Sikorski-Mayski Agreement
Sikorski-Mayski Agreement
The Sikorski–Mayski Agreement was a treaty between the Soviet Union and Poland signed in London on 30 July 1941. Its name was coined after the two most notable signatories: Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski and Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ivan Mayski.- Details :After signing...
from August 17, 1941, resulted in Stalin agreeing to declare the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
in relation to Poland null and void, and release tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war held in Soviet camps. Pursuant to an agreement between the Polish government-in-exile and Stalin, the Soviets granted "amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
" to many Polish citizens, from whom a military force was formed. Stalin also agreed that this military force would be subordinate to the Polish government-in-exile. This force was known as the Anders Army
Anders Army
The Anders Army was the informal yet common name of the Polish Armed Forces in the East in the period 1941-1942, in recognition of its commander Władysław Anders...
. From 1943 Poles were recruited into the Berling Army.
Third period (after 1944)
The third group of Polish prisoners were members of Polish resistance organizations (Armia KrajowaArmia Krajowa
The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
, or 'cursed soldiers
Cursed soldiers
The cursed soldiers is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by some members of the Polish Secret State, these clandestine organizations continued their armed struggle against the Stalinist government of Poland...
') loyal to the Polish government-in-exile and seen by the Soviets as a threat to their establishment of a power base in Poland. Relatively few were sent to the Soviet Union (although there were notable exceptions, see Trial of the Sixteen
Trial of the Sixteen
The Trial of the Sixteen was a staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1945.-History:Some accounts say approaches were made in February with others saying March 1945...
); most were transferred to the Polish communist security forces and prisons, or enlisted in the Berling Army.
See also
- Camps for Polish prisoners and internees in Soviet Union and Lithuania (1919-1921)
- Treatment of Polish citizens by occupiersTreatment of Polish citizens by occupiersThe occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War began with invasion of Poland in September 1939, and formally concluded with the defeat of Nazism by the Four Powers in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of foreign occupation the territory of Poland was...
- SybiraksSybiraksThe Polish term sybirak is synonymous to the Russian counterpart sibiryak and generally refers to all people resettled to Siberia, it is in most cases used to refer to Poles who have been imprisoned or exiled to Siberia-History:Many Poles were exiled to Siberia, starting with the 18th-century...
- Camps for Russian prisoners and internees in Poland (1919–1924)