Wojciech Marciniak
In September 2013 the Polish parliament adopted a resolution establishing the World Day of the Siberian Deportee (Dzień Sybiraka), to be observed on 17 September — the date on which the Soviet Union launched its aggression against Poland. Parliamentarians thus sought to commemorate our fallen compatriots who perished in the East, along with those who managed to return to the Homeland or settled in other countries, or for varying reasons remained in Siberia, being able to faithfully maintain their Polish identity there.
Open wounds
The official commemorations on September 17 date back to the early existence of the Third Republic of Poland and it would appear that this date is both widely and accurately associated in Polish society with the Red Army’s invasion of Poland. Not only have other anniversaries linked to the fate of the Polish population in the USSR or on the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic in the years between1939–1945 been entered into the calendar of patriotic ceremonies, but they have also become deeply embedded in the consciousness of a considerable section of society. “Katyn”, “Volhynia”, “Siberia” — these are phrases that conjure up images of the tragic fate of Poles in the East. In spite of the fact of decades having elapsed since those events unfolded, they still give off the impression of being open wounds, have become the subject of heated debate and even diplomatic or international provocations. By way of example, the Russian narrative justifying the USSR’s attack on September 17 1939 is essentially a rehashed version of Stalinist falsehoods. Equally problematic are issues related to exhumations and dignified burials for Polish victims of the UPA, which serve only to damage Polish-Ukrainian efforts at reconciliation and which are sadly exploited by Russian propaganda.
Repatriation or forced resettlement?
In the 2013 parliamentary resolution mention is made of commemorating Siberian exiles who managed to return to Poland — thereby referencing repatriation. However, this element of Siberian memory appears far less marked in the social sphere, in education, and thus also in terms of overall public awareness. In the Polish history textbooks, the fate of the Polish population in the USSR is primarily outlined up to the evacuation of the Polish Army under Gen. Władysław Anders, and later in the context of the formation of the 1st Polish Infantry Division named after Tadeusz Kościuszko and its hard fought battles at Lenino. In the context of post-war Poland’s territorial transformation, the repatriation of exiles who remained in the USSR after 1942 gives way to the narrative of mass resettlements. Occasional reference is made to repatriation and re-migration flows from various countries, but does not, as a rule, highlight the influx into Poland of victims of the Soviet deportations from 1940–1941 – those who “failed to join up with Anders’ Army” nor enlisted in Berling’s Army.
Only Poles and Jews permitted to leave
Let us recall then — the basis for former exiles to return to their homeland was to be found in the Repatriation Agreement of 6 July 1945, signed for Poland by Zygmunt Modzelewski on behalf of the Provisional Government of National Unity. It was the fourth such accord pertaining to population transfers of Poles from the USSR. On September 9 and 22, 1944 the Polish Committee of National Liberation concluded treaties with the governments of the Soviet republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania with regard to population transfers. These so-called “republican agreements” envisaged the extraction of Polish and Jewish citizens from lands annexed by the USSR, to be followed by their settlement in territories incorporated into Poland after the war. Additionally, from deep inside the USSR only Poles and Jews were permitted to depart — citizens of the Second Republic declaring other nationalities were denied the right to return to the Homeland.
From the outset, implementation of the July agreement was beset with numerous difficulties. In the autumn of 1945, as part of the procedure for changing citizenship (from Soviet to Polish), Soviet authorities demanded the exiles furnish proof of their state affiliation prior to September 1939. Amongst the documents recognised as being valid included official records — which were no longer in the possession of most of our compatriots. Fortunately, in November 1945, after interventions made by the Polish Embassy in Moscow, these criteria were somewhat loosened. The mass departures from deep inside the USSR got underway in January and February of 1946, although they would reach their peak in spring of that same year.
Will four agreements suffice?
The organisation of transport met with a multitude of problems — there was an evident lack of railway rolling stock along with equipment, not to mention the amount of food and medicine required for such a long journey. Furthermore, the great distances to the railway stations and delays in the dispatching of trains all caused disruption to the repatriation timetables. The Polish Embassy reported the various irregularities, but the Soviet authorities were unwilling and slow to put things right. Ultimately in 1946, from the deepest depths of the USSR, as part of the organised action there arrived within the newly remapped borders of Poland, more than 250 000 former exiles. They settled both in the so-called “old lands” of central Poland, as well as in the western and northern regions of the country, the so-called “Recovered Territories” as they were referred to in propaganda.
Photo from the collection of the Sybir Memorial Museum.
Following the completion of the massive population transfers of Poles from the former eastern territories of the Second Republic (an action which had been repeatedly postponed), along with the repatriation from the interior of the USSR, the Soviet authorities declared the population relocation to Poland as being finally concluded. It would also appear that the Warsaw government, subordinated to Moscow, was initially convinced that the four resettlement-repatriation agreements of 1944–1945 would solve at least the majority of problematic issues pertaining to Polish repatriates from the Soviet Union. In the meantime signals were being received by both the Polish government and the Polish Embassy in Moscow regarding a not insignificant number of our compatriots, who for various reasons, had still not managed to leave the USSR, but who very much yearned for a return to Poland. Various state institutions, ministries and administrative bodies were flooded with tens of thousands of dramatic appeals, requests and letters regarding persons still residing in the USSR. They concerned those compatriots who were held in Soviet labour camps and prisons, or who were still deep inside the USSR as free citizens, or else they were to be found on the former eastern lands of the Second Republic. Among this number were for example : repressed soldiers of the Home Army and other independence formations, Poles deported from Silesia and Polish POWs from the German army, Kashubians, Warmians, Mazurians, Polish emigrants in Latvia and in the Kovno region, Poles who had been incorporated into or demobilised from the Red Army, former camp-inmates and prisoners returned to their pre-war homes on the Borderlands, those sought out by relatives of the Augustów roundup, children (including orphans), families that had been split up, etc. Based on the volume of incoming letters received by the postwar authorities, there occurs a visible multiplication of the categories within the Polish population who were keen to be repatriated from the USSR. Taking into account the declarations of the Soviet authorities about the fulfilment of the agreements and a mass of submissions from society which could not be ignored, the Polish diplomatic service launched a painstaking intervention action with the intention of bringing back home as many people as was feasible. This effort was certainly not aided by the changing political system in Poland, which with each passing month developed a more Stalinist character. The Warsaw government, clearly subordinated to Moscow, gradually ceased in pressuring for the rights of its citizens still residing in the East. Attempts in 1947-1948 to conclude a Polish-Soviet extradition treaty, which might have signaled the opportunity to bring home at least some prisoners, ultimately amounted to nothing.
A reluctant Moscow
At the close of February 1947 the new Polish Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz headed out to the USSR, where in early March he signed off on a number of agreements regarding mutual relations between the two states. The intention was that among them would be found an agreement on the resumption of the repatriation action. However it was not a treaty in the classic sense, but rather an exchange of letters between the Polish head of government and Andrei Vyshinsky — Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR (and formerly Stalin’s prosecutor who had been responsible, among other things, for crimes committed during the so-called Great Purge). The downgraded status of the “agreement” indicated a Moscow that was unwilling to genuinely regulate the question of repatriation. The dates officially declared for the exchange of letters (5 and 11 March 1947) might also be treated with caution, as source material reveals that Vyshinsky signed the reply only at the end of April, and that the documents had in reality been back-dated. The following months showed that the “accord” was in fact a sham, and repatriation was to be definitively ended rather than being continued. On January 19 1948 the Polish Embassy in Moscow was handed a note stating that the repatriation and population transfers of Poles from the USSR had been definitively brought to a close. As a result of the restarting of the action, on the basis of the “agreement” of 1947 and individual interventions of the Embassy, only about 15 000 people were granted permission to leave. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Poles, the names of whom were known to Polish representatives, languished in Soviet camps, prisons, in former places of exile or as theoretically free Soviet citizens on the former Eastern Borderlands of the Second Republic.
Reclaiming the children
In such circumstances the Polish Embassy in Moscow focused on efforts to repatriate children. It sent out a series of communiques to the Soviet Foreign Ministry requesting the handing over to Poland those children of Polish citizens, whose number had only increased with the updating of records. Only in the late autumn of 1950 did the Soviets officially consent to their repatriation, as confirmed in a note dated 29 November 1950. Although the content of the note resembled a repatriation “agreement”, in this instance the Kremlin was in no way inclined to proceed (as in the spring of 1947) to an exchange of correspondence with the Polish side, instead simply further downgrading the merit of the “accord” with an essentially subjugated Poland. It was a one-sided dictation of the conditions concerning the flight of those children from Soviet territory, and ought to be viewed as representing the final act with regard to repatriation in the first years of post-war Poland. Only in the wake of Stalin’s death did a new chapter of repatriation commence. From April to November 1951 just 652 children arrived from the USSR to Poland in a manner that might be described as being officially organized. According to Soviet data the complete action for 1948–1950 brought about the repatriation of 787 children — less than 30 % of the minors on whose behalf parents, relatives and the Polish Embassy in Moscow had applied.
Symbols of remembrance
The presence in public spaces of memorials referring to the experiences of exiles, labour camp-inmates, prisoners and POWs places a primary focus on deportation or liquidation, i.e. emphasis is put upon the martyrological aspect of Polish citizens’ experiences in the East. Poland itself is in no short supply in terms of obelisks, commemorative plaques or installations erected to honour those resettlers from the eastern lands of the Second Republic — settlers responsible for the development of the new territories in the north and west of the country. The bulk of such memorials are characterized by a sense of nostalgia, emphasising the loss of small homelands on the Eastern Borderlands. Unfortunately, far fewer memorials reflect history touching on the repatriation of Siberian exiles. Among the most significant of them, is to be found in the seaside town of Rewal: on 17 September 2012 in the local Square of the Siberian Exile, a granite block positioned on authentic railway tracks was unveiled. The initiative originated with the local Siberian Exiles Association and then-mayor Robert Skraburski. On the monument is a plaque dedicated “to the memory of those inhabitants of the municipality repatriated from the inhuman land”. It displays the symbols of the Siberian Exiles’ Association and the Cross of the Exiles of Siberia. Inscribed on the sides of the obelisk are the names of those places the exiles came back from (Komi Republic and Syktyvkar, regions of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Kolyma, Tomsk Oblast) along with the names of 34 returnees. The Rewal monument plays an important role in the forging of the municipality’s identity, whose residents pay remembrance to those who, after experiencing the harsh realities of the East, came there and helped with the building of its modern, post-war history.
In the square in front of the monument, Patriotic ceremonies are organised, with the active participation of the local community led by Paweł Pawłowski – the mayor’s representative for cultural heritage and son of Sybirak Rudolf Pawłowski. In Rewal, celebrations marking Siberian Exile Remembrance Day hold particular significance. Carried out in the presence of the military, standard-bearers, local authorities, clergy, seniors, school pupils, local residents, and, of course, witnesses to history, in this way the memory of deportations to the East and postwar repatriation is kept alive. In attendance at the ceremony on 17 September 2025 was Włodzimierz Kaczyński – the last surviving Sybirak of the Rewal municipality.
In turn, in Bolesławiec (Lower Silesia) in 1995 a stone dedicated to Poles from the eastern regions of the Second Republic was erected in Freedom Square, and is commonly referred to as the “Monument to the Borderlanders”. Mounted upon it is a plaque commemorating the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the first transport of resettled persons from Drohobycz back to Bolesławiec soil (17 September 1945). In 1996 and 2004 additional plaques were added in memory of those Poles who had arrived after the war from Yugoslavia and France. Notable by its absence was any kind of plaque honouring Siberian exiles’ who had been repatriated. An initiative for such a plaque was tendered in 2012 by Zdzisław Lach — a member of the local Siberian Exiles Association. That organisation was ultimately responsible for financing the plaque, which was unveiled at a ceremony that took place in May 2013. It bears the inscription: “Following exile and hunger-filled wandering in Siberia we returned to the homeland. On the 68th anniversary of our return. Siberian Exiles”. The uniqueness of the monument in Bolesławiec is exemplified by its wide-ranging reference to resettlement, repatriation and return migration of Poles from various countries. It is noteworthy that the majority of the memorial signs erected after the war in the territories newly-incorporated to Poland were indirectly linked to the theme in question and centred around the slogan “the return to the homeland of the Piast Lands”. The narrative of the “recovered territories” as historically flawed and marked by propaganda from the era of the People’s Republic of Poland does not generally provide a basis for contemporary monuments, although there are of course exceptions. It would be inappropriate however, to erase the memory of the forced territorial changes in Poland after the Second World War and of the displaced people and repatriates who made a clear contribution to the development of the new regions of the country.
The return of Poland
Memorials should however, be assigned content that is consistent with the historical facts, yet free from ideological or propagandistic bias. In this regard, a recent attempt was made by The National Bank of Poland, which on 26 June 2025 issued an elegant silver collectors’ edition coin in the denomination of 10 zł to mark the “80th anniversary of Poland’s return to the Western and Northern Lands”. The inverted narrative (not the return of the lands to Poland, but the return of Poland to the lands) and the proper and historically accurate geographic naming (not “recovered territories”, but the Western and Northern Lands) give off the impression of a convincing initiative on the part of the central bank to commemorate one of the most significant and simultaneously tragic events in Polish 20th-century history.
Memory of resettlements and repatriation also guided the creators of the plaque dedicated to the Central Board of the State Repatriation Office in Łódź, which was installed at the historic headquarters of that institution (29 Piotrkowska Street), being unveiled at a ceremony on 12 April 2023 by the Rector of the University of Łódź, Prof. Elżbieta Żądzińska. The idea had originally been proposed some years before by Prof. Albin Głowacki and was later taken on and brought to completion by the author of this article. The text on the plaque informs the public of the wide-ranging activity of the State Repatriation Office and the multiple categories of post-war migration movements Poles were involved in. It was not entirely by chance then, that numerous Siberian exiles from Łódź were invited to take part in the unveiling ceremony and share their memories of the repatriation era. The largest transit centre of the State Repatriation Office in Warmia and Mazury was located in the town of Giżycko, in the building that later housed the medical school at 3 Sikorskiego Street.
In March 2019, on the initiative of the local branch of the Siberian Exiles’ Association, a commemorative plaque was erected on the facade of the building in honour of the Borderland inhabitants — deportees and at the same time repatriates — who settled in the region of Masuria. The Giżycko memorial stands as an interesting and simultaneously unique example of the combining of Borderland, Siberian-exile and repatriation themes, furthermore being linked to institutions that provided support, but which are now somewhat forgotten by society or unfairly associated solely with the communist administration. This refers of course to the State Repatriation Office and the repatriation centres during the second wave of arrivals of Poles from the USSR in the 1950s.
It is worth adding that in 2025 the Free City of Giżycko Association, together with the city and county governing bodies and the Giżycko Cultural Center, announced a sculpture competition for the creation of a Monument to the Displaced, which is to be situated in the vicinity of the local railway station. The rules of the competition state that “the Monument ought to preserve the memory of every type of group and individual, including both forced and voluntary displacements, that have entered into the history of the residents of our city and its surrounding areas. These forced displacements, especially those occurring in the 1940s, signified a turning-point in the history of our town — it was then, at this very station, that contemporary Giżycko came into being.” The universal idea of commemoration seems especially fitting.
Memory of repatriation is also inscribed onto the epitaph found on the grave of Zofia and Stefan Teligi and their daughter Zofia Teligi-Mertens. In the autumn of 1945 the mother Zofia, as a member of the Association of Polish Patriots, was co-organiser in preparing for the organised departure of Polish citizens from southern Kazakhstan. Later in Moscow, from 1946 she was involved in the general action concerning the repatriation of Polish citizens from the USSR. She was assisted by her then barely-twenty-year-old daughter, who in the early 21st century, when already retired, was responsible for bringing back to Poland around 200 compatriots from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Both Zofias — Siberian exiles — selflessly dedicated their lives working for the good of the Homeland, sparing no effort in the cause of repatriating Poles from the East.
Eighty years on from the end of the Second World War we ought to sustain the remembrance processes for our compatriots who arrived from the USSR as well as for those who aided them in enduring until the final chapter of their exiled-wanderings, also supporting them when resettling again in Poland. The history of Poles in the East occurred in a timeframe from the moment of deportation to eventual repatriation — and without paying remembrance to that last element, the history of Siberian exiles cannot be fully completed.
Wojciech Marciniak, Sybiraks’ Archive of the University of Łódź
Translated by Jan Dobrodumow