“By transforming a country into a wasteland, they proclaim to have delivered peace.”*
Ryszard Kulesza: Probably all over the world, in all places on earth, from ancient times to the most recent, smaller and larger empires have used deportations.
Historical policy in Russia as a substitute for state ideology
Jan Rachinskij: Today, history politics occupies roughly the same place in Russia as ideology did in Soviet times. And it is not just about imposing state-approved interpretations of events.
“Our stolen youth weeping for its stolen homeland” (Dalia Grinkevičiūtė) – A child´s memories of deportation from Lithuania to Siberia
Vytenė Muschick: Dalia, her brother Juozas, and her parents were deported to Siberia from their hometown of Kaunas during the first mass deportations on 14 June 1941. She was 14 years old at the time and her brother Juozas was 17. That deportation consisted of over 12,000 people; 5,060 of these were children, and 863 more children were later born in exile
Union of Defenders of Freedom in Polesie and in labour camps 1946-1956
Adam Hlebowicz: The formation of the underground youth organisation the Union of Defenders of Freedom (ZOW – Związek Obrońców Wolności) in Polesia in 1946 arouses amazement and admiration for the heroism and determination of a group of Polish youth. After two years of activity, many of its members found themselves in labour camps in Vorkuta.
Maria Obuchowska-Morzycka’s journey to Siberian Arcadia
Wiesław Caban, Lidia Michalska-Bracha: Maria Obuchowska-Morzycka followed her husband into Siberian exile in 1863.
She Kindled a Light of Hope: The Extraordinary Fortune of Dr. Zofia Teliga-Mertens and Her Family
She kindled a light of hope: the extraordinary fortune of Dr. Zofia Teliga-Mertens and her family.
A commander’s notebook reveals the fates of exiles
Daniel Boćkowski: Two ordinary school notebooks containing a dozen or so pages of tables and statistical summaries turned out to be an invaluable source of knowledge about the rules governing the small special settlements to which deportees were sent by the Soviets in 1940 and 1941.
Resettled in Africa on the way to Poland
Adam Czesław Dobroński: A total of 19 Polish settlements were set up in Africa, with more than 20,000 Polish citizens living in them. They arrived by sea transport from Persia to the ports of Mombasa, Tanga and Dar es Salam, Mozambique, and from there were transported inland.
A Passenger on the Philosophers’ steamer
Sergei Lebedev: I am standing on the quay in the Polish city of Szczecin. The north wind from the Baltic Sea brings a thick gray drizzle that envelops the buildings and the port cranes, creating a sense of stagnant timelessness. A tugboat on the Oder River, almost hidden by the curtain of rain and turned into a fluid silhouette, gives a loud, long blast of its horn and vanishes in the fog. But the horn still sounds, an echo out of the past.