Amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union

Amnesty for Polish citizens in USSR
The NKVD release document from the Gulag for a Polish soldier and surviving members of his family, dated 7 September 1941
Evacuation stages
  • Over 30,000 military personnel and about 11,000 children evacuated from 24 March until the first days of April 1942
  • Over 43,000 military personnel and about 25,000 civilians evacuated by sea from 10 August to 1 September 1942

Amnesty for Polish citizens in USSR was the one-time amnesty in the USSR for those deprived of their freedom following the Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II.[1] The signing of amnesty by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on 12 August 1941,[2] resulted in temporary stop of persecutions of Polish citizens under the Soviet occupation. Their mass persecution accompanied the 1939 annexation of the entire eastern half of the Second Polish Republic in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact against Poland.[3] In order to de-Polonize all newly acquired territories, the Soviet NKVD rounded up and deported between 320,000 and 1 million Polish nationals to the eastern parts of the USSR, the Urals, and Siberia in the atmosphere of terror.[4] There were four waves of deportations of entire families with children, women and elderly aboard freight trains from 1940 until 1941. The second wave of deportations by the Soviet occupational forces across Kresy (Polish eastern borderlands), affected 300,000 to 330,000 Poles, sent primarily to Kazakh SSR. The amnesty of 1941 was directed specifically at Polish victims of those deportations.[5]

The opportunity for evacuation of Polish civilians from the USSR came in a remarkable reversal of fortune. Following Operation Barbarossa, the USSR was forced to fight its own former ally, Nazi Germany, and in July 1941 signed the Sikorski–Mayski agreement with the Polish government-in-exile. The treaty granted amnesty for Polish citizens deported within the Soviet Union.[6] The evacuation by General Anders lasted from March to September 1942. Well over 110,000 Poles rescued by the Polish government travelled to Iran including 36,000 women and children.[7] The decision whom to consider Polish belonged to the Soviet side. As of 1 December 1941, the release of Polish nationals no longer included members of prewar minorities. All Polish Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews were considered Soviet and excluded from the amnesty.[8]

  1. ^ Mikolajczyk, S. (1948) The Pattern of Soviet Domination Sampson Low, Marston & Co Pages 17-19
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Piesakowski was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Jan T. Gross (1997). Bernd Wegner (ed.). Sovietisation of Poland's Eastern Territories. Berghahn Books. pp. 74–75. ISBN 1571818820. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  4. ^ Piotr Wróbel (2000). "De-Polonizing the territories newly incorporated into the USSR". The Devil's Playground: Poland in World War II. The Canadian Foundation for Polish Studies of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences. Price-Patterson Ltd. ISBN 0969278411. Archived from the original on 2018-04-27. Retrieved 2016-07-03.
  5. ^ Hope, Michael (2005) [2000]. Polish Deportees in the Soviet Union. London: Veritas Foundation. ISBN 0-948202-76-9.
  6. ^ Tadeusz Piotrowski (2004). "Amnesty". The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World. McFarland. pp. 93–94, 102. ISBN 0786455365 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Andrzej Szujecki (2004). "Near and Middle East: The evacuation of the Polish people from the USSR". In Tadeusz Piotrowski (ed.). The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World. McFarland. p. 97. ISBN 0786455365.
  8. ^ Barbara Patlewicz (2007). "Ludność cywilna i sieroty polskie po "amnestii" 12 sierpnia 1941 r." [Plight of civilians and orphans after the Amnesty of 12 August 1941] (PDF). Zesłaniec (in Polish). 32: 75.