Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

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henryk
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Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#1

Post by henryk » 12 Aug 2019, 20:42

https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7784/Ar ... ret-police
Poland remembers victims of Soviet secret police

Polish Radio 12.08.2019 01:10

Tens of thousands of ethnic Poles killed in the former USSR in the late 1930s were remembered at a memorial ceremony in Warsaw on Sunday.
Memorial ceremonies at the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East in Warsaw on Sunday. Photo: PAP/Piotr Nowak

"The worst genocidal act of Soviet state terror before World War II, known as the Polish Operation, began 82 years ago,” President Andrzej Duda said in a letter that an aide read during the ceremony. “Over 111,000 of our countrymen were killed, and almost 30,000 were sentenced to exile, only because they were Polish," Duda added in the letter.

At least 111,000 ethnic Poles were murdered in the former USSR and more than 100,000 others were deported into the Soviet interior, mainly to Kazakhstan and Siberia, as part of the so-called “Polish Operation” of the Soviet Union’s NKVD secret police in 1937 and 1938, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported. It quoted Jarosław Szarek, head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), as saying during Sunday's memorial that "a few words in Polish, a Polish prayer, were enough to be handed a death sentence."

The NKVD launched its "Polish Operation" on August 11, 1937, following an order issued by its head at the time, Nikolai Yezhov, the IAR news agency reported. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said last year that “the Polish Operation, approved by [Josef] Stalin and conducted by the NKVD, was one of the worst crimes against the Polish nation committed in the Soviet Union.”
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, PAP

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#2

Post by Art » 12 Aug 2019, 22:29

Victims of the "Polish operation" do not equal to "ethnic Poles". Of 36 768 people sentenced in September-November 1938 less than 60% were ethnic Poles, the others were Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, Jews etc etc. Then Soviet citizens were by no means Polish "countrymen" or "compatriots" despite any claims the present Polish government could make to them.


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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#3

Post by wm » 12 Aug 2019, 22:58

The majority of the shooting victims were ethnically Polish, but not all, wrote Timothy Snyder. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry, or classed as possibly having pro-Polish sympathies.
In order to speed up the process, the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#4

Post by Stiltzkin » 13 Aug 2019, 01:25

In order to speed up the process, the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names.
I believe this is called: Ethnic cleansing. Or the Russians (or some historians) would write : "Liberation". "Military aid". "Stabilization".

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#5

Post by Sergey Romanov » 13 Aug 2019, 09:27

Stiltzkin wrote:
13 Aug 2019, 01:25
In order to speed up the process, the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names.
I believe this is called: Ethnic cleansing. Or the Russians (or some historians) would write : "Liberation". "Military aid". "Stabilization".
It obviously happened before the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, so your labels couldn't apply less.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#6

Post by GregSingh » 13 Aug 2019, 10:21

NKVD document has this "labels":

fascist-insurgent, spying, sabotage, defeatist and terrorist activity of Polish intelligence in the USSR

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#7

Post by Sergey Romanov » 13 Aug 2019, 11:11

Correct.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#8

Post by SloveneLiberal » 15 Aug 2019, 11:44

I think at that time one of the main targets was Polish communist party. Because of anti-Stalinist views of some of its members and according to Soviet policy of political repression at that time it was ''better to cut whole tree if some parts of it are ill''. Polish communists survived mostly if they were already in polish jails. Like Ladislaw Gomulka for example.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#9

Post by wm » 15 Aug 2019, 13:18

It was rather Polish communist leaders survived mostly if they were already in polish jails.

Because the Polish Communist Party (and in Poland) was out of reach of the NKVD. And was actually Polish in name only, the majority (60 percent) of members were Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusians.
They were only able to exterminate its members seeking refuge in the USSR (the party was illegal in Poland), from 3,817 survived about 100.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#10

Post by Stiltzkin » 15 Aug 2019, 23:06

It obviously happened before the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, so your labels couldn't apply less.
Ethnic cleansing depends on the timeframe? Cleansing is cleansing, depending on the observational facts. It is not tied to territory but to the act of eradication. This is like saying: A murder occured in your garden, hence this it is not classified as such crime and the government has no right to send investigators (in this case, the investigators are the murderers :D ). Rwanda, Srebrenica, Red Khmer killings... you name it. Russia is a genocidal perpetrator. This still continues to this day, e.g. Chechnya (at least the 90s to early 2000s). Many boys in the early teenage to adult years were abducted and pulverized. This information reached the UN. Almost every structure razed to the ground. A war of annihilation and subjugation. What then follows is a russification of the population in an "Orwellian" fashion. The indoctrination of new generations, bred as mercenaries to serve as their personal HJ.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#11

Post by Art » 15 Aug 2019, 23:49

wm wrote:
12 Aug 2019, 22:58
The majority of the shooting victims were ethnically Polish, but not all, wrote Timothy Snyder. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry, or classed as possibly having pro-Polish sympathies.

What means suspected? Ethnicity was recorded in official documents, for example internal passports. NKVD order of 11 August 1937 prescribed to arrest:
- active members of the Polish Military Organization
- former POWs from the Polish Army that stayed in the Soviet Union
- defectors from Poland
- political emigrants from Poland
- former members of the Polish Socialist Party and other anti-Soviet political parties
- most active nationalist elements of the Polish-populated districts

Obviously, POWs from the Polish Army were not necessarily ethnic Poles, defectors and emigrants were not necessarily ethnic Poles, members of the socialist party were not necessarily ethnic Poles etc. As a result the "Polish" operation didn't strictly target Poles by ethnicity which is confirmed by data presented by Petrov an Roginsky. Then, it was one of several similar "national line" mass operations. Which were in their turn a part of a larger campaign against the most diverse unloyal elements. Taking "Polish" operations out of this contexts would be unhistorical.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#12

Post by Sergey Romanov » 16 Aug 2019, 08:46

Stiltzkin wrote:
15 Aug 2019, 23:06
It obviously happened before the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, so your labels couldn't apply less.
Ethnic cleansing depends on the timeframe?
Labels obviously do. We were talking about specific labels, remember?

For all those with a minimal attention span let me repeat again: we were talking about specific labels.

Should I repeat once more?

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#13

Post by Sergey Romanov » 16 Aug 2019, 08:51

BTW, during the Katyn-complex massacres they murdered some Russian nationalists who just happened to have Polish citizenship:

http://katynfiles.com/content/gdasbu-1.html

В письме отдела "А" МГБ УССР от 24.10.1952 (л. 78; датируется по описи) сообщается, что следственное дело вместе с заключенным Владимиром Филаретовичем Первенцевым (2263 в украинском списке) было 29.05.1940 при номере 541/сп направлено в 1 спецотдел НКВД СССР и должно храниться в Москве. Кстати, по иронии судьбы, кременецкий адвокат Первенцев, расстрелянный как польский гражданин, был арестован 26.09.1939 как "руководитель русских националистов" (л. 197).

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#14

Post by wm » 16 Aug 2019, 20:01

Art wrote:
15 Aug 2019, 23:49
What means suspected? Ethnicity was recorded in official documents, for example internal passports.
They were recorded but without punch card tabulating machines it would take years to access the information.
Maybe even a hundred years for a single person checking registration cards one by one.

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Re: Poles Murdered in USSR Pre-WWII

#15

Post by Stiltzkin » 16 Aug 2019, 21:43

Labels obviously do. We were talking about specific labels, remember?

For all those with a minimal attention span let me repeat again: we were talking about specific labels.

Should I repeat once more?
The greatest irony here is, that one of the most avid contributors in the Holocaust section, the "bastion" and blogger against deniers, also emerges as a denier of Soviet atrocities, but that is not surprising. If I recall correctly, then it is against the forum rules to deny any form of crime. Culling specific groups just by relying on genealogical tools can be a form of cleansing. Driving over protesters in the streets of Budapest with T-34s may be none, but still classifies as a crime.

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