The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World by Tadeusz Piotrowski (Editor)

From the Publisher

Among the great tragedies that befell Poland during World War II was the forced deportation of its citizens by the Soviet Union during the first Soviet occupation of that country between 1939 and 1941.

This is the story of that brutal Soviet ethnic cleansing campaign told in the words of some of the survivors. It is an unforgettable human drama of excruciating martyrdom in the Gulag. For example, one witness reports: "A young woman who had given birth on the train threw herself and her newborn under the wheels of an approaching train." Survivors also tell the story of events after the "amnesty." "Our suffering is simply indescribable. We have spent weeks now sleeping in lice-infested dirty rags in train stations," wrote the Milewski family. Details are also given on the non-European countries that extended a helping hand to the exiles in their hour of need.

About the Author:

Tadeusz Piotrowski is a professor of sociology and the associate dean of faculty at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester and also the author of The Indian Heritage of New Hampshire and Northern New England (2002), Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn (2000), Poland's Holocaust (1998) and Vengeance of the Swallows (1995). He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire.

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Table of Contents