Today marks another grim anniversary in the history of Polish people. It was on this day in 1937 that the order was signed, giving the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) the go-ahead to root out so-called “Polish Spies.” What this really meant was the roundup of all Polish males and their subsequent sentence to death, carried out within days. In all, 139,835 people were arrested and of that, 119,091 were summarily executed. The remaining 24,744 were sentenced to slow death–the labor camps where they died due to exposure, malnutrition, and overwork.
What about the wives and children? The wives were given 5-10 year sentences in labor camps in Siberia, and the young children put in orphanages and raised as Russians with no knowledge of their roots. And what about elderly parents? They were left to fend for themselves, often with nothing. Many subsequently died. The total death count as a result of all of this is estimated to be about 250,000. Their crime? They were Polish, nothing else. The hardest hit areas were of course western Ukraine, on the border with Poland.
When you read about current events in Poland and the Polish desire to remove exiting monuments to the Soviet “liberators” of Poland in World War II, maybe this will help you understand why there is no love lost between Poland and Russia, which continues to this day.
You can read more details about this tragedy here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD_(1937%E2%80%9338)
