KREW KUTZ: “Displaced Persons” Explained - Part 2

By Bernie Krewski

The Dziuba, Dumanowski, Garszczal, and Mikosz families provide brief but valuable sketches of what caused them to leave their Polish homeland during WWII, eventually coming to live in this community. Recently, scholars and journalists have published detailed explanations of their complicated journeys, especially since the disintegration of the Soviet Union beginning in 1989. These writings give us a much larger and clearer picture. Anne Applebaum’s “The Gulag: A History” (2003) is an example.

Poland in 1939 was vulnerable to invasion. Ruled by Prussian, Russian, or Austro-Hungarian Empires for more than a century, it was finally granted statehood in the peace treaty ending WWI. But then it was squeezed between two authoritarian regimes – the German Third Reich and the Soviet Union, both contending that much of the Polish landscape was part of their territory!

Then on August 23, 1939, Germany and Russia signed a non-aggression pact. They agreed to take no military action against each other for the next ten years. This gave the Soviet Union time to strengthen its military and assured Hitler his troops would be unopposed to invade Poland. The results were immediate - the Nazis invaded the western half of Poland on September 1st, the Russians followed two weeks later (September 17), taking control of the eastern half.

If your home was in the western part of Poland, you were potentially faced with slave labour, prison, or murder. Auschwitz, the well-known concentration and extermination known for killing Jewish people, was originally built in 1940 to eliminate Polish political prisoners – those resisting Nazi policies.

Transportation to Siberia or murder were common practices if you resided in the eastern half of Poland. As Anne Applebaum notes, Russian authorities in April 1940 secretly murdered more than 20,000 Polish officers and officials in the Katyn forest – the country’s elite. No one knew what happened to them. “Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted Soviet responsibility for this massacre only in 1991” (p. 431).

As John Dziuba told me one Sunday afternoon: “There was a knock on their door during the night. We were told to pack supplies within an hour for two weeks of travel. My brother said, ‘Let’s fight them!’ We looked outside and our house was surrounded by soldiers.”

Frank Dumanowski describes living conditions in Siberia in his family’s history. I heard similar stories from Honorata Mikosz as well.

Not surprisingly, Nazi Germany violated its non-aggression agreement less than two years later, invading the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941. It was the largest and costliest land offensive in human history, with about ten million combatants taking part.

In desperation, the Russians turned to Great Britain and its Allies for military support. One condition imposed by the Allies was forcing the Soviets to release thousands of Poles detained in Siberia. Many were in horrible physical and psychological condition from their experience. Some joined the “Polish Army” that was soon established, originally called “The Polish Armed Forces of the USSR.” Others were willing to contribute to the war effort as civilians since their homeland, now a war zone, offered no safety if they returned.

The Polish army eventually became the Polish Second Corps attached to the British 8th Army with headquarters in Iran. It was led by the legendary General Wladyslaw Anders (1892-1970) who escaped the fate of his comrades murdered at Katyn. It was members of this group who were involved in the famous battle of Monte Cassino, February & March 1944, overturning the Germany stronghold in Italy.

John Dziuba described to me electrifying moments of the Cassino invasion, travelling on steep mountainous roads in darkness – men guiding vehicles at night, driving with no lights!

An example from my own family helps to explain why it is often so difficult for people to fully describe their unspeakable horrors in Siberia.

Josephine is the mother-in-law of my nephew who lives in Rossland, BC. When I met her in the early 1990s, it was to casually find out where she grew up, reportedly near where my Polish father was born. A simple conversation turned into a remarkable unspoken story, unknown to her own daughter, of living in Siberia and holding her younger sister as she died in her arms.

About six million Polish people perished during WWII, as Bernard Wisniewski notes – half were Christians, and the other half were Jews. They died in camps and prisons, shot in city squares and forests, hanged from lampposts and burned in barns and churches. There was even a special concentration camp for Polish children where 12,000 of the 13,000 occupants were killed. Close to 100,000 Polish children were kidnapped for “Germanification.” – and only about one-fifth returned to their birth-families after the war.

Oyen’s “Siberian Six” had the courage to overcome the tragic circumstances of their early lives, consequently contributing in personal ways to the vibrant life of this community. For that they will always be remembered!