February 10th.

This is the anniversary of the day that changed everything.

On this date in 1940, five members of my family, together with almost half a million other men, women and children, were forcibly taken from their homes at gunpoint, packed into cattle trains, and transported to the forced labour camps of northern Siberia. Their only crime was that they were Polish citizens. It was done so that no trace would ever remain of them, or their language, or their history.

 It was an ethnic cleansing of truly biblical proportions.

They were given no hint or warning of what was to come. The vast operation, carried out all over eastern Poland on a single night under cover of darkness and snow, had been prepared months in advance. It was first of four mass deportations of the population resulting in the incarceration on Russian soil of almost two million Polish citizens

You are not likely to have heard any of this at school, or read about it in the mainstream history books. For almost 50 years, Britain, the United States of America and the Soviet Union colluded together to cover up, or obfuscate, all details of the crime. Even in (Soviet- dominated) Poland, it was forbidden to mention any part of this story until 1989.

All the arrests on that fateful night, February 10th 1940, followed a basic standard pattern. At four o’clock in the morning, when most people were sure to be at home, a loud knock was heard at the door. Three or four soldiers entered, armed with pistols. They herded everyone (including the elderly and children) into one room and put them up against the wall in their nightclothes. Meanwhile, the house was searched and an inventory made of all the family’s assets. They were then ordered to dress warmly and given fifteen minutes to gather together their belongings and prepare for what they were told was, “a long journey”.

It was snowing lightly outside. The temperature was minus 40 degrees, one of the coldest nights in living memory. Two horse-driven sleighs stood waiting to transport them to the railway station. Once there, they were summarily loaded onto cattle wagons (thrust tightly in a standing position, one person next to another) like sardines. It was not uncommon for seventy people to be packed into each wagon, families with children. There was often no room to lie down, or even to sit.

In the centre of each cattle truck stood a small stove, the only source of heat. For ventilation, there was only a tiny window near the ceiling covered in masses of barbed wire. A rough hole in the floor served as a toilet. The doors of the wagon were padlocked loudly and not opened again for three days. Some of the children began to faint from lack of air and water. The men beat loudly against the doors in desperation, but to no avail. Finally, after four days, the train began its passage northwards to the frozen wastes of Siberia, a journey that was to take upwards of four weeks.

Many, however, did not survive to reach their intended destinations. The children were the first to succumb to the intense cold, the lack of air and the scarcity of food and water. Now and again, the train would stop at some abandoned station in the wilderness, and the doors unlocked to allow the passengers to dispose of their dead. The earth was frozen hard, and it was not possible to give them a proper burial. So they merely covered the bodies in a light sprinkling of snow, said a few prayers over them, and continued their journey northwards.
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The story of their exile, the miracle of their eventual release, and the desperate attempts by hundreds of thousands of them to cross Russia to freedom in Iran, is a subject too vast to outline here.

But few of those who managed to escape from Siberia ever saw their homes again. By a cruel twist of fate, their political destiny was sealed in Tehran in 1943. In November of that year, the leaders of Russia, Britain and the USA met in the Iranian capital to decide the fate of Post-war Europe. During their discussions (which were held in secret), the United States and Britain endorsed Stalin’s ethnic cleansing in eastern Poland. They decided to assign Poland to the zone of influence of the Soviet Union after the war. Poland would lose both its independence and its territorial integrity. The eastern part of the country, from which the exiles to Siberia had been originally expelled, would be incorporated wholesale into Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Polish government was not informed of the decision until years later, and felt understandably betrayed. 48,000 Polish soldiers would lose their lives fighting for the freedom of (among others) those very nations whose governments had secretly betrayed them in Tehran, and later (in 1945) at Yalta. The Polish soldiers were not allowed to take part in the Victory Celebrations in London. Most of them could not return to their homes. Many of those who did were immediately arrested. Some of them were even returned to the work camps of Siberia.

February 10th does not mean anything to most people. But in households such as mine, this date on the calendar cannot be allowed to pass without solemn remembrance and reflection. I am a child of Siberian exiles. My ancestors lie buried in the cold soil of that bleak land: all of them exiled against their will by a ruthless totalitarian state.

  

Siberia is in my blood. Its winds blow loudly through my soul.

Ryszard Antolak
Pictures by Stefan Centomirski