The General Langfitt Story
Chapter 2 - Deportation
After the invasion of 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union proceeded to annex territory inhabited by almost 13 000 000 people and which constituted more than half of Poland's post 1918 territory (Królikowski, 1983, p.17). Around 5000 000 of these people were ethnic Poles, the rest were predominantly Ukrainians and Byelorussians. Many Poles, both at the time and even at the time of writing, saw this 'stab in the back' as 'the realisation of a coldly planned design, a natural expression of Russia's attitude to the existence of an independent Poland ever since the Russian state had been born' (Ascherson, 1987, p. 92). Events over the next few years justified the belief that Stalin hoped to 'obliterate the Polish nation both physically and culturally' (Ascherson, 1987, p. 94).
Deportation of Officers
The Soviet authorities carried out an immediate round of deportations and arrests, principally of Polish leaders and those in government posts. In 1948 the Ministry of justice in London estimated that 200 000 Polish soldiers were arrested between 1939 and 1940, with at least 180 000 ending up as Soviet prisoners of war. A further 25 000 were forcibly drafted into the Soviet army, or taken as forced labour (Ministry of Justice, 1949). More recent figures suggest that over the remaining months of 1939, the Red Army rounded up an estimated quarter of a million Polish army personnel and transported them to the USSR (Walters, 1988, pp. 275-6).
Map - Approximate routes of the Polish exiles
Out of that total, between 12 000 and 15 000 officers were interned in camps near Katyn, Ostaskow and Starobel'sk. Relatives received intermittent letters from them until the spring of 1940. The occupying German army in April 1943 discovered the Katyn officers in a forest graveyard. According to Ascherson (1987, p. 123), no trace of the 4000 officers at the Starobel'sk camp nor the 6500 prisoners at Ostaskow has yet been found. Although Polish research in the post communist years is bringing to light more information about localities where NKVD (the secret police, now known as the KGB) victims, including Polish officers, were 'buried', nothing appears to have been published in English. The silence and uncertainty which surrounded the fate of these Polish officers left an enduring, if often understated, impact upon their friends and relatives. Stanislawa Jutrzenka-Trzebiatowska (Adamska), whose husband had joined the army three months before war was declared, summarised the events surrounding his disappearance with simple candour:
I received a note from my husband from Rostov, in Russia, where he was taken with other members of the Polish army. The note was brought to me by a man who came back from Russia. The ordinary soldiers came home but all the others were kept in the Soviet Union. I received only one more letter from him asking for boots and a belt. I found out that he was dead after I arrived in Australia. My brother sent me a book from Poland with all the names of those killed, Lista Katynska, which I still have. My husband's name is there, Henryk Adamski.
Similarly, Helena Lancucka, a school teacher who had been born in southern Poland in 1904 but had moved to Polesie in eastern Poland with her husband, recalled:
Life was very unsettled in Poland before the war. My husband was called up before war started, so he was already on the front when war started. He said it was a very dangerous time and that I should stay together with my family - my Mum and my sister - because he had to go to the army. In February 1940 I had a letter from my husband saying that he was in Kosielsk camp. We sent a letter to that address but never got an answer. My husband was killed in Katyn. For a long time I did not know.
The disappearance of the Polish officers had no less an impact upon their children, even if they were very young at the time. The account given by Bogdan Harbuz, who was only a boy of 6 when war broke out, hints at a persisting sense of injustice and disbelief shared by many of the participants whose fathers 'disappeared' during the war:
During World War One, my father was an officer in the Polish army, so in the inter-war period he was a reservist. Just before World War Two started he was called up. First he went to Warsaw as general staff but when the general staff started being evacuated across the border he stayed in Poland as a front line officer. He was taken prisoner by the Russians, and marched to a place called Kozel'sk. There were three prisoner of war camps for Polish officers: Kozel'sk, Starobel'sk and Ostaskow. For the first few months he was allowed to send letters to us in Poland. Then, when we were taken to Siberia in April 1940, we lost contact with our father altogether.
In 1942 the Polish government in exile asked Stalin what happened to the officers but he could not give any definite answer. Then the Germans uncovered the mass graves in Katyn so at that time we found out that between some 12 000 and 15 000 Polish officers were executed by a revolver bullet to the back of the head. But we only found out after the war that our father was murdered there. For many years, even after the war, I still could not believe it - not until I saw his name on the list of officers that were killed there.
As the Red Army focused its attention on the 1939 'Winter War' in Finland, there was a pause in the deportations while a 'sovietisation' of Polish institutions was carried out. Rigged elections took place in November which produced dummy assemblies of Ukrainians and Byelorussians who voted unanimously for their incorporation into the Soviet Union. There was some land reform and nationalisation, and Poles were removed from official posts and often from their own homes.
By February 1940, Stalin turned his attention to Poland once again as the need to secure his western front became more pressing. Polish families in the occupied zones were driven from their homes and packed into unheated cattle trucks which slowly headed for Siberia and the Soviet far east. Figures produced by the Ministry of Justice in London in 1949 suggested that around 1660 000 Polish soldiers and civilians were deported to the USSR (Stalin and the Poles, Ministry of Justice, London 1949).
With the gradual opening up of Soviet archives since 1989, figures are being revised by Polish scholars. Zofia Ciesielska, in a 1992 article, cites the following as more accurate, but still tentative, estimations. Approximately 12 000 Poles were interned in camps in Latvia before being transported to the USSR. Under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact 210 000-230 000 Polish citizens were automatically considered Soviet citizens and were incorporated into the Soviet Army in 1940-41. According to various sources, between 250 000-350 000 Polish civilians were arrested between 1939 and 1941 and were taken to gulags, hard labour camps throughout Siberia, Kazakhstan and Arkhangel'sk districts. Many of these people were lost without trace. Approximately 336 000 Polish refugees who were running from the German army were also deported to the USSR in June 1940.