Posted on 09/01/2004 9:55:14 AM PDT by lizol
65 years on: Tales from invaded Poland
By Liam Allen BBC News Online
German troops tear their way into Polish territory On 1 September, 1939, German tanks, infantry and cavalry penetrated Polish territory on several fronts. The Germans were closely followed by the Soviet Union, whose troops invaded from the east on 17 September.
Sixty-five years on, BBC News Online talks to one London-based Polish woman about how the invasion changed her life irrevocably.
Teodozja-Zofia Glodowska discovered her country had been invaded through snatched snippets of conversations from her parents.
Little was she to know what impact the invasion would have, not just on her life, but also on the history of the world.
"I was a schoolgirl so I found out from my parents.
"My father just said 'go out to play'.
"Everybody was talking about it but they were trying not to transmit the information to the young children because that would have worried them."
Soon it became difficult for the adults to keep the secret any longer.
"Day and night, we would hear the aircraft and, I'm not sure why, but we would put pillows in the windows. I suppose it was to stop bullets or to stop the glass breaking."
Teodozja-Zofia's family had already moved from western Poland to her father's other estate in Dubno, in the east of the country.
Her father, who had obtained and read with horror a copy of Adolf Hitler's Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf, had hoped the Germans would not encroach on eastern Poland.
"We thought we'd be safe in the east but that wasn't to be," Teodozja-Zofia says wistfully.
Packing up
Sixteen days after the Nazi invasion, the Soviet Union entered Poland from the east.
Memories of the coming months are sketchy for Teodozja-Zofia, who does not wish to reveal her age, but her next clear memory - of 10 February, 1940 - will stay with her for ever.
Two Soviet soldiers woke us up and said 'you have half an hour to pack your stuff and then you are going to a different area'
On this day: Invasion of Poland
"It was very early in the morning. I will never forget it. It was very, very dark.
"Two Soviet soldiers woke us up and said 'you have half an hour to pack your stuff and then you are going to a different area'.
"I asked my parents what was going on? My mum was in tears.
"But I was very brave, I was packing up and put three dresses on, to make sure I kept them.
"My mum said stop worrying. She didn't say where we were going. She didn't want to upset me."
Cattle train
After gathering whatever possessions they could, the family - mum and dad plus Teodozja-Zofia and her brother - loaded a sledge before being marched through the snow to the nearest town of Shepetovka, just across the Soviet border.
"We went there on sledges, everybody was carrying all their belongings. It was very cold because it was the middle of winter."
From there the family, along with hundreds of other Poles, were forced to board a cattle train.
"There was no lavatory," remembers Teodozja-Zofia, "just a hole in the compartment which people queued to use."
None of them knew where they were heading.
Eventually, the train arrived in Kotlas, deeper into the Soviet Union.
"From there, we got our sledges again," says Teodozja-Zofia.
"We walked through lots and lots of woods and snow. Woods after woods and snow after snow.
"Eventually we stopped at a labour camp."
'Indoctrination'
At the camp, the children were forced to either work or have "an education".
Teodozja-Zofia said: "It wasn't education, it was indoctrination and my mother would not let me be indoctrinated.
"So I had to hide in the barracks from the guards when I should have been at indoctrination."
The overseer walked from barrack to barrack and said 'you are free'
She would roll herself in a blanket and hide at the foot of the bed.
"I fooled the guards a few times doing this," she says.
On 30 July, 1941, an amnesty agreement enabled all Polish people to be freed from the Soviet Union - which had by now been invaded by the Nazis - in order to form an army to help defeat Hitler.
Teodozja-Zofia has fond memories of hearing the news.
She said: "The overseer walked from barrack to barrack and said 'you are free, you can go wherever you like'.
'Leaving hell'
Most of camp inmates made the slow, painful journey back to the train station at Kotlas.
"We walked village to village. We stopped at one house and a woman with us had a child that was just freezing cold.
"She asked for some food for the child and unwrapped it from its blankets.
My mother died in front of me in the hospital bed I was sharing with her
"The child was dead. There must have been millions of instances of this happening."
When she and her family eventually arrived back at Kotlas, Teodozja-Zofia remembers thinking 'I have left hell'.
But her joy was short-lived.
She and her mother were taken to hospital near Kotlas, both suffering from typhoid.
"My mother died in front of me in the hospital bed I was sharing with her. Somehow, my survival instinct must have taken over."
Around this time Teodozja-Zofia was also separated from her father, who left to fight Hitler in the Soviet Union's newly-formed Polish army.
She never saw him again.
Nazareth reunion
Teodozja-Zofia also lost touch with her brother when she and hundreds of other Polish girls were taken by train, from Kotlas all the way to Nazareth, in what is now Israel.
"There was a proper school in Nazareth just for girls on the site of a monastery. We lived there too.
"I was very happy there - it felt like a home."
But, although separated from her brother in Kotlas, the pair were to meet again in Nazareth.
"My brother was firstly taken to a place in Russia but we were reunited in Nazareth where he went to a boys' school.
"We were allowed to visit each other from time to time."
When the war ended, Teodozja-Zofia left Nazareth for London and has lived happily in the capital ever since.
But although she tries not to discriminate over past wrongdoings, her experiences have left deep scars.
"I feel cold towards the Germans, but towards the Soviet Union I feel frozen."
TEODOZJA-ZOFIA'S STORY - KEY EVENTS 23 August 1939 Non-aggression pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union 1 September, 1939 Germany invades Poland on several fronts 17 September, 1939 Soviet Union invades Poland from east 10 February, 1940 Teodozja-Zofia's family ordered to Soviet labour camp 22 June, 1941 German forces invade the Soviet Union 30 July, 1941 Poles to be freed from Soviet Union to fight against Hitler Autumn/winter 1941 Her mother dies of typhoid; father joins Polish army in the Soviet Union 1942 Teodozja-Zofia arrives in Nazareth for schooling 7 May 1945 Germany signs unconditional surrender ending war in Europe 1947 Teodozja-Zofia sent to London where she has lived ever since
What happened to Poland was a tragedy.
The only interesting snippet of history that has been "overlooked" is that Poland did invade and annex land in border countries in the time right before WWII. For instance, Poland invaded Slovakia (then called Czecho-Slovakia) in 1938 and forced Slovakia cede territories to Poland. Same type of thing happened with the Ukraine.
My father-in-law's earliest memory is hiding from German soldiers.
It's hard for me to tell whether Poles view Germany or Russia with greater distaste.
Wrong!
1) Poland's never invaded Slovakia. You probably meant Zaolzie, which is area around city of Cieszyn - on the Polish - Checholovakian border. In fact - when the Germans entered Chechoslovakia Polish troops took that area over. I'm not proud of it, especially because of the "company" and circumstances in which it happened.
But you should know, that Zaolzie was actually regained by Poland, because it was taken by the Chechoslovakians in 1919-1920, when Poland was fighting the Bolsheviks.
2) I have no idea what you meant writing about Ukraine. Please let me know, so maybe I'll find something new about history of my country.
I think it's like choosing what's worse - AIDS or cancer.
"With the Germans we lose our lives, with the Russians we lose our souls." - General Anders
From this site, on the Russo-Polish War (1919-1921):
After minor conflicts in 1919, in April 1920 a Polish force invaded Ukraine, took Kiev in May. The Soviet Red Army launched a counteroffensive and reached the Vistula near Warsaw in August 1920, where they were defeated by the Poles (Miracle of the Vistula). A truce was signed in September, the Treaty of Riga (March 1921) ended the war. The Polish forces suffered c. 25,000 fatalities, the Russian forces c.105,000.
L,
I think alot depends on how far back we go in considering what "Poland" means.
Before the first partition, weren't portions of Lithuania and Ukraine within what was then regarded as Poland?
At one time the Kingdoms of Lithuania and Poland were united in a Commonwealth, at the time it was the largest kingdom in all of Europe.
Nazis to the left... Communists to the right... What a hell of a place to be in!
They don’t attacked Ukrainians but with help of UKRAINIAN troops they fought with Russians and it is big difference. In that time Ukraine cannot be an independent country, as always before, question was who take that land Russia or Poland. Russians where there, it was too dangerous for Poland.When polish troops would give Ukrainians independent country, immediately they would have Russians there and Poland cannot had Russians so close their borders. In Poland Ukrainians were in fact free people, they had the same rights like Poles, in Russia even Russians don’t have too many things to say… Now at last they are independent country and good for them!
Well, actually - as a nation we can't "complain" we've got bored during the history.
Also, it is important to acknowledge that the Poles fought several wars in the '20s and '30s, including in Upper Silesia, which had a significant German population to whom Poland was not charitable.
Poland's activities of the previous decades had thus made it an attractive target for both Russia and Germany. Not that the invasion was at all justified -- it just made Poland an obvious first choice for the expansionist aims of both invaders.
But this was not an invasion on Ukraine, it was on the Soviets. At that time Ukrainian troops, commanded by ataman Semen Petlura, were fighting the Soviets arm to arm with the Poles, Marshal's Joseph Pilsudski (Polish national leader) idea, was to help to create independent Ukraine and Belarus, allied with Poland. Finally, that idea failed, and - in fact - Poland in Riga behaved towards Ukraine a little bit like US and UK later in Yalta towards Poland, which is shame.
But I can't agree with saying, that Poland concquered any territory from Ukraine, or forced it to cede any teritory. I'd say it was taken from Soviet Russia and not given to the Ukrainians.
As Gefreiter wrote in # 8 "alot depends on how far back we go in considering what "Poland" means". We must remember that it was just after WW1. There was never Ukraine as a state before. In fact, some form of Ukrainian stat existed for a short time after WW1, but was "grinded" during Polish - Soviet fights.
Poland considered itself as a succesor of former Commonwealth of Both Nations (consisting of Polish Crown and Great Lithuanian Duchy) which was destroyed and divided in XVIII century by Russia, Prussia and Austria. Land of Ukraine was a part of that state, within the Crown. Ukraine was supposed to become the third part of the Union, as the "third Nation". But it didn't for many reasons. In my opinion it was one of the biggest mistakes in Polish history, leading to the final fall of the Commonwealth.
So - after almost 200 years of non-existence, when the Poles were rebuilding their state, many of them considered western part of Ukrainian land as Poland (like city of Lvov).
I swear - this is the first time I've heard of any Polish - Slovakian conflict after WW1. Are you sure you're right?
As far as I remember - after WW1, one of the new states, that emerged out of former Austro-Hungary was Czechoslovakia, not separate Czech Republic and Slovakia (like they're now). So - I think you're referring to Zaolzie, that I've mentioned above.
But - I may be wrong. I'm not a historian, and just after WW1 it was a total mess and kind of a national "kettle" in Central Europe, many nations were fighting each other to create own state and form its best borders. So - I can't exclude, that there were some Polish - Slovakian clashes. I'll try to find something about it.
Ping!
See also:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1204820/posts?page=26
The Poles moved into Cieszyn only after Slovakia was effectively taken over by the Nazis. It was to protect the Polish citizens from the Germans, not to "steal" land from Slovakia, which for all intents and purposes had ceased to be an independent nation.
Here is another description.
Poland's defeat of the Soviet Union in that war helps to explain why the Soviets were eager to help Nazi Germany partition it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.