Deportation to the Arctic

When the USSR invaded Poland in 1939, Stalin ordered the deportation of anyone he perceived as posing a threat. Since my grandfather was a forest worker with an excellent knowledge of the vast forests of the Bialystok area, he was deported along with his family. My mother recalls a particular night not long after the Russians invaded when the NKVD arrived and gave the family two hours to pack. My grandmother got talking to a young soldier who was detailed to stand guard. She made some hot milk to warm him up. When she asked the NKVD officer what she would need to take, he said not to worry about taking anything as where they were going was a paradise where everything would be supplied. On hearing this, the young soldier pulled my grandmother to one side and told her to take everything that was warm.

They were deported in cattle trucks to Arkhangelsk in the Arctic Circle. While they spent a year in the gulag, they had a number of different experiences. The weather was such that people died by being stranded in snow. They saw the evil of the Soviet system and how it dehumanised the ordinary people, with whom my mother describes having good relations.

They were freed when there was an amnesty following Operation Barbarossa. On hearing of the formation of a Polish Army under General Anders, my mother's brother joined the Polish Army. Because of this, the family was evacuated from Russia, and my mother was sent to refugee camps in Karachi, British India, and Lusaka, Zambia. My uncle joined General Maczek's armoured division and fought in Europe, taking part in the fighting for the Falaise Gap in Normandy. He was wounded in Holland whilst rescuing a comrade from a burning tank, which was then hit by another shell.