Operation Vistula -
1944-1947
A
brief history of how the Lemkos are driven out
of
their native lands by the Polish soldiers (in
Stalin communist-controlled Poland)
Akcja Wisla (in
Polish) Operation Vistula (in
English) - Ukrainians just called themselves chased or pushed.
Map showing where people were re-distributed when they were chased
out of their ancesteral homes in the years surrounding 1946- 1947.
Losie (Nowy Sacz
County, Poland) by Nancy nsrevak@aol.com
During
Akcja Visla, my own Lemko family was deported from the village of Losie
(Nowy Sacz County) to the devastated,
former German Prussian lands in western Poland (near
Wroclaw, which used to be Breslau, Germany). And yes,
it was truly a horrid, gut-wrenching experience
that no one should ever have to endure.
It was a beautiful, sunny summer day in peaceful
Losie in June of 1947. The hills and pastures were green, the
forests lush, and the flowers, a burst
of every color in the rainbow. Then out of nowhere, and withoutany
warning, soldiers invaded the village, running from house to house,
pounding on doors with their rifle butts and shouting orders for everyone
to pack up what they could carry and be ready to evacuate the village -- in
just 30 minutes. The Lemko villagers had no ideawhat was
happening or why, and no explanations were given.
After the villagers were all together, they were surrounded by armed soldiers
and led to a train station quite a distance away. Young and old,the
villagers walked, sat on a wagon, or rode in trucks for many miles and hours.
At the train station, villagers were split up -- a few this way, a few over
there -- and directed by the soldiers to waiting cattle cars, where they were packed
in with other families,like sardines. Any livestock they
happened to bring along was loaded in as well. People on one side of thecar,
animals on the other.
It was all very efficient. Some time later, the car doors were slammed
and bolted shut. They would remain that way for the rest of the
journey. For many, this would be the last time they would ever see theirbeautiful
homeland again.
The boxcar had no windows, no toilet facilities, and no food or water
(except what people brought with them). There was nowhere to sit
or sleep except the floor. It was sweltering hot. No breeze. No
fresh air. No cooling off in the evenings. There was no privacy
to do the normal things a body needs to do. And the people went days and
sometimes a week or more without seeing daylight.
It wasn't long before the closed-in air became unbearably foul with the
stench of farm animals, sweating people, animal and human excrement,
people vomiting. Illness and disease soon became rampant. But
there was no medicine. The attitude of those in charge was simply "if they
die, they die "-- which
many did.
Pregnant women lost their babies or died in childbirth. With nofood
or water, new mothers couldn't produce enough milk to feed their babies,
and the babies died. Other mothers starved themselves to death in order
to feed their children. The days, nights, weeks, months were
filled with the agonizing cries of hungry children and babies,
the moans of the sick and dying, and the sobs of the family members who lost them. To make things even
worse, dead bodies stayed in the closed boxcar until the next stop--which could
be as long as a week. During the stop, the people would scurry to look
for anything that might be edible or a drop of water.
The trains carrying the Lemkos were in no hurry. Any time another train
a distance away might need access to a crossing along the Lemko train's
path, the Lemko train would stop and wait until the other train passed
by. And
when the Lemko train needed to change tracks, the engineers took their
good old time while the people sat sweltering inside the boxcars.
It's reported that some engineers played games with their
Lemko passengers. One game was
to repeatedly speed up the train and suddenly
put on the brakes, which would toss the people and animals in the
cars around and on top of each other. If you suffered a broken bone,
too bad. Another game was
to stop at the Auschwitz concentration camp and open the doors
to scare the passengers into thinking they were going there to be gassed. This
frightened the people inside the cars so much that, in their frenzy
to move to the back of the car, they actually trampled other people
in the car to death.
Some Lemkos tried to escape but were usually captured, beaten, or shot. In
the end, a journey that might normally take four to five hours took
up to three months. Imagine three months locked up with all
that.
My family finally reached it's resettlement village in September. The area
was pretty devastated by thebombing and fierce fighting that had taken
place there during the war. And the landscape was barren and flat
-- not anything like beautiful Lemkovyna.
The father was given the choice of three houses for his family of seven. He
picked the best one -- a two-room house with no roof, no windows,
no stove, no electricity, no furniture, no heat -- nothing. But it
did have four walls. Since most of the floorboards had been torn up,
the family slept on floorboards or the dirt floor until they could scrape together
enough remnants or money to start fixing things.
The parents and older children tried to find work. But, at first,
no one would hire them. This wasn't because the Poles were bad people. It
was because of what else had been happening at the time.
You see, Western Poland was where the Eastern Poles (whose lands ended
up being
attached to Ukraine) were resettled when they were permitted to return to Poland. But
when the Lemkos were deported from Lemkovyna and
being sent to Western Poland, these same Eastern Poles got uprooted
again -- this time to resettle in Lemko villages that were now vacant. Imagine
how the Poles must have felt. It wasn't fair either way. Unfortunately,
some of the Eastern Poles were so angry, they burned down their houses
before they left so that the Lemkos couldn't have them.
So it was already a hostile atmosphere before the Lemkos ever arrived.
The Western Poles had probably never seen a Lemko before and didn't
know anything about them--other than thinking the Lemkos were to blame
for the Eastern Poles being sent away and were coming to take their
place. Lemkos
were complete strangers--and not one of their own. (And we
all know the attitude toward 'outsiders' even in the U.S. at that time.)
When the Lemkos finally arrived and got off the train, they were dirty and
stinking from their long journey -- and probably had few clean or untattered
clothes to change into even later. They had lice and were covered
with sores. And because the Lemkos had so little, they were probably
looked like beggars and thieves. So besides being pre-disposed
to not liking the Lemkos, the Poles didn't trust them either.
To make matters worse, the Lemkos spoke a different language that was
certainly wasn't Polish. So to the Poles, the Lemko weren't even
Polish. But the language problem was short-lived because the
government had forbidden the Lemkos from speaking the Lemko language. So
the Lemkos had to learn to speak Polish (or Russian) very quickly.
The government also singled out the Lemkos in other ways. Lemkos were
forbidden to identify themselves as Lemkos, to read Lemko literature,
to practice their Lemko traditions, to wear anything that might identify
them as Lemko. Getting caught doing so meant punishment
or even death. (Yet
many brave families managed to secretly keep their 'Lemko-ism' alive
behind the doors of their own homes.)
To the Poles, the Lemkos were also different because they were Greek Catholic
-- not Roman Catholic like the rest of Poland. (During Soviet times,
in Poland, unlike Slovakia, the Roman Catholic Church was tolerated.) Since
there were no Greek Catholic churches in Western Poland when the
Lemkos arrived, the Lemkos usually went to the local Roman Catholic
church -- or no church at all. They (like all poor Poles) couldn't afford
a car or gasoline to travel to one of the few Orthodox churches a distance
away.
But not all local Poles treated the Lemkos badly. Some were very
kind to their new neighbors and tried to help them out -- a chicken here,
some eggs there, a few scraps of wood, an old mattress, some handyman
work, etc. And
the Lemkos quickly proved to be good workers.
Gradually, the ethnic Lemkos and ethnic Poles started getting along
-- and a number eventually inter-married (which was not surprising given
that many Lemkos attended Roman Catholic churches.) But, unfortunately,
there are still those who carry hard feelings from those days to the present.
I first realized the importance of my Lemko traditions the first time
I stayed with my Lemko relatives in 1998. We were sitting around the
table, eating and drinking (what else?). Then my relatives started
singing Lemko songs I recalled from my childhood, and without realizing
it, I started singing along. Suddenly, an older cousin (who resembles Archie Bunker)
started to cry. When I asked why, I learned that he was so moved
to learn that Lemkos who had emigrated to America had kept the Lemko
traditions alive during all those years that the Lemkos in Poland were
forbidden to do so.
Most of the Lemkos I've met in Poland consider themselves Polish citizens
of Lemko extraction/ethnicity. But the further east you go, I
notice an increasing number of Lemkos with the Ukrainian orientation.) But
ethnicity doesn't ever seem to come up except among Lemkos. On
the other hand, how often does the question of ethnicity comes up in
the workplace or normal day-to-day conversations?
To really understand how strong the Lemko identity is in Poland today,
you have to attend one of the Lemko Vatras held there every summer. The
one I've been to (and will be attending again this August as part
of the Lemko Tour) is held outside the town of Michalow in western Poland. It's
called the Vatra of Lemkos in Exile. Its purpose is
to bring the Lemkos together to celebrate the ongoing survival of
the Lemko people and their Lemko heritage. (Another Lemko vatra
of Ukrainian
orientation is held in Zdnya--in June, I believe.)
Throngs of Lemkos from all over Poland and other countries attend this
festive reunion -- young and old alike. There are on-going performances by
young school children, teenagers, and adults -- all singing, dancing
and playing Lemko music. One particularly well-known high-school-aged group
is called 'Lemkovyna,' (which practices in Gorlice.) But the
most popular and well-known ensemble is 'Kychera', headquartered in
Legnica, which performs all over the world.
There are several grammar schools starting up in Poland that teach the
Lemko language and culture -- and more are coming. There are Lemko organizations
and Lemko newspapers (written in the Lemko language, not Polish.) I
could go on and on, but there is considerably more Lemko activism
going on in Poland than you may think. And I'm only aware of some of
it.
Now that isn't to say that all of Poland knows (or cares) about the Lemkos or
considers them equals. Lemkos are still a minority in Poland, and they
are generally looked upon the same way many minorities are looked upon
here in the U.S. But again, things are changing as Lemkos get more
publicity -- some good, some not. For example, a town in northwestern
Poland (I can't recall the name) recently dedicated the town or
town tower to the Lemkos.
While Akcja Visla [Operation Vistula] has finally been acknowledged by the Polish government, it's
still kind of hush-hush. Lemkos have been allowed to
petition to have their land returned to them, or to be reimbursed
for the land and possessions taken away from them. But there's
a lot of red tape and it can be
costly.
As for Lemkos being 'hillbillies', actually, we are. (But
not necessarily with the same connotation that we think of
hillbillies here.) After
all, our people did come from remote areas of the mountains. In
fact, there's another breed of hillbillies practically
next door to Lemkovyna called Podhale -- the area of the High Tatras
in Poland (e.g. Zakopane) and Slovakia (e.g. Stara Lubovna) -- where the
Gorale live. But the Gorale call
themselves Highlanders. So maybe
we Lemkos should call ourselves Lowlanders!
As for Lemkos being poor and uneducated, that has changed. The
one good thing the Soviets did for our people was to give them a good
education -- including University.
Yes,
it's still hard for many people in Poland
to make a good living these days -- particularly if they live in small,
out-of-the-way villages. And people on pensions have a tough time. But
we've got the same thing here. And since becoming a member
of the EU, things in Poland have gotten much better.
Some Lemkos have already become very successful. For example, about 10
or so years ago, a young Lemko couple, Jan and Janina Kopcza, bought an old,
rundown villa in Legnica that used to house Russian military officers when
Russians lived in Legnica. The Kopcza's completely restored the place
to its original elegance--and received Poland's top architectural
award. The
villa is now an inn and four-star restaurant where you can sit outside
on the patio
and dine surrounded by magnificent gardens.
Halina and Andrezj Malecky are Lemkos from central Lemkovyna (Gorlice
County.) During the year, they are school teachers. In the
summer, they lead individual tours of Lemkovyna (which are usually
booked well in advance.)
As far as the languages Lemkos speak, I guess it depends on which part of
Poland they lived in. The Lemko adults I know who would have been
attending school during the Soviet era have spoke Polish since Akcja Visla. But
they probably learned Russian in school. In Western Poland,
they also speak German -- and in eastern Lemkovyna, Ukrainian. There's
an increasing number of Lemkos
who speak English -- particularly in the cities and in the younger
generations.
So, hopefully, if you've had the patience or interest to have read
all of his, you will have a greater appreciation of and increased
pride in
what our people have suffered, what they overcame, and the strength
it took to climb up from minus 0 to where they are today. That's
the sort of spirit that's represented by the bear in the Rusyn emblem.
Nancy nsrevak@aol.com
Polish Home Army - Operation Vistula
Beria reported to Stalin on 17th May 1945 (Hastings, 2005) that twenty
AK units compromising of 6,000 men and women were in a desperate battle
of survival against the communist regime’s armed forces in
eastern parts
of Poland. In the melee of active former partisans were 4,000 men of
the
Ukrainian Patriotic Army (UPA) operating in the remote Bieszczady
Mountains on the new border between Poland and the Ukraine. Stalin used
the opportunity to send 5 NKVD regiments and in addition 3 regiments
of
NKVD Frontier Guards to ‘liberate’ the countryside from the ‘bandits’.
The UPA was eventually crushed in 1947 by a coalition of the newly
formed Polish Communist Army, Soviet and Czechoslovak units. About 0.5m
survivors of Operation Wisla were forced to migrate to the artificially
re-created provinces of Warmia and Mazury. This oppressive action has
remained a ‘dark’ episode in Poland’s recent
history.
In effect the region was fighting a civil war (Davies, 2001; 2003) from
1944 until 1947. The ‘West’ knew little of it and had
abandoned its ally
Poland to concentrate on rebuilding their war shattered economies and
hanging onto shrinking empires. However, the term ‘civil war’ masked
the
true objective and that was to use brute force to subjugate those who
dreamed of freedom and democracy. Davies (2001; 2003) estimated there
might have been up to 40 to 50,000 underground fighters in the field
with the Soviet backed security forces losing 18,000 men.
http://www.polandinexile.com/vistula.html
Submitted by Laurence Krupnak lkrupnak@verizon.net
Researching People Lost in Operation Vistula
(Akcja Wisla)
Witam
Villagers,
Some time ago, some of you were interested in contact information in
regards to Operation Vistula. I have written to the Instytut
Pamieci Narodowej (The
Institute of National Remembrance - The Commission For The Prosecution
of Crimes Against the Polish Nation) and have received a reply.
So, if anyone is interested in receiving information on your loved ones that
were part of Operation Vistula, this is where to write. You may e-mail
them directly and in English - does not have to be in the Polish Language.
Office of the President: sekretariat.ipn@ipn.gov.pl
or http://ipn.gov.pl/en/contact and
they will respond by registered letter within two to three months.
http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/35/1/Brief_history.html
Hello Danuta,
Perhaps you can shed some light on a subject for me. I remember as a child
(in the 1940's) my father receiving a (smuggled) letter from his sister in Poland
(who had stayed in Dudynce, Poland and was given the family farm). She
later married. They were Greek Catholics. She stated in the letter
that the Russians "came in the night" and loaded the elderly (and some
not that old) into trucks. They (including my relatives)
were taken to Siberia and "dumped in the snow" to fend for themselves. In
later years, contact was made between my grandfather here in the US and my aunt
in Siberia and they corresponded. Upon my grandfather's death nobody evidently
thought it important to keep my aunt's address and so that branch of the family
is now a mystery to me. Is this part of being "resettled" that
you spoke of? Where
would I find further information regarding my family's location in Siberia?
Since it happened over 60 years ago and I was a small
child at the time...I really don't know exactly what year this occurred.
I do remember that the family discussed that the letter had been smuggled
into the US (by whom I don't know) and didn't come via regular mail. The
Russians referred to evidently were the Russian soldiers that occupied the
Dudynce, PL area during that era. Thank you for any information you might
have.
Have a great day, Mary-Ann
Reply:
The period of time that your relatives cruelly where deported
was the beginning of the Holocaust, shortly after the 1939 September Campaign
(Defence War). The Defence War lasted from September 1, 1939 to October,
1939. The Nazis and Soviets were in joint control of that area, where
your relatives lived.
Prior to the Defence War, Hitler made it clear the Poles (inhabitants of Poland
- all Polish citizens) were Untermenschen (subhumans), who occupied
a land, which was part of the Lebensraum (living space) that belonged
to the superior German race. The Poles were subjected to a program of extermination
and enslavement. As
Hitler stated, "Be merciless! Be brutal... it is necessary to proceed with
maximum severity.... The war is to be a war of annihilation."
Deportation started, around February 1940 in the cold of winter, and they
came knocking in the middle of the night. Some Poles were sent to Forced
Labour Camps, under the newly formed German General Government and some Poles
were sent East by the Soviets to the Gulag.
To make contact with your family try:
Centralne Biuro Adresowe
Sekcja Zapytan Zagranicznych
ul. Kazimierzowska 60
02-543 Warszawa
POLAND
"You can write your letter in English. They will reply in Polish. Give them
as much information as you can. A must is the village or
town in which they lived and the province. Give as much information as you
can, i. e. your ancestors full name (using maiden names, also), dates of birth,
siblings names and where they were from. In other words, you are giving them
all the data they need for you to connect with the known relative you wish to contact.
Give them that person's full name and their ancestors.
They will not let you know where your relatives are. They will contact
them, and if they wish to reach you, they will. Send a letter
to your relative in another envelope for them to mail it to them. Tell them
the relationship to this person you wish to contact and how you connect with
them as a relative."
Pozdrawiam
Danuta - Daughter of Non Jewish Holocaust Survivors
In 1945 Stalin wanted Poles in Poland,
and Rusyns in USSR (according to Yalta agreement). The Ukrainian
partisans (UPA) were still running around the Carpathians. The posters
and agents claiming that Ukraine (dominated by Stalin) was better, weren't
working.
Military units went into villages to persuade the people to "voluntarily" get
out. Everything from a single hanging to get
the message out to huge massacres and burning of the villages occurred.
The priest gathered up a hundred families in my village in 1946, and took
them to Ukraine, where most of them still remain. The mother of a friend
said, "We had to go, or they would have shot us." Another
hundred or so families who didn't go, got sent to Silesia in 1947, as part of
Operation Visla.
Many people were intimidated (executed) to leave before Operation Vistula began.
Jim
On 11/15/11 John
Magyari jmagyari@gmail.com wrote:
I'm going
through the data in the
Polish Version of
E. Misilo
Akcja Wisla.
Unfortunately I do not have a scan of the whole book, but I do have scans
of 2 areas the first which shows ~774 Village Names pages 404-423; the second
which shows # people, # cows, # horses, # goats, Loading Station, Departure
Date, Unloading Station, Date Of Arrival number displaced and the trains they
were placed on pages 428-449.
The Ukrainian Version has 561 pages the Polish Version has
524 pages
1) data for Nowy Sacz District this appears to be missing from my Polish version
maybe it's on pages prior to 428 or after page 423, could anyone who has the
Polish and Ukrainian Version of this book check and see if they have Nowy Sacz
District info?
2) I noticed that the nearby Lemko villages of
Pulawy (1936
population 692) ,
Tarnawka (pop. 424), and
Zawoje (pop.
302) are not listed on pages 417-419 Sanok Area. Although in 1946 many probably
went to Ukraine, I would assume there were some that were displaced via Vistula.
Could someone check and see if they are listed in the Ukrainian Version?
3) I assume that on page 419
Sanok region,
Wislok refers
to both these Lemko villages together
Wislok Gorny and
Wislok
Dolny?
Population
Exchanges Between Poland and the U.S.S.R.: A Prelude to Akcja Wisla (Operation
Vistula)
When faced
with the opportunity to participate in the transfer of minority populations
with the Soviet Union in 1944, the Polish government agreed in the hope
of solving its nationality conflict. Feeling betrayed and angered by the
violent reaction of the Ukrainian population, the leadership adopted a
resettlement campaign. Ukrainians were deported voluntarily and then forcibly,
as the Polish government set out to retrieve its nationals and to achieve
its goal of a homogeneous state. Poland's frustrating loss of land at the
end of World War II only further exacerbated the government's negative attitude
towards its national minorities. Thus, the population transfers that took
place between Poland and the U.S.S.R. from 1944 to 1946 marked only the beginning
of the evacuation of Ukrainians from southeastern Poland.
The negative
Polish sentiment towards its minorities manifested itself in the signing
of an agreement regarding population transfers between Poland
and the U.S.S.R. on September 9, 1944. It should, therefore, be noted
that the idea to relocate Poland's Ukrainian population originated, not
in 1947, but before World War II had even ended. The agreement stipulated
that "people
of Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian, and Rusyn nationality" living in Poland
should be "evacuated" to Soviet Ukraine and Belorussia, while Poles
and Jews in Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Belorussia should be repatriated to Poland.
The view that national minorities had been one of the major causes
of World War II was a predominant notion among many European countries at the time; thus, Misilo
explains that both sides saw this agreement as the solution to their painful
nationalities conflict. The relocation of Ukrainians from Poland to the U.S.S.R.
began on October 15, 1944. The terms of the agreement stated that"evacuation
is voluntary, therefore coercion can not be applied either indirectly,
or directly," and, indeed, during the first few
months after the signing of the agreement, many people who werelandless
or whose property had been destroyed during the war left Poland. However,
in the following year, contrary to the terms of the agreement, the Polish
authorities began to apply pressure and to use violence in order to
persuade Ukrainians to leave Poland.
The
redrawing of Poland's eastern border after World War II constituted a
major blow to the Polish state that further worsened relations with the Ukrainian population. Stalin
dominated the decision-making process regarding the Polish-Ukrainian border,
or the so-called Curzon
Line. Officially, he refused to give up the lands which he had annexed
during the war, and which the Polish government considered historically Polish
territories, because he stated that Western Ukraine should be united with
its brothers in Soviet Ukraine.
In reality, Stalin
faced no real opposition because, first, Poland remained militarily incapable
of challenging him and, second, at the Yalta conference, the Western powers
permitted Stalin to include the Eastern European countries within the Soviet
Union's sphere of influence.
Thus, the Polish
government had no real choice but to accept its new eastern border, which
expanded the Ukrainian republic westward, but which left Ukrainian ethnolinguistic
territories, such as the Lemko, San River, Chelm, and Podlesia regions within
Poland. Although it is difficult to evaluate to what degree Poland's loss
of its eastern borderlands and particularly the loss of historic Lviv impacted
the Polish community's frame of mind, the realization of a new territorial
border in the east must have caused unpleasant disillusionment, which in
turn promoted a radical attitude towards the Ukrainian question.
Misilo explains
that the Polish communists took up the banner of the building of a Polish
nation-state and used anti-Ukrainian propaganda, just as it used
anti-German propaganda, as a way to consolidate support. The leadership
used the idea of an "enemy," or the Ukrainian population, in order
to unite the Polish community and rebuild the country. With the memory of
the wartime period of Polish-Ukrainian conflict fresh in their minds, the
Polish authorities were not very sympathetic to the Ukrainian minority.
Because Poland experienced a major territorial shift, factors other than
concern over national minorities may have also contributed to the government's
decision to participate in the population exchanges. For example, Misilo
adds that the September 1944 Polish-Soviet agreement was signed for economic
reasons as well. While Ukraine had lost over 5 million of its citizens during
the
[Olga's
comment: this is grossly underestimated, other research shows Ukraine lost
10 million] war
and needed people to work in its collective farms, Poland needed to populate
its newly acquired German lands.
Furthermore, given that the agreement included the repatriation of Poles
in Ukraine, another significant motive may have been the government's concern
for ethnic Poles. In his book. Gross explains how 1.25 million Poles found
themselves on the Soviet side of the border between 1939 and 1941 because
of various waves of deportation. For example, some Poles went to Poland voluntarily
to look for work; some were drafted into the Red Army; some were kept in
POW camps after 1939; and about half (about 900,000) were transported as
prisoners to labor camps. Therefore, the notion that the Polish government
remained concerned for its nationals and wanted to secure their return is
valid.
While about
1 million Poles moved to Poland between 1944 and 1946, close to 520,000
Ukrainians were relocated from Poland to the U.S.S.R. One difference regarding
these statistics, however, is the argument that many Poles wanted to escape
from the harsh conditions under which they suffered in the Soviet Union, whereas
many Ukrainians in Poland were forced to leave their ancestral homes. Notwithstanding
its concern for its Polish nationals, the brutality to which the Polish
government resorted in order to remove Ukrainians testifies to its eagerness
to resolve its minority conflict. Before discussing the Polish government's
initial steps towards the complete resettlement of its Ukrainian minority,
some attention should also be given to the make-up of the Polish leadership
and to who held authority in the immediate post-war years. Just as the question
of Poland's borders remained confining after World War II, the question
of Poland's government caused even more chaos.
At Yalta,
Stalin argued with the United States and Great Britain over whether the
Lublin committee that the U.S.S.R. had formed and recognized as the"Provisional Polish Government" would play
a larger role than the London government-in-exile that was established in
Paris in 1939. The communists consolidated their hold over Poland as the Western
powers acquiesced and permitted the Lublin Poles (later called the Warsaw
Poles) to essentially continue to govern, albeit under the stipulation that
the government "be reorganized on a broader democratic basis with the
inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and Poland abroad. However,
because opposition to the Soviet-controlled Lublin government remained widespread
after the Yalta conference, the Polish People's Army acquired a key role
in the postwar government.
The
Lublin government relied on the army to pacify anti-communist forces.
Furthermore, in the January 1947 Sejm elections, the Polish Workers Party
(the Polish communist party) used army officers "to
supervise the vote count" and then later unleashed state terror with
military tribunals in order to destroy the rival Polish Peasant Party. Hence,
by 1947, a pro-Soviet communist government was solidly in place and the
army, which
later played a large role in the undertaking of Akcja Wisla, became
an important asset to the Polish leadership. The Polish government found
that the Ukrainians in southeastern Poland, who were attached to their land,
could not be completely evacuated from their ancestral territories through
peaceful means. While announcements were made encouraging the Ukrainians
to return to their Fatherland, meaning greater Ukraine, the
majority of these peoples had no desire to leave the lands which their forefathers
had inhabited for centuries. The redrawing of the border held little
significance for such Ukrainian ethnographic groups as the Lemkos, who had
long been isolated in the Lemko region of the Carpathian Mountains.
The
Polish government encountered even more difficulty in persuading the Ukrainian
population to relocate to the Soviet Union after Ukrainians, who had voluntarily
left, began to illegally return from the U.S.S.R. and to inform the others
of the Stalinist repression in the republic of Ukraine. Therefore,
the Polish government resorted to significant pressure. Initiatives that
were used to compel the Ukrainians to leave included the deprivation of
land rights and the liquidation of Ukrainian schools and Greek-Catholic
churches. The Polish government even attempted to persuade the leaders of
the Ukrainian community to help carry out the resettlement process. On August
24, 1945, the Ministry of Public Administration, on behalf of the Presidium
of the Council of Ministers, organized a conference in Warsaw, to which
it invited representatives of the Ukrainian population from the Rzeszow,
Lublin, and Krakow palatinates. Misilo states that the government was surprised
when the Ukrainian representatives came prepared with a statement, which
demanded the end to discrimination against Ukrainians and the resolution
to the issues of land, education, and religion.
Although a Councilman, by
the name of Byeletski, at first responded positively by saying that the
Ukrainian population had the right to enjoy the same privileges as the Poles,
he recommended nonetheless that the Ukrainians resettle in the Soviet Union
in order to eliminate the historical conflict between the Poles and the
Ukrainians. Furthermore, the Ukrainian representatives were informed that
if a significant portion of the Ukrainian population remained in Poland,
it was possible that the Ukrainians would be relocated to other parts of
Poland for economic considerations. This last statement holds importance
because it shows that the tactic of relocating the Ukrainian population
throughout Poland was discussed years before Akcja Wisla (Operation Vistula) began.
Thus, during the conference in Warsaw, the Polish leaders expressed their
belief that Poland would benefit only by finishing the relocation by any
means.
Having
failed to evacuate the Ukrainian population through voluntary relocation,
the Polish government changed its tactics in August 1945 and adopted a policy
of forcible deportation. In early August, the head representative
of the Soviet government on the issue of Ukrainian resettlement, Mykola
Pidhomyj, approached the Polish authorities with the offer of providing
military assistance to speed up the population transfer. The Polish leadership
quickly took advantage of the idea to use military force, calling an emergency
meeting on August 22nd with the head of the General Staff of the Polish
Army, the commanders of the 3rd, 8th. and 9th Infantry Divisions, and the
head of the Palatinate (wojewodztwa) Command of Public Safety. With the
orders to complete the resettlement plans, three divisions of the Polish
Army began the process of forcibly relocating the Ukrainians from the Lesko,
Lubaczow, Przemysl, and Sanok districts (powiaty) in September 1945. Misilo
notes that the level of brutality used by the army reached extremely high
levels. This can be partly explained by the large proportion of soldiers
in these divisions that came from the Wolyn region, where OUN units had massacred
thousands of Poles in 1943.
Hence, after August 1945, the tempo of the relocation
campaign continued to speed up. For example, because divisions were
under strict instructions to "completely,
relocate the Ukrainian population," when
General-colonel Stephan Mossor, Assistant to the Chief of the General Staff of
the Polish Army, encountered statistics that listed the tens of thousands of
Ukrainian families which still remained in the Krakow, Rzeszow, and Lublin palatinates,
he ordered the 8th and 9th Infantry Divisions to increase the number of families
being removed from 100 to a minimum of 500 a day per division. The increased
tempo of campaign, thus, practically doubled the total number of Ukrainians that
were relocated, given that 260,000 of the approximately 500,000 Ukrainians who
were relocated from Poland to the U.S.S.R. from October 1944 to August 1946 were
deported after September 1945, during the period of forced
relocation.
Keeping in mind the argument that the Soviet authorities in Moscow influenced
Poland's treatment of its minorities, it is interesting to note that it was
the Polish leadership, and not the U.S.S.R., which wished to prolong
the agreement on population transfers in mid-1946. The Soviet-Polish
agreement, which had already been modified to extend its original
completion date, was supposed to end in June, 1946. However, because
a portion of the Ukrainian minority still remained in Poland, the
Polish leadership wanted to continue the relocation campaign. Nonetheless,
as Misilo notes, ".
. . in spite of the intensive diplomatic measures of the Polish side, the authorities
of the U.S.S.R. did not agree," and the
agreement regarding the exchange of minorities came to an end.
Why did
the Soviet Union slam the door on continued Ukrainian resettlement? Although
further research needs to be undertaken regarding this question, possible
reasons can be suggested. For example, perhaps the Soviet reaction suggests
that the U.S.S.R. also realized
the need to reduce the number of Ukrainians who could give local support
to the UPA that was active in the Soviet Union? Or perhaps Stalin
decided that enough of the Ukrainian minority had been removed from southeastern
Poland to prevent the UPA from gaining significant strength, but that it
would be unwise to resettle the entire population because the Soviet Union
would lose claim to the Polish border strip that its "brothers" inhabited?
Finally, perhaps Stalin, who was a master at playing one group against the
other, felt that a limited amount of Polish-Ukrainian tension would be to
the U.S.S.R.'s benefit? Yet, regardless of the importance of these questions,
as well as their answers, Poland realized in mid-1946 that, without the support
of the U.S.S.R., it would have to find another way to solve its Ukrainian
problem.
Laurence Krupnak wrote:
The following
articles offer information about
the 1944 transfer aggreement:
http://www.lemko.org/wisla/DH01.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12292959
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2547293
Advance of Eastern Front through Poland during 1944:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Front_1943-08_to_1944-12.png
A
population exchange agreement was signed by the communist "Polish
Committee of National Liberation" and the
Soviet government in September 1944, whereby Ukrainians were to move from Poland
to Soviet Ukraine and Poles from the USSR to Poland. The transfers were
to be voluntary, although Ukrainians were often moved to the USSR by force.
As for local Poles [living in USSR], they had a "choice" to
stay and undergo another forced collectivization and possibly renewed Stalinist
terror -- or move to Poland. The vast majority "chose" the
latter. These transfers took place in 1946-47. As mentioned above, most settled
in the new western territories, previously in Germany [Prussia].
http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557/lect17.htm
The first stage occurred at the end of the Second World War. Poland and
Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges 1⁄2
Poles that resided east of the established Poland-Soviet border were deported
to Poland and Ukrainians that resided west of the established Poland-Soviet Union
border were deported to Soviet Ukraine. Bilateral agreements were signed between
Poland and the USSR on 9 September 1944 and 16 August 1945. As
a result of these treaties, some 400,000 Lemkos and Ukrainians were deported
to the Ukraine, and some 300,000 managed to stay in their native regions, within
the borders of Poland. They
lived in such Rusyn former territories as Lemkowszczyzna, Chelmskie
and Podlasie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_population_transfers_(1944%E2%80%931946)
Poland and Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges - Poles that resided
east of the established Poland-Soviet border were deported to Poland (c.a.
2,100,000 persons) and Ukrainians that resided west of the established
Poland-Soviet Union border were deported to Soviet Ukraine Population transfer
to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to April 1946 (ca. 450,000
persons). Some Ukrainians (ca. 200,000 persons) left southeast Poland more
or less voluntarily (between 1944 and 1945).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union
Diana Howansky
Reilly's new book, Scattered: The Forced Relocation of Poland's
Ukrainians after World War II is available for pre-order at Amazon.com
and B (for delivery in May 2013.)
"Reilly's engaging book, a valuable
historical source, is a homage to the Lemkos, whose world has disappeared
forever." — Piotr
J. Wróbel,
Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish History, University of
Toronto
http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4891.htm
GATES TO THE LEMKOS' LAND
For those who have Lemko roots A film by Roman Kryk, now with English subtitles! for everyone to understand. Published on Jul 2, 2014.
Dedicated to the Lemkos, who through their extraordinary love for the country overcame the trauma of massive deportations during the "Operation Vistula" and managed to return to their homeland. This film is a story about the fate of people from the annihilated Dłlugie village, and it talks about Małlastóow village, where Lemkos, originally the dominant group, were transformed into a defenceless minority. Today, with admirable perseverance, they continue to fight for their rights. Above all, this is a film about love, which is the most precious thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQzIqRt3XvQ
GATES TO THE LEMKOS' LAND / ДВЕРІ ЛЕМКІВЩИНИ
The successful ethnic cleaning: Few Lemkos who were shoved into northern Poland in 1947 admit they are Lemko nor Rusyn. They opted to adopt Polish because of biased laws and discrimination. They did not teach their children either Ukrainian nor Lemko.
Reply from Nancy: "The first time I visited Poland was a few years after the fall of communism. You could still see the blank, cautious expressions on the faces of people on the street. Inside their homes, they were outgoing, extremely generous, quick to laugh and with a great sense of humor.
"One of my Lemko cousins married a Pole. While they primarily celebrate in the Polish tradition, her grown children know of their Lemko heritage and can speak the language. When I first visited them in 1998, they drove me to my ancestral village of Losie (between Nowy Sacz and Krynica)--where my Lemko cousins were also born. The village is totally inhabited by Poles today, many of whom work in Krynica.
"Another cousin, whose wife is also Lemko, and their grown children speak and celebrate Lemko traditions in their own homes. In fact, when I visited them, they sang many Lemko songs that I remembered from my childhood. And they sang them with robust voices--a capella, and in perfect harmony. When I started to sing along, they were amazed and overcome with tears. When I asked why, they said they had assumed that the family members who moved to America had discarded the Lemko language and traditions in order to become Americanized. So they were overjoyed to find out that their American-born relatives had, in fact, kept alive the traditions and language that the Lemko people in Poland were prohibited from speaking or practicing for so many years. And that warranted yet another toast with a shot of vodka!!
"One of this cousin's sons is part of a small band that performs Lemko songs. He gave me a tape recording of some of them. Also, there are several Lemko festivals and reunions of displaced Operacja Visla victims held in Poland each year. In addition, I understand that the relocation records from Operacja Visla are now being released by the Polish government. So it appears that being a Lemko is gradually becoming more acceptable in Poland these days."
9 October 2001, Volume 3, Number 38
http://www.rferl.org/pbureport/2001/10/38-091001.html
ETHNIC LEMKO WINS PRECEDENT CASE OVER NATIONALIZED PROPERTY. (Oct.2001) Poland's Supreme Administrative Court passed a precedent verdict in a case over property confiscated by the state in 1949 from Maria Hladyk, an ethnic Lemko who was compulsorily resettled in 1947 from her village in Beskid Niski (a region in southeastern Poland).
In 1999, Maria Hladyk's grandson, Stefan Hladyk, applied to the Polish authorities
with a request to repel the 50-year-old decision by which some 11 hectares of
land (including 7.55 hectares of forest) was confiscated from his grandmother. The
Agriculture Ministry satisfied his request. In last week's decision, the Supreme
Administrative Court rejected an appeal by Poland's State Forests, a state-run
agency that manages the country's forested areas and which had owned Maria
Hladyk's wooded plot for the past 50 years. The court simultaneously confirmed
Stefan Hladyk's ownership right to the plot.
This precedent verdict by the Supreme Administrative Court actually admits that
the nationalization of Lemko properties 50 years ago was illegal. The verdict
paves the way for other Lemkos (or their heirs) to regain what was confiscated
from them by the communist authorities. According to PAP, Polish courts are
currently going over some 200 lawsuits by Lemkos seeking to have their
properties in Beskid Niski returned to them.
[Ed. note: Some historical background to the case. In a bid to deprive the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) -- which fought the Polish communist government in 1944-47 -- of support among Ukrainians inhabiting their ethnic territories in southeastern Poland, the Polish authorities decided in 1947 on a mass resettlement of Ukrainians to the so-called Recovered Lands (Ziemie Odzyskane) -- the former territories of the Third Reich incorporated into post-World War II. The Polish army performed the drastic and violent Operation Vistula, which resettled some 150,000* (They save face by grossly understating the figure), an ethnic community with a vaguely defined ethnic identity: some Lemkos considered themselves to be Ukrainians, while some believed they were a group different from Ukrainians. Incidentally, support for the UPA among Poland's pre-1947 Lemko community was much weaker than among Polish Ukrainians.
The dispersion of Lemkos following the 1947 resettlement immensely accelerated
the process of their assimilation. The Polish authorities did not give Lemkos the
right to develop their ethnic identity until 1956, when Poland's Ukrainians,
Belarusians, Lithuanians, and Jews were allowed to set up their own ethnic
organizations to pursue some educational, cultural, and social activities. Some
Lemko activists joined the Ukrainian movement but many others chose Polishness
to avoid being identified with Ukrainians.
In 1949, the Polish government passed a decree on the nationalization of
properties remaining after the resettlement of the Ukrainians and Lemkos.
Following the decree, local authorities passed appropriation decisions with regard
to resettled owners' land plots and belongings remaining on their administrative
territories.
23 April 2002, Volume 4, Number 16 (
http://www.rferl.org/pbureport/)
Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski condems 'OPERATION VISTULA.'The
peak of the deportation of Ukrainians to the Soviet Union occurred in the autumn
of 1946, when some
200,000 people were relocated within four months. In total,
according to official data, some
490,000 Ukrainians were expelled from Poland to
the Ukrainian SSR.
Polish census
http://www.rferl.org/pbureport/
For more, see
http://www.rferl.org/pbureport/2001/10/38-091001.html
Askold S. Lozynskyj articles on Operation Vistula / Akcja Wisla:
Zakerzonnia and Akcja Wisia
http://www.ulucz.org/?p=2287
Deportations 1944-1951
https://lemko-ool.com/?page_id=30&lang=en
Lemko Ukrainians in Ukraine, Polish history
https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/askold-s-lozynskyj-lemko-ukrainians-in-ukraine-polish-history-417304.html?cn-reloaded=1
2/5/06
Olga, do you think there would be someone out there that could find my mother's
people? My grandmother was from Dolzyca and the village was apparently dispersed
in Operation Vistula. Marija Medwid born in 1882. Her father: Basilus Medwid,
her mother: Anna Boiwka Basilus Medwid's father was Michalis Medwid and his mother
was Tekla Torhan. Anna Boiwka's parents were Theodore Boiwka and Katharina Karlicka.
Related family names farther back are: Lewicki, Smolnickey, Kapustianick, Paraszcczak,
Harhay, Szczawinski/a, Kapustanyka, Komanicka,
Kuchyna, Hryahy Donna