How the USSR Murdered 22,000 Civilians in One Month
The story of the dire fate of Poland’s ‘bourgeoise’ after the Soviet takeover
The year 1939 is a significant one in all Polish history books as it signifies the start of another period of oppression by foreign powers. The powers at play, in this case, were the Soviet Union on its east and the Third Reich on its west. This would come as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed by both sides on 23 August 1939 in which both ‘empires’ agreed to split Poland and not to attack each other. This, of course, would be later broken by Hitler with his invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 during Operation Barbarossa.
The just over half a decade of oppression by external forces was brutal for the Polish people and is most significantly seen during the genocide of Jewish Poles by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Although the Nazis were the main perpetrators of crimes in Poland during this period the Communists had their fair share of events in which they also ended up killing innocent Polish people. The most significant of these instances was the Katyn Forest Massacre of April 1940.
A new Poland
Shortly after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact both sides would declare war and attack the Polish state from two…
