Following the Soviet invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, in accordance with the Nazi–Soviet Pact against Poland, the Soviet Union acquired more than half of the territory of the Second Polish Republic or about inhabited by more than 13,200,000 people.Piotr Eberhardt, Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950). Polish Academy of Sciences, Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization. Monographies, 12. Page 25. Within months, in order to de-Polonize annexed lands, the Soviet NKVD rounded up and deported between 320,000 and 1 million Polish nationals to the eastern parts of the USSR, the Urals, and Siberia. There were four waves of deportations of entire families with children, women, and elderly people aboard freight trains from 1940 until 1941. The second wave of deportations by the Soviet occupational forces across the Kresy macroregion, affected 300,000 to 330,000 Poles, sent primarily to Kazakhstan. – From Foreword by Dr. Tomasz Piesakowski 1998 reprint with excerpts by Waldemar Wajszczuk. See also: Derek Crowe, book review with excerpts.

Thanks to a remarkable reversal of fortune well over 110,000 Poles, including 36,000 women and children, managed to leave the Soviet Union with Anders' Army. They ended up in Iran, India, Palestine, New Zealand, and British Africa colonies, as well as in Mexico. Among those who remained in the Soviet Union, about 150,000 Poles perished before the end of the war.Tomasz Szarota & Wojciech Materski (2009), Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami (The human losses among Poles between two occupational forces), Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, (Excerpts reproduced online).

The evacuation of the Polish people from the USSR lasted from 24 March 1942 for one week, and then again from August 10, 1942, until the beginning of September. In the first stage, more than 30,000 military personnel and about 11,000 children left Krasnovodsk (Turkmen SSR, present-day Turkmenistan) by sea for Bandar Pahlavi. In the second stage of evacuation from the interior, more than 43,000 military personnel and about 25,000 civilians left with General Władysław Anders across the Caspian Sea to Iran. About one third of the civilians were children. A smaller-scale evacuation to Ashgabat–Mashhad followed, including the large and final group of civilians.

Background

In 1939, following Nazi German and Soviet attack on Poland, the territory of the Second Polish Republic was divided between the two invaders. The eastern half of Poland was annexed by the Soviet Union. Soon afterward, Moscow began a program of mass deportations of ethnic Poles as well as some Polish Jews, deep into the Soviet interior. Hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens were forced to leave their homes at a moment's notice and were transported in cattle cars to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and other distant parts of Russia. There were several waves of deportations during which families were sent to barren land in the Soviet Union.Klaus Hergt, Exiled to Siberia. A Polish Child's WWII Journey. Chapter 7: "You have half an hour..." Crescent Lake Publishing. . Digitized by Polish Academic Information Center, at University at Buffalo. The categories first targeted by the NKVD included court judges, civil servants, staff of municipal governments, members of the police force, refugees from western Poland, tradesmen, forestry workers, settlers, and small farmers, as well as children from summer camps and Polish orphanages, family members of anyone arrested by the NKVD, and family members of anyone who had escaped to the West or had gone missing.

The fate of the deported Poles improved in mid-1941, after the signing of the Sikorski–Mayski agreement. A one-time Amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union was declared by Stalin. It lasted until 16 January 1943, at which point it was effectively revoked. In this small window of opportunity, Anders' Army was formed, which attracted not only soldiers who had been kept in Soviet camps, but also thousands of civilians, and Polish orphanages with children whose parents had perished in the Gulag. Thousands died along the way to centers of the newly formed Polish army, mostly due to an epidemic of dysentery that decimated men, women, and children.Tadeusz Piotrowski (2004), The Polish Deportees of World War II.. Account of Wisia Reginella, page 94.

Evacuations

On March 19, 1942, General Władysław Anders ordered the evacuation of Polish soldiers and civilians who lived next to army camps. Between March 24 and April 4, 33,069 soldiers left the Soviet Union for Iran, as well as 10,789 civilians, including 3,100 children. This was a small fraction of the approximately 1.7 million Polish citizens who had been arrested by the Soviets at the beginning of the war. Most Poles were forced to stay in the Soviet Union.Ryszard Antolak, Iran and the Polish Exodus from Russia 1942. Pars Times. Polish soldiers and civilians who left stayed in Iranian camps at Pahlevi and Mashhad, as well as Tehran.

After the first evacuation, Polish-Soviet relations deteriorated and the Soviet government began arresting Polish officials. On August 9, 1942, a second evacuation began, which lasted until September 1. Polish evacuees had to travel by train to Krasnovodsk, where they took a ship across the Caspian Sea to Iran. Some had to travel by land to Ashgabat. The Polish consulates in the USSR issued in-land temporary passports for those being evacuated: These had to be presented at the border crossings in order to proceed. According to one of the evacuees, Wanda Ellis:

The hunger was terrible, we did not get a loaf of bread a day, as we had in Siberia. Each slice of bread had to be stolen or gotten in any other way. It was a hell—hungry, sick people, children in rail cars, filled with louse. Illnesses—typhoid, dysentery, no restrooms in cars. To relieve ourselves, we had to jump out of the train whenever it stopped. It is a miracle that we survived, with thousands dead.Dr. Barbara Patlewicz. LUDNOŚĆ CYWILNA I SIEROTY POLSKIE PO „AMNESTII” 12 SIERPNIA 1941 ROKU. Instytut Historii i Stosunków Międzynarodowych Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego. PDF document, direct download.

During the second evacuation, 69,247 persons left the Soviet Union, including 25,501 civilians (9,633 children). Altogether, in the two evacuations of 1942, 115,742 left: 78,470 soldiers and 37,272 civilians (13,948 children). Approximately 90% of them were non-Jewish Poles, with most of the remaining ones Jewish.

Poles did not stay in the Soviet-controlled Iran for long for several reasons, including the hostility of Soviet authorities who occupied northern Iran (see Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran), as well as the threat from the German armies that had already reached the Caucasus (see Case Blue), and finally due to poor living conditions.

Refugee camps

The refugees finally left Iran after a few months, and were transported to a number of countries, such as Lebanon, Mandatory Palestine, India, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Mexico.

British Africa Maria Gabiniewicz, one of the refugees, later wrote: "We managed to leave the Soviet Union in the last transport. Still, thousands of distraught Poles remained there, sent to kolkhozs. I will never forget the journey on trucks through the mountains from Ashgabat to Tehran. After the hell that we survived, Tehran was a different world. Camp life was organized, there was a school, scouts, and religious life. Tehran was a gate, through which we were sent, in groups, to different parts of the world. My mother refused the tempting offer of going to Santa Rosa in Mexico. She wanted us to go either to India or Africa, as it was closer to Europe. She hoped we would return to Poland some day. We were transported on board a warship, through Persian Gulf. . . . After twelve days, we reached the port of Beira in Mozambique. The adults were uneasy and afraid of the unknown, but us, the children, were happy for an adventure. We were not first the Poles in Africa. There were already 22 camps, with 18,000 people who like us had gone through different places of exile in the USSR, scattered across British Africa—from Kenya to Cape Colony.

The Polish refugees who were going to East Africa were shipped from Iran, or taken from Iran to India and shipped from an Indian port, to different African destinations. The Kenyan port of Mombasa, the Tanganyikan ports Tanga and Dar es Salaam, and the Mozambican ports Beira and Laurenҫo Marques (which is today's Maputo), were the first African stops for the Polish refugees.

Many Polish refugees that spent time in refugee communities in British East Africa exhibited a white subaltern form of self-identification, regarding themselves as more similar to local populations than white European settlers as a result of their experience of oppression and forced migration at the hands of an expansionist power. However, other Polish refugees’ testimonies reflect the attitudes of British Imperial officials. This was particularly evident in Koja, Uganda, where there were heightened anxieties regarding miscegenation.

Northern Rhodesia

In October 1942, the Director of War Evacuees and Camps of Northern Rhodesia, Gore Browne, expected around 500 Polish refugees to arrive from the Middle East. In August 1945, the number of Polish refugees in Northern Rhodesia was 3,419, of which 1,227 stayed in camps in the capital Lusaka, 1,431 in Bwana Mkubwa at the Copperbelt,164 in Fort Jameson at the border with Nyasaland, and 597 in Abercorn in the Northern Province.

The last camp that was built in Northern Rhodesia at Abercorn (today's Mbala, Zambia). It was set up in 1942. Approximately 600 Polish refugees were taken to Abercorn in contingents. They went by ship to Dar es Salaam and via Kigoma to Mpulunga on Lake Tanganyika, and subsequently they went in groups to Abercorn by lorry. Wanda Nowoisiad-Ostrowska, quoted by historian Tadeusz Piotrowski (The Polish Deportees of World War II), remembered that Abercorn camp was divided into six sections of single-room houses, a washing area, a laundry, a church, and four school buildings with seven classes. The cooking was done in a large kitchen situated in the middle. One of the administrators lived in a building that also had a community centre where films were shown. Nowoisiad-Ostrowska depicted quite a sociable image with singing songs in the evening, listening together to the radio in order to be informed about the war in Europe, and doing craftwork with other women in the evenings.Sandifort Mary-Ann. World War Two: The deportation of Polish refugees to Abercorn camp in Northern Rhodesia, pp.25-45.

Living conditions

Living in Africa was very difficult for the Poles who were unfamiliar with local customs and languages and were not used to tropical weather. In Uganda, the biggest camps—which housed some 6,400 people, including 3,000 children—were at Koja (Mukono District by Lake Victoria) and Masindi, Western Uganda. Each camp had its own school, clubroom, and theatre. The housing was primitive: dwellings made of clay, with roofs made of grass and banana leaves.

Bogdan Harbuz stayed at Koja camp: "We did not receive any money for food, we only got 5 shillings a month for our expenses. The food was delivered: rice, flour, meat, salt, sugar, tea, and some coffee. People kept their own gardens, with vegetables. We were very poor, there were no jobs, kids had their classes in the open, there were no books."