Chris Janiewicz

W CZTERDZIESTYM NAS MATKO NA SYBIR ZESLALI
(IN NINETEEN-FORTY THEY SENT US TO SIBERIA, MUM)

Selected and edited by Jan Tomasz Gross and Irena Grudzinska-Gross Published by "ANEX", London, 1983 (Excerpts translated from Polish to English by Jan Moor-Jankowski, see below)

(Archives of the Hoover Institute, Stanford, CA. contain about 2,300 essays by Polish children liberated from Soviet deportation, and more than 10,000 reports by soldiers of the Polish Army East (Army of General Anders) and their families. Gross presents in this volume 130 children's essays and 36 reports by adults.)

In his book "Neighbors", published 2000, Gross goes to a great extent in emphasizing that the Jewish population was not collaborating in 1939 - 1940 with the Bolsheviks invading eastern Poland. This contradicts the lengthy statements published by him in 1983, in Polish "In Nineteen-Forty They Sent Us to Siberia, Mum"; an astonishing proof of Gross' duplicity, and indication that his recent hate-mongering book was prepared for American readers who would not know about his earlier publications in Polish.

Chapter: Jews p.28-33

"The Red Army of occupation was received in eastern Poland enthusiastically by the Jews. In almost every locality entered by the Soviet Army there were groups of Jews, sometimes quite large, publicly expressing their enthusiasm."

"There were many such (Jewish) enthusiasts of the new authorities, so many that they left a lasting memory not only among Poles and Ukrainians, but among the Jews themselves."

" 'The Jews greeted the Soviet soldiers with joy, their young people spent the evenings together with the soldiers'….'the Soviets also showed confidence in the Jews." Three independent relations from different localities present the same picture, and one could repeat it many times over because nobody disputes these facts."

"Grodno: when the Bolsheviks entered the Polish territories they showed great distrust of the Polish population, but full confidence towards the Jews. They (the Jews) manned all institutions and were entrusted with the leading positions. There are similar reports from the town Zolkwia. A statement of (a Jew) from Lwow seems to illustrate well the situation at that time: 'when there was a political meeting, a demonstration, or another joyful manifestation, the visual effect was always the same: Jews'"

"There were also acts of symbolic vengeance and ridicule directed against the Polish population. A physician from the little town Wielkie Oczy recalls Jewish youth who organized what they called a "komsomol" and drove through the district overturning and destroying roadside chapels. "The local non-Jewish population did not appreciate this and often threatened to remember it in future times"

"The numbers of Jews working in the propaganda apparatus was out of proportion with their overall number. Truly, the anti-Semitism grew enormously during the Bolshevik occupation and it manifested itself very soon, namely during first days of the war between the Soviets and Germany."

(refers to the period 1939-early 1940) "As soon as there was a possibility (for the Jewish refugees in Russian occupied eastern Poland) to return to German occupied Poland, crowds of Jews stood entire days in queues to meet with the German repatriation committees that arrived in Lwow,Valdimir and Brest, the Jews cheered by their hundreds and thousands for Germany and Hitler. Just imagine: crowds of Jews shouting "long live Hitler" ("niech zyje Hitler")."