Timeline of Events – Post War

World War II – Poland

Fighting the Soviets

Between 1944 and the early 1950s a guerrilla war was waged against the Soviet state. Much of the history of this new civil war is still unwritten. It was waged on a vast scale, and was fought with all the ferocity and passion of that earlier civil war that followed the Revolution. In Lithuania Soviet sources admitted the loss of 20,000 men, fighting a nationalist army estimated at 30,000. In Poland the Home Army revived after the Warsaw rising and was not finally wiped out until 1948; 50,000 Polish nationalists were exiled to Siberia. Thousands of Soviet and Polish troops were tied down trying to root out the Ukrainian People’s Army, which were said to number 20,000 in 1945. The guerrilla war was waged from bases in Poland and Czechoslovakia and was backed by thousands of Ukrainian and Polish peasants hostile to collectivization. Between 1946 and 1950 an estimated 300,000 people were deported or imprisoned from the western Ukraine alone.

Richard Overy in Russia’s War

The Greedy Kulak still filled the same role in Communist propaganda as the greedy Jew had in Nazi propaganda.

Katyn Monument, Toronto. The Canadian government refused to attend the unveiling in 1980 to appease the Soviets

1946

June – Victory Parade, London. Detachments of every Allied force march, but Polish units are not allowed so as to not offend Stalin. Air Marshall Sir Philip Joubert protests the Poles’ treatment: “Have we lost all sense of decency and gratitude?”

July 6 – 42 Jews are killed in Kielce, Poland, in a pogrom staged by the Soviets to pressure Jews to leave Poland and to discredit Polish opposition to Soviet takeover. In the immediate post war period, Soviet terror and chaos will claim 300,000 lives including 1,500 Jews.

July 23 – Canada decides to accept 4,500 Polish ex-servicemen, Allied soldiers, provided they are unmarried and will work on Canadian farms for two years and not “wage propaganda.”

August 24 – Canada categorically refuses to accept Polish ex-servicemen who had survived Nazi concentration camps or forced-labour camps. Later this policy will be softened.

1946 – 1947 – Some British trade unions, the Labor Party, The Times and Daily Mirror, call for the expulsion of “fascist” Poles. The British government will never grant pensions to Polish airmen who served in the RAF.

October 26 – Twelve Polish airmen returning to base at Hucknall are attacked by a British mob. Similar attacks occur at Nottingham and Chesterfield.

1947

1947 – 1951 – Canada will accept 36,549 Poles displaced by World War II.

January – Some 60,000 members of the Peasant Party in Poland are arrested by Communist authorities prior to the rigged elections of 1947 won by the Communists. Britain and USA protest.

March 28 – UPA assassinates Vice-Minister of Defense General Karol Swierczewski.

April-July – Operation Wisla designed to destroy UPA in southeastern Poland is carried out by Communist-controlled Polish forces with assistance of Soviet and Czech units. About 140,000 Ukrainians and Lemkos are forcibly resettled in former German territories.

June – Marshall Plan offers massive economic aid to Europe. Soviets force Poland and Eastern Europe to refuse the help.

July – In Britain the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers and others unions take action to have Polish and foreign workers fired.

October – Communists force Mikolajczyk, former prime minister of Polish Government-in-Exile, to flee Poland after failing to protect the Peasant Party.

1948

February – Communists seize power in Czechoslovakia.

Summer – Soviet blockage of Berlin.

1949

Communists, under Mao, are victorious in China.

September – USSR explodes its first atomic bomb.

1950

February – Sino-Soviet Treaty signed.

June – Korean War erupts as Communist North Korean troops attack the south.

1952

February – December – Select committee on Katyn holds hearings in Washington D.C., Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Berlin, Naples, to determine guilt in murder of Polish POWs.

December 22 – Select committee issues unanimous final report blaming the Soviets for Katyn and calls for trial in the World Court.

1953

January – Stalin announces Jewish “Doctor’s Plot” against him, and plans new wave of terror.

March 5 – Stalin dies. Some 2,750,000 prisoners are in the Gulag.

1956

June 28 – 29 – Demonstrations in Poznan against the Polish regime and Soviet domination results in 75 killed and 800 wounded at the hands of the army and militia.

1981

December 13 – General Jaruszelski imposes martial law in Poland. Solidarity erects a memorial to victims of Katyn with the correct date of 1940. Polish communist government removes the memorial.

1983

October 5 – Lech Walesa receives Nobel Prize for Peace.

1985

March – General Jaruszelski government erects monument on same site as former Solidarity monument dedicating it to “victims of Hitlerite fascism on the soil of Katyn.”

1989

November 9 – Berlin Wall comes down.

1990

April 13 – Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev officially admits Soviet guilt in the mass murder of Polish POWs at Katyn and elsewhere.

December 22 – Lech Walesa is elected president of Poland in first free elections since before WWII.

1999

March 12 – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic enter Nato.

Polish Jews and Poles in Post War Poland

To Polish Christians it has become increasingly clear that events of World War II need to be viewed not only in moral terms but also in terms of interest. It has to be said bluntly, that while the interests of Jews and Catholics were the same concerning the Nazis, in regard to the Soviets these interests did not coincide. For the Jews, the Soviet Union was a possible refuge from the horrors of Nazi occupation. For all too many Jews, the Soviet Union was a land of promise. A significant part of the secular Jewish community in Poland greeted the Soviets as friends and collaborated with them in every way until the mid-1950’s, thus contributing mightily to the destruction of Polish economy, culture, and population. Similar things could be said about the Polish-Soviet war in 1919, when gossip of “pogroms in Poland” was spread by Marxist and non-Marxist Jews in the West.

Ewa M. Thompson in “Reflections on Richard Lukas’ The Forgotten Holocaust, ” Houston Holocaust Museum, 1998

Christopher Jacek Gladun was born in 1951 and grew up in Canada to where his family emigrated from England as displaced persons. Sadly, Chris died in Toronto in March 2003. He held a diploma in Journalism from the Niagara College and a BA in Polish Language & Literature from the University of Toronto. Chris also acted as interviewer and researcher for the documentary film “Rescued From Death in Siberia”.

This content is now maintained by the Kresy-Siberia Group, which Chris was a charter member of and which is taking his website and his research work forward.