Niezapomniany rok 1942
The unforgotten 1942
Author(s): Ewa WeinbergSubject(s): History, Jewish studies, Recent History (1900 till today), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949)
Published by: Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Soviet deportation; Samarkand; Anders’s Army (7th Division); anti-Semitism; exclusion; discrimination; bishop Józef Gawlina; Leopold Okulicki; the Weinberg family; the Weindling family; the Zyss famil
Summary/Abstract: Ewa Weinberg relates her story of the deportations of Polish citizens to the USSR in the summer of 1940 and their life in 1942. After the Sikorski-Majski Pact had been signed and Anders‘s Army established, the deportees tried to leave Siberia for Samarkand, Uzbekistan. In Samarkand, it turned out that the category of citizenship is no more valid for the deportees: anti-Semitic acts were very common, but the persecutions were also applied to non-Roman Catholic Christians. Such behaviour was legitimate from the point of view of the majority and their model of society. When trying to get onto the train to Tehran, Weinberg’s friends and relatives (members of the Polish intelligentsia) heard a question: “You’re a nation of merchants and you do not even have a golden ring?”. In consequence, some of the cars left empty, having left stranded some Polish citizens categorised as gudłaje i kacapy (contemptuously: Jews and Russians).
Journal: Studia Litteraria et Historica
- Issue Year: 2013
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 573-584
- Page Count: 12
- Language: Polish