Dear all
I am passing on a very kind note from Irena Czernichowska that she is alive and well at the Hoover Institution - East European section. ?
As you know, that is where the various war-time collections of the Polish Armed Forces in the East (Anders Army) and the Polish Government-in-Exile and various Embassy files were archived to protect them during the Communist years. ?This is not dry historical data - the holdings are fantastic, including files on deportees stories, letters, even refugee children's school essays. ?The Poles that survived the Soviet repression insisted on documenting their horrific experiences for posterity. ?That's us!
I will follow Irene's note with a longer explanatory comment on the Hoover materials. ?For those ?new to the list who are interested, get yourself a cup of coffee and read this through. ?I have put it here in the hope that the richness of this material about the Siberian deportees and their experiences fires some of us with the enthusiasm to spend some time at Stanford or in correspondence with them to bring these experiences back to life.
--
Stefan Wisniowski
Moderator, Kresy-Siberia
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> From: "Czernichowska, Irene?"
> Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001 10:05:45 -0800
> To: Stefan Wisniowski
> Subject: Re: Hello!
>
> Dear Stefan and others,
> I am here, overloaded with new responsibilities, and yes, ?it is due to
> some changes here. I feel very guilty about not responding to people, and
> hope that things will stabilize soon so that I could go back to my favorite
> subjects, and to continuation of ?my correspondences with real people.
> I hope it will be soon.
> Don't give up on me!
> Irena
>
Here is the explanatory material I promised. ?
- Stefan.
Hoover Institution Archives
Contact Information
Hoover Institution Archives
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305-6010
Phone: (650) 723-3563
Fax: (650) 725-3445
Email: archives@...
Three significant holdings:
1. Poland. Ambasada (Soviet Union) Records, 1941-1944
2. Poland. Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji Records, 1939-1945
3. Wladyslaw Anders Papers, 1939-1946
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1. ?Poland. Ambasada (Soviet Union), 1941-1944
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Abstract.
Reports, correspondence, accounts, lists, testimonies, questionnaires, certificates, petitions, card files, maps, circulars, graphs, protocols, and clippings, relating to World War II, the Soviet occupation of Poland, the Polish-Soviet military and diplomatic agreements of 1941, the re-establishment of the Polish embassy in Moscow, Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, deportations of Polish citizens to the Soviet Union, labor camps and settlements, relief work by the Polish social welfare department delegations among the deportees, the Polish armed forces formed in the Soviet Union, evacuation of Polish citizens to the Middle East, the Katyn massacre of Polish officers, and the breakdown of Polish-Soviet relations in 1943. Includes material on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet government, 1928-1929.
Biography.
Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations were severed with the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. After the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, however, the Soviet government re-established diplomatic relations with the Polish government, then in exile in London. An agreement was signed on July 30, 1941, followed by a military accord on August 14. The Poles were allowed to re-establish an Embassy in Moscow, to form an army on Soviet territory for the common struggle against Germany, and to set up a network of Polish citizens deported to the USSR in 1939-1941.
Friction soon developed in several areas, leading to an eventual break in diplomatic relations. Of particular concern to the Polish government were the Polish deportees, many of whom were forced to accept Soviet rather than Polish citizenship. The activities of the Polish social welfare workers awoke the suspicions of the Soviet authorities, who conducted a series of arrests in June and July of 1942. Finally, the question of the fate of between 8,300 and 8,400 Polish officers who had been taken prisoner by the Soviet forces in 1939 and who were supposed to be released from the prison camps at Kozel'sk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov became a source of Polish-Soviet discord. The discovery by the Germans of mass graves of between 4,443 and 4,800 Polish officers at Katyn on April 13, 1943, seemed to confirm Polish suspicions. The Soviet authorities responded by accusing the Polish government of collaboration with the Germans. On April 25, 1943, the Soviet government broke diplomatic relations with the Polish government, and the mission of the Polish Embassy was officially terminated.
The Polish ambassador in Moscow from 1941 to July 5, 1942 was Stanislaw Kot. After the general evacuation, when the Embassy was moved to Kuibyshev, the post was assumed by Tadeusz Romer. He remained there until July 25, 1943, although his official status had been revoked in April of that year. The Romer papers are located at the Public Archives of Canada, and a microfilm copy has been deposited at the Hoover Institution.
A major part of the activity of the Polish Embassy was the organization of a network of social welfare "delegations" administered by "hommes de confiance" appointed by the Social Welfare Department. The Embassy repre-sentatives were responsible for the physical well-being and in some cases the religious and educational care of the more than one million Polish citizens deported by the Soviet authorities to labor camps and settlements in 1939-1941. A mass southward evacuation of these deportees was effected in 1943, and many made their way to Britain via Iran. A large number were interviewed in Tehran in 1943 regarding their experiences in the USSR. The interviews themselves are a part of the General Wladyslaw Anders Collection at the Hoover Institution.
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2. Poland. Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji Records, 1939-1945
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Abstract.
Correspondence, reports, bulletins, memoirs, and photographs, relating to conditions in Poland during World War II, deportation of Poles to the Soviet Union, the Katyn Forest Massacre, and activities of Polish armed forces and of the Polish Government-in-Exile. Includes release certificates and reports of several thousand Polish deportees released from the Soviet Union in 1941.
Introduction.
The origins of the Ministry of Information and Documentation go back to the inception of the Polish government in exile in October 1939 in Paris. At first it had neither a definite organizational structure nor a name. It was referred to as the Office (urzad) or Bureau of Information and Documentation. By April 1940, the unit was named Center of Information and Documentation, and in September 1940 the Center was reorganized into the Ministry of Information and Documentation, a designation it carried for the remainder of the war and in the years that followed.
During the early months of its existence the office, comprised of information and documentation sections, was headed by Deputy Prime Minister Stanislaw Stronski, who was directly in charge of its documentation section. The information section was headed by Minister Marian Seyda. Stanislaw Stronski was in charge of the Ministry of Information and Documentation until March 1943, when his position was taken over by Stanislaw Kot, who headed the Ministry in the cabinet of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, until the resignation of that government in November 1944. Kot's successor was Adam Pragier, who was Minister of Information and Documentation until 1949.
The Ministry of Information and Documentation was the main information and propaganda unit of the Polish government in exile. It coordinated and facilitated the dissemination of information in support of the Polish war effort through its publishing and radio programs. The Ministry also documented and analyzed the conditions and developments in occupied Poland. One of its units, for example, the Research Section headed by Wiktor Sukiennicki, was assigned the task of systematically reviewing and summarizing the testimonies of former Polish prisoners and deportees to Soviet Russia, with a view to document the entry of the Red Army into Poland, the first weeks of Soviet occupation, the October 1939 "elections", and the consequent sovietization of the occupied territories. Thousands of original Soviet camp release certificates, statements of survivors, and detailed summaries of Soviet occupation compiled by the Research Section for every county of Eastern Poland, make up about forty percent of the volume of the Ministry's collection.
Most of the archives of the Ministry of Information and Documentation, together with those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were moved from London to Dublin at the end of the war, and remained in storage for more than a decade. In 1959, in keeping with the agreement reached between the Hoover Institution and Aleksander Zawisza, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Polish government in exile, the archives were shipped to their new home at Stanford.
The collection of the Ministry of Information and Documentation in the Hoover Institution Archives occupies about 31 linear meters. A smaller portion of the Ministry's archives, 3.6 linear meters, is preserved in the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London. Two Hoover collections in large measure complement the archives of the Ministry of Information. One of these is the Wladyslaw Anders Collection, consisting mostly of over 18,000 statements and reports of former Polish prisoners and deportees to Soviet Russia. The other collection is that of the Polish Government Information Center (Polskie Rzadowe Centrum Informacyjne), the New York agency of the Ministry of Information and Documentation.
Preliminary processing of the collection was provided in the 1980s by the late Helena Sworakowska. Detailed processing and preservation microfilming were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1997 and by matching funds from the Taube Family Foundation.
In addition, the grant provides depositing a microfilm copy of these materials in the State Archives of Poland in Warsaw
Maciej Siekierski
November 1998
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Selected box details.
RELEASE CERTIFICATES ("UDOSTOVERENIA"), 1941 August-September.
Boxes 152-184
Nearly 13,500 certificates issued by the NKVD after the Polish-Soviet agreement of July 1941, releasing Polish deportees from forced labor camps and other places of detention. Arranged alphabetically by name of deportee. Each name has also been entered on-line in a separate database, along with indication of father's name, camp name, date and place of birth, names of other family members, and box number. The names use standard Polish spelling and diacritical marks; because of that, the computer has alphabetized the names in a sequence that is not quite the correct alphabetical one. Please consult reference archivist for searches in that database. Hard copies of both databases are in separate binders.
REPORTS OF POLISH DEPORTEES, 1941.
Boxes 185-247
Nearly 12,000 questionnaires ("ankiety"), statements, and depositions of Polish deportees (as well as of some Polish prisoners of war in Box 246) collected by the Bureau of Documents of the Polish Armed Forces (Referat Historyczny Polskich Sil Zbrojnych) after evacuation to the Middle East. Arranged by name of province, and therein alphabetically by name of county. This series also includes related studies as well as copies and excerpts of some of the reports, which are filed after the orginal ones. Each name of deportee for whom we have an original report has also been entered on-line in a separate database, along with indication of profession, province, county or city, and box number (more biographical information is found in the report itself). The names use standard Polish spelling and diacritical marks; because of that, the computer has alphabetized the names in a sequence that is not quite the correct alphabetical one. Please consult reference archivist for searches in that database. Hard copies of both databases are in separate binders.
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3. ?Wladyslaw Anders Papers, 1939-1946
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Abstract.
Orders, reports, card files, questionnaires, accounts, Soviet government documents and publications, photographs, microfiche, and printed matter, relating to World War II, the Polish Armed Forces in Russia, the Polish 2d Corps in Italy, Polish citizens arrested and deported under German and Soviet occupation, Polish foreign relations, the Polish government-in-exile in London, and Polish Jews.
Introductory Note.
The Wladyslaw Anders Collection is the core of the 1946 archival deposit to the Hoover Institution made by General Wladyslaw Anders, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces. The collection is composed mostly of the archives of the Documents Bureau of the 2nd Polish Corps. The Bureau was established by General Anders in April 1943 to collect documentation on the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, and the fate of the hundreds of thousands of Polish prisoners of war, labor camp inmates, and deportees, as well as to prepare materials in support of the Polish cause for the future peace conference.
The collection contains over 18,000 original personal accounts and questionnaires of former prisoners and deportees, some documents dating back to 1941, most completed later, shortly after the 1942 evacuation from the Soviet Union. The materials were once filed in one sequence numbered 1 to 18,304. Later the file was broken into two sections, one labeled as "Relacje" and the other as "Ankiety", translated loosely as "Statements" and "Reports" in the present Hoover register, but with the old numeration retained. The highest number of the "Reports" file is 15,714, and the highest number in the "Satements" file is 18,304. The "Statements" and the "Reports" files are complementary, with numbers which are lacking in one file found in the other. The documents have an alphabetical card index, occupying the first 34 boxes of the Anders Collection, comprised of over 18,000 cards, listing the name, brief biographical data, and the corresponding personal account or questionnaire number. The 18,000 plus documents contained in the next 33 boxes of the Anders Collection (boxes 35-68) represent a variety of formats. Two questionnaires, one shorter, page-long ten point form, and the second, a four-page questionnaire, were commonly used. There were also specialized questionnaires -for the clergy, for Jews, one about working conditions, etc. Some less typical materials, such as general situation reports, regional compilations, and memoirs, are also numbered with "Reports" and the "Statements". The personal accounts and questionnaires of the Anders Collection have a detailed subject index with about 250 entries on cards (boxes 89-92). There is also a card index (boxes 93-107) of several thousand names of people who died in prisons and labor camps or who were probably left behind after the 1942 evacuation to Iran. Additionally, the index includes the names of suspected collaborators and of Soviet camp and prison personnel. Besides the original accounts and questionnaires and the card indexes, the Anders Collection includes a large number of internal documents and reports collected or produced by the Documents Bureau (boxes 68-81). Finally, the Anders Collection is supplemented by materials generated by a 1951-1952 U.S. Government study of Soviet labor camps. During that time, with the permission of General Anders, the entire Anders Collection and some files of the Poland-Ambasada (Soviet Union) Collection, were loaned to the Library of Congress. In exchange, the Hoover Institution received copies of the resulting works -nearly 1,300 English language abstracts of the personal accounts from the Anders Collection (boxes 81-87), card indexes on the geography and terminology of the Soviet camp system (boxes 108-109), and a final report of the study.
Two other Hoover Institution collections include original depositions of Polish soldiers and civilians, former prisoners and deportees in the Soviet Union. These are the Poland-Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji Collection, and the Poland-Ambasada (Soviet Union) Collection. Most of the holdings of the Documents Bureau were filmed in 1945-1946 in Italy, before the transfer of the archives to the Hoover Institution. These microfilms are now part of the Col. Wincenty Bakiewicz Collection in the Archives of the Polish Institute and the Sikorski Museum in London. The personal papers of General Anders are also at the Polish Institute.
Maciej Siekierski
June 1998
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