Deportation of Poles from Soviet occupied Polish territories

On 10th February 1940 in the early hours were deported 140 000 -300,000 Poles, mainly mothers with small children and the old, from Kresy (today the Western Ukraine and Belarus) to Syberia and Kazakhstan to Soviet forced labour camps. Many of them have never returned home.

During the 21 months Soviet occupations of Kresy at least several hundred thousand Polish Citizens were taken captive.

Altogether about 1.7 million Polish citizens of various faiths and ethnicities (Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish) deported from eastern Poland (Kresy) in 1940-42 to special labour camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and Soviet Asia. Due "pale of settlement", up to 7% of deported were Jews, who densily inhabitated these areas. The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire, which was made after Poland-Lithuanian lands were occupied by Russia during "Partitions of Poland".  Pale with varying borders existed from 1791 to 1917 (de facto until 1915) in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well. The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation.

Some 120,000 of these escaped through Persia in 1942 as soldiers of Anders Army and their families - and eventually made their way to the West because their pre-war homeland was consigned by the Allies to remain under the hated Soviet regime. Part of those Jews escaped and conscripted in so called "Anders Polish Army", remained in nowadays Israel territories.

The circumstances of their odyssey and the tragic history of the Polish citizens under Soviet occupation during the war was hushed up by the Allies during the war to protect the reputation of the Soviet Union, an important ally in the war against the Nazis. After years of courageous suffering, followed by heroic efforts fighting at the side of the Allies in Africa, Italy and Europe, the staunchly anti-communist Polish soldiers were prevented from even participating in the Allied victory celebrations.