War Through Children's Eyes: The Soviet Occupation of Poland and the Deportations, 1939-1941

On September 17, 1939, two weeks after the German invasion of Poland, Soviet troops occupied the eastern half of Poland and swiftly imposed a new political and economic order. Following a plebiscite, in early November the area was annexed to the Ukraine and Belorussia. Beginning in the winter of 1939–40, Soviet authorities deported over one million Poles, many of them children, to various provinces of the Soviet Union. After the German attack on the USSR in summer 1941, the Polish governmen...