I am working on a creating a database with some other volunteers. We are using baseportal and are transcribing names from old copies of Red Cross lists of Polish refugees sent to Africa, Iran and beyond after release from Siberia in 1942.
There are thousands and thousands of names, ghosts from my past… Putting the names into a searchable database (not yet online) for the future, means they are remembered at least by me who typed the name.
The bigger project one day would be transcribing all the deaths. All our lists are in some way incomplete as well… hopefully one day all archives will be fully accessible.
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www.Kresy-Siberia.org
The “Kresy-Siberia Group” brings into contact people from countries around the world with a special interest in the tragedy of over one million Polish citizens of various faiths and ethnicities (Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, etc.) arrested or deported from eastern Poland (Kresy) in 1940-41 to special labour camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and Soviet Asia. Some 115,000 of these were evacuated through Persia in 1942 as soldiers of Anders Army and their families – and eventually made their way to the West. 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.
Sixty years later the survivors have aged and many have died. With this list we hope to bring together surviving deportees and their descendants to remember, learn, discover and spread the word of their ordeal to the world and to future generations.
