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The lot of Jewish refugees from central and western Poland (biezency) living at the territory of Bialystok district in 1939-1941

100%
Bockowski D.
Studia Podlaskie
|
2006
|
vol. 16
85-126
EN
Jewish refugees from central Poland whose attitudes, conduct and lot differed from the lot of native Jews to a great extent, owed their specific situation to many various factors. The Jews arrived in territories seized by USSR with hope and beliefs completely unsuitable to Soviet reality. Their beliefs derived from Soviet propaganda, which was reaching Poland, about Soviet Union's prosperity, social order, lack of nationalism or persecutions. Apart from that, Soviet Union appeared as a powerful country capable of providing security, or at least, as an excellent place to survive war commotion. Apparently all these objectives were in no way comparable to the reality which was to become part of Jewish Diaspora's life, however, quite large groups of Jewish youth, communist activists and some socialists treated their way to the homeland of the world proletariat almost as the beginning of a journey to the 'promised land'. The lot of refugees, mostly Polish Jews, escaping east from advancing German army and hoping salvation is extremely complicated, and regards people who actually have not left any apparent trait in collective memory of the local community. These people, after north-eastern lands of the II Republic of Poland were seized by the Red Army and incorporated into the Belarussian SSR, found themselves in a very specific situation. For new authorities they became an enormous 'technical' problem and - at least from NKVD's point of view - a problem threatening state security as a politically uncertain element vulnerable to any activity of German special service, which can be easily seen in documents prepared for the needs of the Central Committee of the CP(b)B by Lavrentii Tsanava, head of the Belarussian NKVD. The refugees became incorporated into the mode of the Soviet dislocation policy as one of the first, whereas in summer 1940 - already as enemies of the Soviet state - they were deported upon the same principles and to the same places where they had got in February 1940 as Polish settlers and forestry service. It was a peculiar paradox of history that thanks to these dislocations most of them survived the hell of Holocaust, which in fact annihilated their compatriots from territories of north-eastern Poland. For the price of torment, blood and life of many of them these people survived in USSR as long as to 1946 when, thanks to the Polish-Soviet agreements, they could come back to their country. Small groups of refugees deported in summer 1940, released under the Sikorski-Maiski treaty and amnesty of autumn 1941, left USSR in summer 1942 together with the troops of the Polish Army in USSR and the Polish civilians.
2

MARCH 1968 IN BIALYSTOK IN THE LIGHT OF MATERIAL FROM THE CIVIC MILITIA VOIVODESHIP HEADQUARTERS

100%
Bockowski D.
Dzieje Najnowsze
|
2008
|
issue 1
195-202
EN
March 1968 did not leave a distinct imprint on the history of Bialystok. There are no records of significant events, and mention is made only of several hundred distributed leaflets, several inscriptions on walls, and heated discussions held amongst secondary school and university students. The reports emphasize that a prominent impact on the prevailing situation was exerted by the social composition of the local students - the predominance of peasant and working class backgrounds and the absence of students of intelligentsia origin. The politically active role was in many cases assumed by secondary school pupils. Quite possibly, this state of affairs was strongly affected by the lack of humanities faculties, which almost traditionally acted as the 'organisers' of student protest and disturbances. An active 'participant of the March events was the press. 'Gazeta Bialostocka' conducted a propaganda campaign throughout almost the entire period, although compared to the national papers its articles preserved a low profile and, for all practical purposes, reprinted information from the central press and featured accounts of the meetings and mass-scale demonstrations held in assorted workplaces. Neither the local press nor the Civic Militia reports reflect an excessive involvement of the residents of Bialystok in the anti-Semitic campaign, although operation reports contained numerous information about anti-Semitic moods. It is interesting to note that an examination of the Civic Militia Voivodeship Headquarters documents shows a much stronger reaction to events associated with the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Many more 'nonconformist' commentaries, public appearances, meetings and discussions were noted down; the same holds true for the number of detainees.
3

BIALYSTOK - THE FIRST YEAR (AUGUST 1944-1945)

100%
Bockowski D.
Dzieje Najnowsze
|
2005
|
issue 4
93-109
EN
The image of the first 'post-liberation' year in the life of the town depended to a great extent on the person describing its reality. On the one hand, there were the activists of the Polish Workers' Party and the Polish Committee for National Liberation (PKWN), involved in 'consolidating people's rule'; on the other hand, Home Army soldiers and representatives of the Polish authorities in London trying to fulfil their tasks were punished by deportation to the Soviet Union. During the first months of Soviet military occupation Bialystok was a town of two worlds, one of which, long awaited, was departing together with the hundreds of detained soldiers of the Polish Underground State, while the other, imposed at bayonet point, was spreading in the manner of a noxious weed, systematically depriving the population of all illusions. The yearning for freedom after years of Soviet and German occupation was the reason for attempts, made at all cost, at finding bearings in the new reality, and for succumbing to the new order in the hope of establishing some sort of a golden mean. It soon became apparent that each path proposed by the communists led to new subjugation. In addition, Bialystok experienced national problems; its liberation was perceived quite differently by three section of its population - the Belorussians, the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, and those Poles who had remained in the town.
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