Brutal, drunk, real beasts in uniform, but also ... friendly, kind and bringing selfless help. The Red Army soldiers entering our country were remembered by Poles in various ways. Here are the most interesting stories you have told about the family.
Poles at the end of World War II and right after it saw the Soviets primarily as cruelty, greedy primitives or mindless fools. The stereotype of a raping, drunk soldier, formed at that time and preserved for generations, has survived in Poland to this day. Such ideas did not arise by themselves.
Soviet soldiers who "liberated" our country from German occupation worked for them. Many of the disgusting excesses you have chosen to report to us in response to a special "Historical Curiosities" survey. Before my new book, The Red Plague. What was the liberation of Poland really like? ”, It went to press, we asked how the events of 1944 and 1945 were remembered in the homes of your parents and grandparents. Natalia Cielas replied:
Family stories show that it was just a rabble. Girls aged around 12 were taken by horse-drawn carts to the forest, and women were gang-raped. Many of those that grandma knew (small communities know, everyone knows each other) (...) committed suicide. There was a hunger and cows and chickens, which were the only feeders after the war, were taken. My (great-great) grandmother's potty was taken out from under the bed, which they then filled with water from the well and drank from it.
The stereotype of Red Army as rapists, thieves and murderers has become common.
Our countrymen tried in various ways to protect themselves from the Soviet locusts. On the route of the Soviet army, entire towns sometimes became depopulated. Women were hiding, and only men were left in the farmyard, trying to protect their belongings from "watchmakers" - as Red Army stealing timepieces were commonly called. As Karol Szron recalls:
My great-grandfather and other men in his village were digging holes in the ground in the barns to save their daughters from being raped. My grandmother and her sisters stayed in such a hole for several days.
They were worse than the Germans…
Dramatic events took place practically throughout the entire Republic of Poland, and the Soviet "liberator" was often perceived worse than the Nazi occupant. Maciej Pilczuk writes:
(...) The Russians were worse than the Germans. When they entered Lida, they behaved like rabid animals. They went around the houses after alcohol, women, threatened to shoot them if they did not get what they wanted. It was scary to go out into the streets because you could get a ball. They also came to the houses and arrested them according to the list prepared by informers. The one who praised communism and the happiness prevailing in Russia before the war, they shot themselves, and he greeted them with open arms in the middle of the street ...
The fear of their soldiers was felt even by Soviet officers, who never gave up their weapons, also during their rest. Poles witnessed exceptionally shocking events. Christian Kowalski recalls:
My aunt remembered one incident very strongly:how they managed to bribe the officer and slept in his room, but he did not hide his gun that night - yes in the countryside, but the soldiers, drunk, they started the only pig on the farm from the back ...
The Soviets were also the perpetrators of cruel rapes on Polish women. And these were not isolated cases. An anonymous reader reports:
The Russian army entered the village where my grandmother lived with her mother and four sisters. Word quickly spread that they rape anything they could. One of the sisters, a married girl (her husband was returning from the concentration camp at that time), said that they were all to hide under the floor and not speak until the army had left. She stated that if something "happened" to them, unmarried women would not find a husband. The army came, the entire brigade ... was raped all night unconscious. They were drunk and their laughter and screams drowned out the crying of the women under the floor.
Red Army soldiers often acted like animals.
A few days after the incident, my great-grandmother, their mother, died of a heart attack. (…) She blamed herself for staying upstairs instead of her daughter. (...) I remember very well that woman, my grandmother's sister. She died before my grandmother. I asked her often why she had no children. She always somehow avoided answering. Now I know that this gang rape destroyed her psyche and body .... she couldn't have children.
But not all have stolen and raped?
Some Soviet soldiers, however, revealed their human face to the Poles. They helped the sick, protected them against temptations from their comrades, and gave them food. You have also sent us such testimonies. Oskar B. recalls:
The house where my father lived was entered by the Red Army. When they saw my father's sister lying feverishly, the non-commissioned officer shouted to one of the boyfriends - run for the caper, tolka quickly. When the doctor came, my aunt was diagnosed with severe pneumonia. For the week they were stationed, this doctor looked after my aunt. They even made penicillin for her. The fact is, what the moonshine with my grandfather was drinking them. When they left for the front, they left a haversack of canned food and medicines. My aunt is still alive today, but if it weren't for the Soviet sergeant and the doctor, she would not have survived. She was less than 3 years old then.
However, there were also cases of positive behavior of the Red Army soldiers.
There were also ordinary, normal people, dead tired of the war and longing for their families. We give the floor to Bartosz Michor:
My grandmother said that when the Soviets came to Śmigiel in Greater Poland, three came to them. They asked if any women were pregnant? They all got scared then, but the soldiers didn't hurt them. They just wanted water and rest for a while. They said something in their own way, showed them pictures of, probably, their women, one cried and that's it. Some time later their commander came, he asked about the Germans and that's all. Surprisingly, they didn't do anything to them.
With vodka and a rifle
The situation of Poles in the territories occupied by the Red Army largely depended on the attitude of the Soviet commanders. If the commander was able to keep his subordinates in check, then the crimes were less frequent:
In my city there is no bad mention of Russian soldiers - in 1945 it became a city hospital. Hotels - and there were several of them - were renamed hospitals and prisoners from nearby camps, wounded and civilians were brought in. Russian doctors and food aid saved many lives. The commandant is not mentioned badly either - he supposedly "kept everyone in the mouth". He shot two soldiers who were caught rape - without trial. Mention is also made of the dances they organized for the public by the pond, and in autumn in one of the hotel rooms. They also "fed" the local people, bringing soup in the kitchens. I think a lot depended on the commanders. (author of the report:Róża Stolarczyk).
More about the activities of the Red Army in Poland in the book by Dariusz Kaliński, “Czerwona Zaraza. What the liberation of Poland really looked like. ”
The memories sent to us, however, were dominated by stories unfavorable to Soviet soldiers.
Women and young girls hid when they could, slept in cellars, barns, and fields. A rifle in one hand, a bottle of vodka in the other, they did not remember any other image. And the poverty of the Red Army:without shoes, or in two different ones, dirt, a few lumps of sugar in sacks, cruelly smelling, pepesh on a string. They forced various services in the villages, e.g. horse shoeing at the blacksmith's great-grandfather. He was afraid to ask for payment, or they gave something that they had stolen earlier, or he was just shaking the rifle and fear to think what could come to his drunk head. (author of the account:Paweł)
And how was it in my home region?
During the war, my family lived in a small village in northern Mazovia. The great-grandmother herself had to support a group of children - the great-grandfather was murdered by the Germans. The village was "liberated" on January 19, 1945. Then a pale fear fell on its inhabitants. Grandma often told how her mother (or great-grandmother) smeared her and her sisters' faces with cow dung to protect them from being raped . They had something to fear. Two women were brutally raped by the Red Army soldiers in the vicinity. Fortunately, the girls avoided the worst. The hungry soldiers took the last hens for them. A single mother and her children were left almost destitute.
Not all Red Army commanders plundered and raped. There were also those who organized hospitals for former camp prisoners.
I admit that these stories were in conflict with my idea of liberation. How is that? So there were no flowers, no hugs, no cheers? Instead, panic fear of the people who finally came to save us from brown oppression? So everything they taught us at school (it was the end of the 1980s) that is shown on television is telling the books is a lie ?!
For obvious reasons, I did not receive exhaustive explanations for many of my questions at the time. My inborn inquisitiveness meant that later, I found the answers myself. The book that you may wish to read eventually became the result.
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Once again, thank you to all those who decided to share their own, often very personal, stories from the traumatic experiences of 1944 and 1945. Selected of these accounts are included in the annex to the publication by Darek Kaliński. People whose stories have been published in the printed edition will receive the "Historical Curiosities" book packages as a reward. Including his own copy of "Red Plague", of course.