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Guide

Deported to the Soviet Union

This guide is for families of people deported by the NKVD from Poland's eastern provinces. In four mass deportations, from 10 February 1940 to June 1941, the Soviet Union removed some 320,000–340,000 Polish citizens according to NKVD documents (the government-in-exile's estimates ran as high as a million), not counting those arrested and the prisoners of war. After the 'amnesty' of 12 August 1941 some of the deportees reached General Anders' army and in 1942 left with it across the Caspian Sea to Iran, about 115,000 people in all; most stayed in the USSR for many years. Arrests and deportations resumed after 1944, as in the Augustów roundup of July 1945.

How to search

  1. 01Start with what survives at home: letters and postcards from exile, photographs, certificates issued by Soviet offices, Anders' army paybooks, repatriation papers and Polish Red Cross certificates. Gather the person's details: full name (also in Russian spelling), father's first name, year and place of birth, place of residence in 1939 and, if possible, the date of deportation and the place of exile.
  2. 02The date of deportation often shows which group the family belonged to: February 1940 meant military settlers and foresters; April 1940 the families of prisoners of war and of those arrested (mostly to Kazakhstan); June 1940 refugees from western Poland, many of them Jews; May–June 1941 the last wave. Our articles on each deportation describe them.
  3. 03The main database is the Index of the Repressed run by the IPN. Its search form takes surname, first name, father's and mother's first names, year and place of birth and place of residence. The public database holds over 316,000 records and the internal one about 1.2 million, so no online result does not mean the IPN has nothing: send a query through the form linked on the Index's site.
  4. 04Check the place of exile in 'From Central Asian Archives', a portal of the Museum of the Second World War and the Sybir Memorial Museum that searches documents from Central Asian archives for people and places. For context, photographs, letters and recorded accounts by other deportees from the same places, see the Sybir Memorial Museum's digital collections and its 'Accounts from Siberia' site.
  5. 05If the person joined Anders' army, the guide 'Soldiers in the West' covers the military records. The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London takes family enquiries in writing and asks you to enclose copies of documents already obtained from the institutions that hold personal files.
  6. 06If the person's fate is unknown, or they died in exile, send a written request to the Polish Red Cross Information and Tracing Bureau on its tracing forms. The bureau issues certificates on the fate of missing people, but warns that for most people deported into the USSR there is no information on the place of burial. People living outside Poland should approach the Red Cross in their own country.

Where to search

We checked the addresses and holdings on these institutions' own websites. Their rules can change, so check their current pages before sending a request.

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